Ars Astronomica adds eight new works and updates existing translations of historical astronomy texts

Corpus Expansion and Updates

Ars Astronomica has announced significant updates to its collection of English translations of historical Hebrew and Latin astronomy, cosmology, and natural philosophy texts. Eight new works have been added to the corpus, including "Milchamot HaShem" (Gersonides) and "Sefer HaBrit HaShalem" (Hurwitz). Additionally, "Cheshbon Mahalechot ha-Kochavim" (bar Ḥiyya ha-Nasi) was retitled, and source records for several works, such as "Nechmad ve-Na’im," have been improved with digitized exemplars from the National Library of Israel.

Translation Pipeline and Versioning

All existing translations have been regenerated and are now at version 2, superseding the previous version 1. This update follows corrections made to the automated, AI-assisted pipeline used for translation. The pipeline processes each text through a multi-stage workflow before final collation, aiming for fluent, readable modern English that is accessible to educated readers beyond specialists.

Accessibility and Future Plans

Draft editorial footnotes are now available for download for each work, enhancing the scholarly utility of the translations. These translations are considered prepublication texts, nearing completion, with diagrams and illustrations still in progress. The project focuses on maintaining fidelity to the original texts while rendering them in contemporary prose, breaking down complex sentence structures for clarity.