Re:Dumb Cuneiform
by harel on Saturday November 07, 2015 @07:48PM
(#10526874)
I'm curious as to how the cuneiform is translated. Are they (or have access to) linguists who specialised in old Mesopotamian languages? Or do they use some freely available tools like this: http://www.paleoaliens.com/event/babylonian/ ?
Or in other words - is the translation legit? If I show it to the Sumerian god Gozer, will he laugh at me? I realise the translation is probably phonetic (i.e., written in cuneiform but would sound like English if Gozer read it).
Re:Dumb Cuneiform
by gnoway on Saturday November 07, 2015 @08:29PM
(#10526984)
You could pre-translate, but Gozer would probably still laugh at you because they use Old Persian cuneiform, not Sumerian. You might also risk your message exceeding 140 characters post-translation.
Re:Dumb Cuneiform
by orthoganol on Saturday November 07, 2015 @07:32PM
(#10526825)
As an archeology nerd, I appreciate this.
However it feels like you're lying when you say "Just tweet or text us", when you actually need to manually type out the message on a field in a Gumroad checkout widget... I think you should add better tech integration, or drop the tweet/ text part.
Re:Dumb Cuneiform
by pp19dd on Saturday November 07, 2015 @10:35PM
(#10527343)
Their choice of 'Old Persian cuneiform' is also ... weird. I don't know how to phrase it, but seems doubly misleading. The time period they're preferring by that choice is ~500-300 BCE, whereas my appeal of cuneiform is that it's one of the earliest systems of writing, going back as 35 centuries BCE.
Re:Dumb Cuneiform
by twright0 on Sunday November 08, 2015 @04:00AM
(#10528000)
Nobody used the word "trigger". It's interesting to me that you're conflating pointing out a potential issue (their sarcastic "classy") with being personally upset ("triggered") - what's going on there? Also, why are age and gender the two attributes you want to learn about them as a result?
Or in other words - is the translation legit? If I show it to the Sumerian god Gozer, will he laugh at me? I realise the translation is probably phonetic (i.e., written in cuneiform but would sound like English if Gozer read it).
"We take the letters from your message and transliterate by syllable, as nearly as we can, into cuneiform."
They're just mapping the english sounds into cuniform. It's not a translation.
You are basically writing English, but using different symbols (like IPA I suppose).
However it feels like you're lying when you say "Just tweet or text us", when you actually need to manually type out the message on a field in a Gumroad checkout widget... I think you should add better tech integration, or drop the tweet/ text part.
They should pay me the big bucks to translate tweets into Akkadian or Sumerian.
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