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Ars Astronomica – English translations of rare Hebrew and Latin astronomy texts

109 points by sweisman 2mo ago

devilfileprong 2mo ago
[flagged]
sweisman 2mo ago
I built Ars Astronomica to make historically important works on astronomy, calendrics, and related sciences accessible in modern English. The project combines OCR, AI-assisted translation, editorial review, and publication into a workflow that can handle book-length works while preserving diagrams, mathematical notation, and references. The site currently includes English translations of rare Hebrew and Latin works, including texts that have never previously appeared in English and others that survive only in manuscript form. All editions are released under a Creative Commons license. I'm interested in feedback from historians of science, classicists, medievalists, digital-humanities researchers, and anyone interested in AI-assisted scholarly publishing.
- pmontra 2mo ago
  I don't belong to any of those categories of people but I'm glad that you took the effort to build this site. I didn't know about those texts and I will at least skim through a few of them now. Thanks.
madhu_ghalame 2mo ago
[dead]
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
domschl 2mo ago
Why was the comment of the author of the translation-site that explains the methodology flagged / dead? The mere fact that the translation was AI-assisted shouldn't be a reason to flag a comment. AI translations, especially supervised translations, can actually achieve a reasonable level of quality. Disagreement on AI philosophy shouldn't be a reason to flag a contribution.
- kensai 2mo ago
  "Disagreement on AI philosophy shouldn't be a reason to flag a contribution." Amen!
- sweisman 2mo ago
  A professional book editor and Hebrew translator said the translation of the one work he checked out was "impressive". Others have responded equally positively to the Latin translations. AI as a panacea is overwrought, but there are genuine positive uses of it. Would critics rather have NO translations of these pivotal works?
  - NetOpWibby 2mo ago
    Yes, because if a human didn’t do it, how will we know of the translation is free of mistakes? /s
    - sweisman 2mo ago
      Professional translators don't throw around the word "impressive" like that. You don't, yet I still stand by my work. I translated some books up to four times as I refined the process. The default behavior is repeatedly to not attempt to translate text it can't resolve for whatever reason. AIs do have a tendency to hallucinate, and I expended a lot of effort on minimizing this problem to the point it can be considered mitigated.
      - ButlerianJihad 2mo ago
        Professional publishers collect blurbs which are attached to real names of real people, and bona fide reviewers write in full sentences with context, without
        sweisman 2mo ago
        It's good enough for me. I'm not publicizing his name without permission. He is quite well-known and until I moved recently, was a neighbor of mine.
bflesch 2mo ago
Nice project, but I think the PDF format could be improved. I'd prefer having landscape layout and original text and translated text side-by-side or keep the portrait layout and do a line-by-line translation so that it is easier to review and spot translation errors.
- sweisman 2mo ago
  Thank you. Your suggestion makes sense, and you are not the first to offer it. Maybe someday, although probably not CC licensed.
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
lordgrenville 2mo ago
While it's really cool that this is possible now, this project seems to be a thin wrapper around running Claude. Presumably, someone who wanted to read one of these books could just run it through Claude themselves with comparable results. Sharing some artifact of your own added value, or things you learned in the process, would be more interesting to me than the output.
- us-merul 2mo ago
  I think there's more to it than that. It's a combination of extracting the text from the PDFs, resolving persistently tricky issues (especially numbers), and flagging issues for human review at scale. You can view lessons from the author on the GitHub repo: https://github.com/sweisman/translation-pipeline https://github.com/sweisman/translation-pipeline
  - lordgrenville 2mo ago
    Great, then rather post that! Although that repo looks like 100% AI artifact, not human intervention. (What does "flagging issues for human review at scale" mean in this context?)
    - us-merul 2mo ago
      I was referring to this bullet under Lessons Learned: "Manuscript translation is feasible but rough. A 14th-century Sephardic manuscript hand is readable at ~70–80% accuracy. The output is a useful rough draft, not a polished translation. Plan for a longer discrepancy report and more editorial review." Some of the samples I looked at had question marks or original Hebrew text throughout, which I took to mean marked uncertainties.
      - sweisman 2mo ago
        Manuscripts are doable but tougher than printed works. Hebrew likewise is tougher than Latin.
    - 2mo ago
dwohnitmok 2mo ago
"All translations in this collection are © Scott Weisman. All rights reserved, except as granted by the license below." Does copyright actually belong to Scott Weisman if all the words are outputs of LLMs? Is there any relevant case law here? I'm very curious about whether LLM outputs are copyrightable by the LLM user (I'm guessing potentially it varies throughout the world).
- sweisman 2mo ago
  Yes. The rules vary worldwide. Do your own research. I did, before asserting copyright.
- therealpygon 2mo ago
  Solely the direct output of an LLM? Not in the US, no, according to the copyright office. Can a human edited and corrected text in which a human adds authorship (corrections, style, diction, editing, composition etc) to LLM output? Yes. Though simply making singular mechanical edits/corrections wouldn’t meet that bar; this seems like more than that. An original human-authored translation is a derivative work that can hold copyright, but it is the human-authored parts that give it protection. No amount of human authored pipelines that are automated (no human input) would give it this status as that is not human authorship (the pipeline itself can be however). The prompts for the LLM can also be copyright (again…human authorship), however they would be difficult to enforce since the direct output can’t be copyrighted.
tulio_ribeiro 2mo ago
Hey, man. Great work and thanks for sharing this as CC.
deluvenec 2mo ago
As a jew: it would be better to put up a site which does not risk to create the false impression of somehow comparable contribution of early european astronomers and medieval (and not so medieval) rabbis.
- mmooss 2mo ago
  Could you tell us more?: How are those groups not comparable in this context, and what do you see as the downside? And what is dishonest about the presentation?
  - deluvenec 2mo ago
    I said that the contributions from early european astromomers and rabbis are not comparable, and that this site risks to create the impression that they are (I edited out the dishonesty part, as I can't really know what your intention was). If Copernicus and Kepler would be on this page, perhaps this would be clearer. But I really think that one Tyho Brahe suffices. His measurements, that is.
    - mmooss 2mo ago
      I know what the prior comment said but I (and I imagine others) don't understand it. There is a lot of context or prior reasoning left out: In what respect are they being compared, from your perspective? How do you think they are not comparable? What is the harm of comparing them? How would Copernicus and Kepler help and what is the drawback of multiple Brahe entries? > I can't really know what your intention was My intention? I have nothing to do with the OP. Many assumptions jumping up here.
      - sweisman 2mo ago
        Judaism says revealed knowledge, as transmitted to us via our mesorah, is superior to empirical knowledge, such as that obtained via the scientific method. That being said, Ralbag, as we refer to him, or Gersonides, as you do, was both a highly regarded (and controversial) rabbi and esteemed astronomer who pioneered empirical observation and measurement.
mondainx 2mo ago
Don't get me wrong, this is awesome, but it could be better by adding Greek and Arabic, and possibly Sumerian documents?
- sweisman 2mo ago
  Thank you. I have considered Arabic, as there a couple works I am interested in. My queue of Hebrew and Latin works is already lengthy, and this is my focus for now.

109 points by sweisman 2mo ago

[flagged]

I built Ars Astronomica to make historically important works on astronomy, calendrics, and related sciences accessible in modern English. The project combines OCR, AI-assisted translation, editorial review, and publication into a workflow that can handle book-length works while preserving diagrams, mathematical notation, and references. The site currently includes English translations of rare Hebrew and Latin works, including texts that have never previously appeared in English and others that survive only in manuscript form. All editions are released under a Creative Commons license. I'm interested in feedback from historians of science, classicists, medievalists, digital-humanities researchers, and anyone interested in AI-assisted scholarly publishing.

pmontra 2mo ago
I don't belong to any of those categories of people but I'm glad that you took the effort to build this site. I didn't know about those texts and I will at least skim through a few of them now. Thanks.

madhu_ghalame 2mo ago

[dead]

deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]

domschl 2mo ago

Why was the comment of the author of the translation-site that explains the methodology flagged / dead? The mere fact that the translation was AI-assisted shouldn't be a reason to flag a comment. AI translations, especially supervised translations, can actually achieve a reasonable level of quality. Disagreement on AI philosophy shouldn't be a reason to flag a contribution.

kensai 2mo ago
"Disagreement on AI philosophy shouldn't be a reason to flag a contribution." Amen!
sweisman 2mo ago
A professional book editor and Hebrew translator said the translation of the one work he checked out was "impressive". Others have responded equally positively to the Latin translations. AI as a panacea is overwrought, but there are genuine positive uses of it. Would critics rather have NO translations of these pivotal works?
- NetOpWibby 2mo ago
  Yes, because if a human didn’t do it, how will we know of the translation is free of mistakes? /s
  - sweisman 2mo ago
    Professional translators don't throw around the word "impressive" like that. You don't, yet I still stand by my work. I translated some books up to four times as I refined the process. The default behavior is repeatedly to not attempt to translate text it can't resolve for whatever reason. AIs do have a tendency to hallucinate, and I expended a lot of effort on minimizing this problem to the point it can be considered mitigated.
    - ButlerianJihad 2mo ago
      Professional publishers collect blurbs which are attached to real names of real people, and bona fide reviewers write in full sentences with context, without
      - sweisman 2mo ago
        It's good enough for me. I'm not publicizing his name without permission. He is quite well-known and until I moved recently, was a neighbor of mine.

bflesch 2mo ago

Nice project, but I think the PDF format could be improved. I'd prefer having landscape layout and original text and translated text side-by-side or keep the portrait layout and do a line-by-line translation so that it is easier to review and spot translation errors.

sweisman 2mo ago
Thank you. Your suggestion makes sense, and you are not the first to offer it. Maybe someday, although probably not CC licensed.

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]

lordgrenville 2mo ago

While it's really cool that this is possible now, this project seems to be a thin wrapper around running Claude. Presumably, someone who wanted to read one of these books could just run it through Claude themselves with comparable results. Sharing some artifact of your own added value, or things you learned in the process, would be more interesting to me than the output.

us-merul 2mo ago
I think there's more to it than that. It's a combination of extracting the text from the PDFs, resolving persistently tricky issues (especially numbers), and flagging issues for human review at scale. You can view lessons from the author on the GitHub repo: https://github.com/sweisman/translation-pipeline https://github.com/sweisman/translation-pipeline
- lordgrenville 2mo ago
  Great, then rather post that! Although that repo looks like 100% AI artifact, not human intervention. (What does "flagging issues for human review at scale" mean in this context?)
  - us-merul 2mo ago
    I was referring to this bullet under Lessons Learned: "Manuscript translation is feasible but rough. A 14th-century Sephardic manuscript hand is readable at ~70–80% accuracy. The output is a useful rough draft, not a polished translation. Plan for a longer discrepancy report and more editorial review." Some of the samples I looked at had question marks or original Hebrew text throughout, which I took to mean marked uncertainties.
    - sweisman 2mo ago
      Manuscripts are doable but tougher than printed works. Hebrew likewise is tougher than Latin.
  - 2mo ago

dwohnitmok 2mo ago

"All translations in this collection are © Scott Weisman. All rights reserved, except as granted by the license below." Does copyright actually belong to Scott Weisman if all the words are outputs of LLMs? Is there any relevant case law here? I'm very curious about whether LLM outputs are copyrightable by the LLM user (I'm guessing potentially it varies throughout the world).

sweisman 2mo ago
Yes. The rules vary worldwide. Do your own research. I did, before asserting copyright.
therealpygon 2mo ago
Solely the direct output of an LLM? Not in the US, no, according to the copyright office. Can a human edited and corrected text in which a human adds authorship (corrections, style, diction, editing, composition etc) to LLM output? Yes. Though simply making singular mechanical edits/corrections wouldn’t meet that bar; this seems like more than that. An original human-authored translation is a derivative work that can hold copyright, but it is the human-authored parts that give it protection. No amount of human authored pipelines that are automated (no human input) would give it this status as that is not human authorship (the pipeline itself can be however). The prompts for the LLM can also be copyright (again…human authorship), however they would be difficult to enforce since the direct output can’t be copyrighted.

tulio_ribeiro 2mo ago

Hey, man. Great work and thanks for sharing this as CC.

deluvenec 2mo ago

As a jew: it would be better to put up a site which does not risk to create the false impression of somehow comparable contribution of early european astronomers and medieval (and not so medieval) rabbis.

mmooss 2mo ago
Could you tell us more?: How are those groups not comparable in this context, and what do you see as the downside? And what is dishonest about the presentation?
- deluvenec 2mo ago
  I said that the contributions from early european astromomers and rabbis are not comparable, and that this site risks to create the impression that they are (I edited out the dishonesty part, as I can't really know what your intention was). If Copernicus and Kepler would be on this page, perhaps this would be clearer. But I really think that one Tyho Brahe suffices. His measurements, that is.
  - mmooss 2mo ago
    I know what the prior comment said but I (and I imagine others) don't understand it. There is a lot of context or prior reasoning left out: In what respect are they being compared, from your perspective? How do you think they are not comparable? What is the harm of comparing them? How would Copernicus and Kepler help and what is the drawback of multiple Brahe entries? > I can't really know what your intention was My intention? I have nothing to do with the OP. Many assumptions jumping up here.
    - sweisman 2mo ago
      Judaism says revealed knowledge, as transmitted to us via our mesorah, is superior to empirical knowledge, such as that obtained via the scientific method. That being said, Ralbag, as we refer to him, or Gersonides, as you do, was both a highly regarded (and controversial) rabbi and esteemed astronomer who pioneered empirical observation and measurement.

mondainx 2mo ago

Don't get me wrong, this is awesome, but it could be better by adding Greek and Arabic, and possibly Sumerian documents?

sweisman 2mo ago
Thank you. I have considered Arabic, as there a couple works I am interested in. My queue of Hebrew and Latin works is already lengthy, and this is my focus for now.