Communicating The World In Three Inches: The Rosetta Project

By Author: Jeannette Balleza
Total Articles: 3
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The Rosetta Project is a worldwide endeavor to produce an updated version of the famous Rosetta Stone from 100 BC. Some of Napoleon's troops discovered the Rosetta Stone in Rashid, Egypt, in 1799. They found inscribed upon the granite slab three parallel translations of a certain decree in Egyptian Hieroglyphics, Demotic and Greek. Using the Greek text, experts of the 1800s were able to decipher the previously elusive Hieroglyphic script.

Language specialists and native speakers from around the globe are joining forces to build an archive of 1,000 languages to be micro-etched onto 27,000 data pages on the Rosetta Disk, a 3'' nickel disk with a life expectancy of 2,000 years. The Rosetta Project is collecting the following information for every language:

* Detailed Descriptions: Origins, histories and other relevant statistics.
* Genesis Translations: Chapters 1-3.
* Glossed Vernacular Texts: Cultural stories contrasting with the Genesis text accompanied by grammatical analysis.
* Orthographies: Written letters/symbols as well as pronunciation keys.
* Swadesh Word Lists: Essential ...
... lists of common words.
* Inventories of Phenomes: Fundamental sound units.
* Audio Files: Spoken samples with transcriptions.

The Long Now Foundation began the Rosetta Project with funding from the Lazy Eight Foundation to address the disconcerting prediction that 50-90% of the world's languages will disappear within the next century with little documentation. The project's mission is to provide a definitive resource for comparative linguistic research and education, to preserve a meaningful survey of human languages for future decipherment and recovery of lost languages as well as to create an aesthetic object representative of the world's linguistic diversity.

''We hope the process of creating a new global Rosetta will help draw attention to the tragedy of language extinction as well as speed up the work to preserve what we have left of this critical manifestation of the human intellect,'' declared the leaders the effort.

Currently, the archive contains 760 total languages, 938 unique texts, 5,371 individual text pages and 58 volunteer contributors. If you are a language specialist, The Rosetta Project needs your contribution! The completed Rosetta archive will be available to the public via an intricately-designed nickel disk, a gargantuan reference book and the online archive at http://www.rosettaproject.org.

Let Vulcan Creative Labs communicate you and your company to the world. We do not offer micro-etching just yet, but we can do wonders with a web site! E-mail us at staff@vulcancreative.com, or call us at (479) 973-0600. Initial consultations are free of charge.
About the Author Jeannette Balleza is Co-Owner of Vulcan Creative, a creative agency specializing in identity with integrity. Vulcan Creative consults with clients on communication strategy and concept development and refinement for graphic design and web site development projects. Go to http://www.vulcancreative.com for more information and to request a free initial consultation, or e-mail jeannette@vulcancreative.com.