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

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.

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kensai 42 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

"Disagreement on AI philosophy shouldn't be a reason to flag a contribution."

Amen!

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sweisman 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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?

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NetOpWibby 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes, because if a human didn’t do it, how will we know of the translation is free of mistakes? /s

	▲	sweisman 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		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.

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madhu_ghalame 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is a valuable initiative. It would be great to include more historical context alongside each translated work.

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bflesch 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Thank you. Your suggestion makes sense, and you are not the first to offer it. Maybe someday, although probably not CC licensed.

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sweisman 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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.