MetaFilter posts tagged with language and literature

Everything you wanted to know about pre-Columbian Central America but were afraid to ask lest your heart get ripped out and offered to Quetzalcoatl

Kattullus — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 12:49:00 -0800

The Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies is your one-stop shop for pre-Columbian Central America awesomeness. There are so, so many wondrous things on that site, I don't quite know where to begin. I suppose John Pohl's scholarly introduction is a natural place to start. But maybe you just don't have time to read anything and just want to dive into pretty, pretty pictures. Perhaps the most user-friendly databases are Justin Kerr's photographs Maya Vases (e.g. 1, 2, 3) and Pre-Columbian Portfolio (e.g. 1, 2a, 2b, 3). From there you can delve into the collection of Linda Schele's photographs (e.g. 1, 2) and drawings (e.g. 1, 2, 3). There are more image databases but let me direct you to the collection of old Maya, Aztec and Mixtec books which are simply stunning (e.g. 1, 2, 3, 4 [last link pdf]). You can read more about Mayan and Mixtec codices and download high resolution versions of the entire books. There are also Maya dictionaries, glyph guides, linguistic maps and a who's who. There is also classic Mayan and Aztec poetry in translation. I'm telling you, that's not even half of what this amazing site has to offer.

Translation can be hard.

skynxnex — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 07:24:13 -0800

A Wicked Deception (youtube). A fun look at (multi) round-trip machine translation. Sadly, it is a simple fattening of Verbindungsyoutube. Of course, humans, as Jules Verne might tell you, can have problems with translations too. Related previously: Multibabel, translating poetry, and good machine translation?. Main link via Fazed.

The Sumerian Language

Effigy2000 — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 22:08:16 -0800

Sumerian is the first language for which we have written evidence and its literature the earliest known. The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, a project of the University of Oxford, comprises a selection of nearly 400 translated literary compositions recorded on sources which come from ancient Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) and date to the late third and early second millennia BCE. Not enough for you? Why not impress your friends (and confuse your enemies) by translating some english words into Sumerian?

Traduttore-traditore: translating poetry

nthdegx — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 09:35:28 -0800

Translating poetry is really really hard.

Tao Te Ching in many languages

Wolfdog — Sun, 10 Sep 2006 06:35:21 -0800

The Tao Te Ching in dozens of languages and translations, with a lovely side-by-side comparison tool.

"I am of Ireland, and the Holy Land of Ireland..."

languagehat — Sun, 11 Apr 2004 16:20:39 -0800

CELT, the Corpus of Electronic Texts, "brings the wealth of Irish literary and historical culture to the Internet, for the use and benefit of everyone worldwide. It has a searchable online database consisting of contemporary and historical texts from many areas, including literature and the other arts." It has texts in Irish, Latin, Anglo-Norman French, and English, ranging from the annals of the fifth century to the Agreement reached in the Multi-Party Negotiations in Northern Ireland of 1998. "Great my glory/ I that bore Cuchulainn the valiant..."

to blathe, or not to blathe

kaibutsu — Sun, 07 Mar 2004 04:42:26 -0800

Part dictionary, part literature. Often intensely personal, sometimes quite creepy. Not quite Wiki, and not wholly a forum. Must be Blather.