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From: dcs2e@darwin.clas.virginia.edu (David Swanson)
Subject: Re: Languages: Hard, Harder, Hardest
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Date: Tue, 23 Jul 1996 14:07:31 GMT
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In article <4t271h$cga@news.ox.ac.uk>
patrick@gryphon.psych.ox.ac.uk (Patrick Juola) writes:

> Well, as a professional linguist I have to go with Mr. Silberstein here.
> To the best of my knowledge, there is no language into which people
> have tried and failed to translate the Bible, and it's commonly enough
> translated to serve as a very good base case.  (I can't think of a 
> language offhand that has a million words of text translated into it
> that do not include at least the Gospel of John.)


For chrissake.  There are languages that have no written form.


> 
> As you point out, "greatly" is of course a matter of opinion.  Please
> let me provide some numbers.  Consulting my sources, I have on-line
> translations of the Bible in the following languages (with sizes) :
> 
>         English (NRV)  4,379,692 bytes
>         Russian         3,575,074   "
>         Dutch           4,542,254   "
>         French          4,311,550   "
>         Finnish         4,229,221   "
>         Maori           4,639,731   "
> 
> The maximum difference in this case is less than 30% (Maori/Russian), and
> notably is a difference between the language with the smallest character
> set and the largest, again indicating "conservation of complexity."  On
> the basis of this data, representing at least four maximally independent
> linguistic groups(*) by the way, I think it's reasonable to conclude
> that (scholastic translations of) Bibles don't vary greatly in size.
> 
>         Patrick


I should have thought 30% was greatly.


David

"Heideggerian hope comes into question." J.D.
