--- title: Ars Astronomica – English translations of rare Hebrew... description: Ars Astronomica is a scholarly imprint producing first English translations of historical Hebrew and Latin works in astronomy, cosmology, and natural... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/ars-astronomica-english-translations-of-rare-hebrew-and-latin-astronomy-texts-pl4poezpn twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Ars Astronomica – English translations of rare Hebrew and Latin astronomy texts | daily.dev og:description: Ars Astronomica is a scholarly imprint producing first English translations of historical Hebrew and Latin works in astronomy, cosmology, and natural... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/ars-astronomica-english-translations-of-rare-hebrew-and-latin-astronomy-texts-pl4poezpn og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/pl4POezpn.png og:image:alt: Ars Astronomica – English translations of rare Hebrew and Latin astronomy texts og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Ars Astronomica – English translations of rare Hebrew and Latin astronomy texts **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 11 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Ars Astronomica is a scholarly imprint producing first English translations of historical Hebrew and Latin works in astronomy, cosmology, and natural philosophy, spanning from ancient times to the 17th century. The corpus includes 25+ works by authors such as Tycho Brahe, Gersonides, Riccioli, and others — many never before available in English, including Gersonides' 136-chapter mathematical astronomy that survives only in manuscript. Translations are produced using an AI-assisted pipeline (Claude) with a multi-stage workflow, aiming for fluent modern English while preserving fidelity, technical precision, and mathematical content. PDFs are freely available for non-commercial use under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, with illustrated print editions in progress. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 1 discussion and 46 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-07-28). **TL;DR:** The community is divided: some appreciate the effort to make rare Hebrew and Latin astronomical texts accessible in English for the first time, while others question the quality and legitimacy of AI-generated translations without a credentialed human certifying accuracy. **Sentiment:** 30% positive · 40% mixed · 30% skeptical **The case for** - A professional Hebrew translator reportedly called one translation 'impressive,' suggesting at least some works meet a reasonable quality bar. - The project makes historically important works accessible that have never previously appeared in English, filling a real gap. - The pipeline goes beyond a simple Claude wrapper, involving OCR, anomaly flagging, and iterative refinement across multiple translation passes. **The pushback** - A classicist consulted by a commenter dismissed AI-generated translations as 'shit,' arguing a bad translation of an untranslated work is worse than no translation. - The translations lack a credentialed human willing to put their reputation behind accuracy, which commenters argue is essential for ancient texts with no automated verification mechanism. - Inconsistent transliteration and lack of a style guide were observed in at least one work, suggesting the output reads like a rough draft rather than a polished translation. - The copyright claim over LLM output is legally questionable under US law, where direct LLM output is not copyrightable. - The author's anonymous online presence and lack of stated academic credentials make it hard to assess the editorial oversight involved. **By community** - hackernews (mixed): Commenters are split between appreciating the accessibility of rare texts and serious concerns about translation quality, lack of human certification, and the author's credibility. **Hottest debate:** Whether an AI-assisted translation without a credentialed human certifying its accuracy is better or worse than having no English translation at all. **Open questions** - What is the author's academic or professional background (software, history of science, paleography)? - How much human editorial review is actually applied before publication, and by whom? - Are LLM-generated translations with this level of human involvement copyrightable under US law? - Would using multiple LLM models for cross-checking improve reliability? **Highlights** > > Would critics rather have NO translations of these pivotal works? I sent a Classicist the link because it's adjacent to his area of interest, and by chance he addressed this question. I don't think he'll mind me quoting him: "There's a lot of this shite popping up at the moment. [...] There seems to be some idea that publishing a shit translation of an untranslated work is better than no translation, but that's obviously wrong." Speaking for myself: Some of the anomaly rules are obviously patches to deal with a specific situation, and might be better off in code. But relying on the chatbot to flag wider anomalies is odd. How does it know what it doesn't know? At a minimum, I'd use a spread of models to gain binocular vision, and I wouldn't publish until a human was prepared to sign their reputation to it. In other words, I think what you've got there is a first draft of a translation, not a translation. Given that, if you are going to publish, I think the NoDerivatives restriction is a mistake. But that's a minor issue. > — [flir on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49083941) > The thing with LLM-generated code is you can test it on a real CPU - that's a tight feedback loop with a cast-iron verification mechanism. Translations of human language have no analogous mechanism. So yes, the translation might be perfect, but until a human puts their reputation on the line and says "I certify this translation is accurate", it's still shit. It's shit because of the way it was created, not its absolute accuracy (or otherwise). He doesn't need to read it. I'm sorry, I'm not trying to upset you, and I know I won't change your mind. We just have different philosophical positions on this, I think. > — [flir on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49084799) > I'm not a book editor or translator, just a guy with a reasonable familiarity with rabbinic literature in its original language. I spent some time reading the translation of Tzemach David, and I can say the following: it's legible to me but the AI is clearly lacking a style guide. It's inconsistent about what it chooses to translate and what it chooses to transliterate, and when it transliterates, it's inconsistent in how it does so. Eg "Rosh mesivta" vs "metivta" vs "exilarch". The AI is drawing on a hodge-podge of training materials with diverse audiences and no clear audience of its own. > — [names\_are\_hard on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49084074) > While it's really cool that this is possible now, this project seems to be a thin wrapper around running Claude. Presumably, someone who wanted to read one of these books could just run it through Claude themselves with comparable results. Sharing some artifact of your own added value, or things you learned in the process, would be more interesting to me than the output. > — [lordgrenville on hackernews · 2 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49082314) > Solely the direct output of an LLM? No, not in the US, not at all. Can human edited and corrected text in which a human adds sufficient authorship (style, diction, etc) to LLM output? Yes. An original human-authored translation is a derivative work that can hold copyright, but it is the human-authored parts that give it this status and protection. The prompt for the LLM can be copyright (again…human authorship), but the direct LLM output has no protection. > — [therealpygon on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49083528) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49079727) · 67 points · 46 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Artificial Intelligence: Ars Notoria and the Promise of Instant Knowledge](https://daily.dev/posts/artificial-intelligence-ars-notoria-and-the-promise-of-instant-knowledge-fphgptf5y) · Hacker News · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#claude](https://daily.dev/tags/claude) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/ars-astronomica-english-translations-of-rare-hebrew-and-latin-astronomy-texts-pl4poezpn) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Ars Astronomica – English translations of rare Hebrew and Latin astronomy texts","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/ars-astronomica-english-translations-of-rare-hebrew-and-latin-astronomy-texts-pl4poezpn","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/ars-astronomica-english-translations-of-rare-hebrew-and-latin-astronomy-texts-pl4poezpn"},"datePublished":"2026-07-28T10:57:03.300Z","dateModified":"2026-07-28T16:28:08.894Z","description":"Ars Astronomica is a scholarly imprint producing first English translations of historical Hebrew and Latin works in astronomy, cosmology, and natural...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/892401f112e294eb962181dc99cd806f?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/892401f112e294eb962181dc99cd806f?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Hacker News","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Hacker News","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/hn","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/hn"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/ars-astronomica-english-translations-of-rare-hebrew-and-latin-astronomy-texts-pl4poezpn","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"claude","timeRequired":"PT11M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Hacker News","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/hn"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Ars Astronomica – English translations of rare Hebrew and Latin astronomy texts"}]} ```