4 ms·
If readability in 1000s of years of time is the goal, wouldn't you want to add as many (common) languages as possible? And for each book add as many translation
by pintxo 6y ago
If readability in 1000s of years of time is the goal, wouldn't you want to add as many (common) languages as possible? And for each book add as many translations of them as possible? That way they will be able to read most/all even if just one language survived - irrespective which one.
- wheels 6y agoLanguages don't maintain internal mutual comprehensibility over those sorts of time frames. This is what English looked like 1000 years ago: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43521/beowulf-old-english-version https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43521/beowulf-old-eng... The only ones that maintain any significant population that can use them are those that are liturgical languages (e.g. Latin, Hebrew, Classical Greek, Classical Arabic, Sanscrit, ...)
- pintxo 6y agoThat would be an interesting task for some scholars: "We have a bunch of technology literature here, could you translate it for us into classical greek?"
- jovial_cavalier 6y agoThere is a finite amount of space in which to store data. Even if diversity of language is a principle that you adopt while creating this, not every single item in the database can be a Rosetta Stone-style snapshot of the state of human language in 2020.