How the texts are made
Hearth Library collects writing by people who lived through the events they describe, and lets you read each passage in up to four versions. The translations in this library are new. They are drafted with AI, from public-domain editions of the originals, under written rules for accuracy and readability. This page says exactly what that means, step by step, and what has and hasn’t been checked by people.
Who does what
The editor, Gregry Livingston, chooses the sources, sets the rules, decides what to cut and how the collections are arranged, and edits the finished translations. None of the current translations has been through his edit yet; each page says so.
Claude, an AI model made by Anthropic, drafts the translations, the notes, the introductions and the classroom material, following the editor’s rules. Separate Claude sessions review the drafts.
Specialists in each language will review the readings that most need an expert. That review hasn’t started; uncertain readings are listed for it as they come up.
The four versions
Here is one passage, Thucydides on the doctors of Athens in 430 BCE, in all four.
οὔτε γὰρ ἰατροὶ ἤρκουν τὸ πρῶτον θεραπεύοντες ἀγνοίᾳ, ἀλλ’ αὐτοὶ μάλιστα ἔθνῃσκον ὅσῳ καὶ μάλιστα προσῇσαν, οὔτε ἄλλη ἀνθρωπεία τέχνη οὐδεμία· ὅσα τε πρὸς ἱεροῖς ἱκέτευσαν ἢ μαντείοις καὶ τοῖς τοιούτοις ἐχρήσαντο, πάντα ἀνωφελῆ ἦν, τελευτῶντές τε αὐτῶν ἀπέστησαν ὑπὸ τοῦ κακοῦ νικώμενοι.
oute gar iatroi ērkoun to prōton therapeuontes agnoiai, all’ autoi malista ethnēiskon hosōi kai malista prosēisan, oute allē anthrōpeia technē oudemia; hosa te pros hierois hiketeusan ē manteiois kai tois toioutois echrēsanto, panta anōphelē ēn, teleutōntes te autōn apestēsan hypo tou kakou nikōmenoi.
For neither were the doctors sufficient at first, treating [it] in ignorance, but they themselves died most, inasmuch as they also most approached [the sick], nor [was] any other human art at all; and as many things as they supplicated at sanctuaries [temples], or [as often as] they made use of oracles and such things, all were useless, and in the end they gave them up, being conquered by the evil.
At first the doctors were helpless. They were treating a disease they did not know, and they themselves died in the greatest numbers, because they came closest to the sick. No other human skill did any good either. People prayed at the temples, consulted oracles, and tried everything else of the kind, but nothing worked. In the end, overwhelmed by the disaster, they gave it all up.
- Original
- The text as printed in a named public-domain edition, or as it appears on the object. It is checked against images of the printed pages or of the object itself. Only the author’s words are used, never an editor’s notes or headings.
- Transliterated
- The original spelled out in our alphabet, generated by a script that follows a written policy for each language: classroom-style romanization for Greek, pinyin with tone marks for Chinese. Those are machine output and not yet reviewed. Classical Chinese written in Japan is shown as Japanese readers read it aloud (kundoku), romanized, so anyone starting from English can hear how the passage and its names sound in Japanese; that reading is an interpretation, so it is drafted and checked like a translation. Languages without an agreed policy show none rather than a guess. Latin needs none.
- Close English
- A working draft that follows the original as closely as English allows, keeping its word order and images where it can. Words in brackets are additions or the translator’s open questions. It was made to check the final against, not for publication, and it hasn’t been edited.
- Simplified English
- The finished translation, written for a curious teenager or adult with no special background. It is written from the original and the close draft, then a separate review checks every section against the original and every fact in the notes against its sources. Until that review is done, the page is marked Draft. No copyrighted translation is used while drafting; any we consult afterwards is checked by software for borrowed wording.
Principles
- Easy to read, without losing what the writer meant. Common words and short sentences, but every kept sentence of the original is translated.
- Each writer keeps a voice. Thucydides stays terse; a bishop’s sermon still sounds like preaching.
- Old ideas stay old. “Corrupted air” and “the anger of the gods” are translated as written and explained in a note, never modernized into germs.
- Cuts are marked. [...] shows where we left something out, and each page says how much of the original passage it includes. In “Compare versions” you can see every omitted section.
- Additions are marked. Words in [square brackets] were added for clarity. Explanations go in notes, not into the translation.
- Difficulty stays. If a writer is confused or contradicts himself, the translation is too, with a note.
- Context, not verdicts. Introductions say who wrote, when, and how far they can be trusted, and let the sources speak.
- Every claim in the notes is checked against the sources listed on its page.
Rights
Every original and every edition used is in the public domain in the United States. The same goes for images: each one is a public-domain object, and its page names the library or collection the copy comes from. Modern translations still in copyright are consulted only after our own translation exists, and never quoted. Under current US Copyright Office guidance, text generated by AI is generally not protected by copyright, so the translations on this site may not be protected; the editor’s selection, arrangement and editing are.
Corrections
Every page records the edition it comes from and how its text was made, so a mistake can be traced to its step and fixed at the source. Corrections from readers who know these languages are especially welcome.
Reusing the data
Everything here is also published as plain data. api/v1/index.json lists every source and collection; each source’s full record, with every version of every passage, is at api/v1/sources/<id>.json. Our own games and books read the same files.