Hello everybody,
I'm a German student living in Paris for one year. I've learned Latin and Ancient Greek at school, so occasionally, I like to glance into a bilingual book. But sometimes it's impossible to find a bilingual version of a particular work, say, some books of Seneca; or they are extremely expensive or just badly translated. While I'm not good enough to translate an entire Latin book, it'd be great fun to translate some parts, and I'd think that many people who once learned ancient languages share this feeling. After all, this way you could actually USE what you've learned. Fans and Texts of ancient literature are hopelessly scattered through the Web, one text here and part of a translation there.
Could it be possible to set up a Wiki containing some Latin/Greek/Arabian/whatever philosophy (or other content) whose copyright has expired for a long time - be it by typing in old editions or by taking over some Gutenberg content - and displaying it one paragraph per page, giving the viewer the possibility to translate it into his native language? I guess some specific features would be helpful, such as allowing two translations in the same language to coexist (call them "English version, showing John's translations where possible" and the same thing for Jim), as there will never be "the one correct version". In addition, it would be nice to create a bilingual PDF for printing.
As I'm a student living in a small chamber with only two hours of Internet access from Monday till Friday, it is impossible for me to create such a thing. There will be lots of other ideas and feature requests; for me it doesn't matter if this will be a new project or integrated into Wikibooks or something completely different. I just wanted to present this idea; maybe someone "mightier than me" likes it, too: using your knowledge of humanism to actually exert humanism, translating some of the oldest and greatest works of mankind to be accessible free of charge by nowadays' mankind.
Have a nice day, Viktor.