Pasigraphy¶
pasigraphy · translation · validated
A sentence carried into another language by way of a numbered vocabulary: each word becomes its number and the number becomes a word again at the far end. The checker verifies the rendering against the table and counts what the crossing cost — words with no number, numbers with no entry in the target, and numbers carrying more than one word, where two distinct things arrive as one.
Provenance¶
- Source: Athanasius Kircher, Polygraphia Nova et Universalis ex combinatoria arte detecta (Rome, 1663), book I
- Attribution:
primary— a named author, work and year this catalogue stands behind - Checkability:
source— decidable against the source text it was made from - Attested:
author-stated— the originator set this rule down
Details¶
- Kind: both
- Languages: en
- Requires:
tokens - Deterministic: yes
- Also known as: polygraphia, universal writing
- In other languages: Pasigraphie (de), Pasigraphie (fr)
Notes¶
No vocabulary travels with this package. Kircher's own has not been transcribed into anything machine-readable this project could verify, and a checker measuring against an invented table would be measuring nothing — so the table is supplied by the caller, as the corpus is for Ideenwürfeln. Books II and III of the Polygraphia are cipher systems rather than writing procedures and are not catalogued.
Prompt hint¶
Number a small vocabulary in two languages, then send a sentence across it.
Parameters¶
| Name | Type | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
from_language |
string | — |
Language the source is written in. |
require_complete |
boolean | False |
Every word must cross; a gap in the rendering is a failure. |
source |
string | — |
The text this one was made from. |
table |
string | — |
The numbered vocabulary, as JSON. |
to_language |
string | — |
Language the rendering is in. |
Examples¶
latin-to-english¶
en — this text satisfies the procedure.
god light word
Parameters: source='deus lux verbum', table='{"1": {"la": "deus", "en": "god"}, "2": {"la": "lux", "en": "light"}, "3": {"la": "verbum", "en": "word"}, "4": {"la": "sermo", "en": "word"}}', from_language='la', to_language='en'
Source: constructed example with a synthetic vocabulary; the mechanism is Kircher's Polygraphia Nova (1663), the words are not his
two-words-arriving-as-one¶
en — this text satisfies the procedure.
word word
Parameters: source='verbum sermo', table='{"1": {"la": "deus", "en": "god"}, "2": {"la": "lux", "en": "light"}, "3": {"la": "verbum", "en": "word"}, "4": {"la": "sermo", "en": "word"}}', from_language='la', to_language='en'
Source: constructed example; verbum and sermo are distinct in Latin and the same word in English, which is the loss the numbering takes on
a-word-the-table-does-not-hold¶
en — this text does not satisfy the procedure.
god stone
Parameters: source='deus lux', table='{"1": {"la": "deus", "en": "god"}, "2": {"la": "lux", "en": "light"}, "3": {"la": "verbum", "en": "word"}, "4": {"la": "sermo", "en": "word"}}', from_language='la', to_language='en'
Source: constructed counterexample