Languages & Linguistic Foundation
Comprehensive directory of supported languages, selection criteria, and public domain alignment.Curatorial Framework & Language Selection Methodology
| 1. Authorial & Human Verification (Human-in-the-Loop) | Development intentionally began with languages and scripts the author speaks or reads (English, German, Italian, BHS languages, and Cyrillic script). This enabled immediate forensic verification and prompt calibration. For additional target languages, inclusion requires at least one bilingual contact who can review sample translations and provide authentic human feedback. |
| 2. Gutenberg Deficit vs. Global Demographics | Languages are not chosen merely by United Nations demographic rankings or raw global speaker counts. The primary driver is their representation deficit on Project Gutenberg — deliberately prioritizing languages where public domain digital literature is scarce to bridge the digital availability divide. |
| 3. Economic & Legal Realities (Copyright Disparities) | A language's catalog depth in digital archives often reflects economic and legal differences rather than linguistic stature. International copyright terms (e.g. Life + 50 vs. Life + 70 years, varying national publication cut-offs) remain non-standardized across borders, dictating how much literature can legally enter the global public domain. |
Project Gutenberg Empirical Census (78,325 Works)
| Global Dominance | English (EN): 61,998 works (79.16% of total global digital archive). |
| Represented (3% – 5%) | French (FR): 4,249 (5.43%) · Finnish (FI): 3,688 (4.71%) · German (DE): 2,449 (3.13%). |
| Moderate (~1%) | Dutch (NL): 1,118 · Italian (IT): 1,110 · Spanish (ES): 914 · Portuguese (PT): 655 · Hungarian (HU): 655 · Greek (EL): 221. |
| Marginal (< 0.03%) | Japanese (JA): 21 · Afrikaans (AF): 17 · Bulgarian (BG): 6 · Romanian (RO): 5 · Slovenian (SL): 5 · Serbian (SR): 4 · Korean (KO): 1. |
| Digital Vacuum (0.00%) | Bosnian (BS), Croatian (HR), Macedonian (MK), Albanian (SQ), Turkish (TR): exactly 0 works (0.00%) in Gutenberg history. |
Target Languages Catalog —
Učitavanje jezičkog kataloga...