The Urantia Book

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4 paragraphs · about 2 minutes

Every paragraph the index cites under translators, once, in the order of the book. Beside each stand the entries that cite it.

44:4.3Each super­uni­verse has its own lan­guage, a tongue spo­ken by its per­son­al­i­ties and pre­vail­ing through­out its sec­tors. This is known as the tongue of Uversa in our super­uni­verse. Each lo­cal uni­verse also has its own lan­guage. All of the higher or­ders of Neb­a­don are bilin­gual, speak­ing both the lan­guage of Neb­a­don and the tongue of Uversa. When two in­di­vid­u­als from dif­fer­ent lo­cal uni­verses meet, they com­mu­ni­cate in the tongue of Uversa; if, how­ever, one of them hails from an­other super­uni­verse, they must have re­course to a trans­la­tor. In the cen­tral uni­verse there is lit­tle need of a lan­guage; there ex­ists per­fect and well-nigh com­plete un­der­stand­ing; there, only the Gods are not fully com­pre­hended. We are taught that a chance meet­ing on Par­a­dise re­veals more of mu­tual un­der­stand­ing than could be com­mu­ni­cated by a mor­tal lan­guage in a thou­sand years. Even on Sal­ving­ton we “know as we are known.”

44:4.4–8 · five paragraphs not cited here ·

44:4.4The abil­ity to trans­late thought into lan­guage in the mor­ontia and spirit spheres is be­yond mor­tal com­pre­hen­sion. Our rate of re­duc­ing thought to a per­ma­nent rec­ord can be so speeded up by the ex­pert re­cord­ers that the equiv­a­lent of over half a mil­lion words, or thought sym­bols, can be reg­is­tered in one minute of Uran­tia time. These uni­verse lan­guages are far more re­plete than the speech of the evolv­ing worlds. The con­cept sym­bols of Uversa em­brace more than a bil­lion char­ac­ters, al­though the ba­sic al­pha­bet con­tains only sev­enty sym­bols. The lan­guage of Neb­a­don is not quite so elab­o­rate, the ba­sic sym­bols, or al­pha­bet, be­ing forty-eight in num­ber.

44:4.52. Con­cept re­cord­ers. This sec­ond group of re­cord­ers are con­cerned with the preser­va­tion of con­cept pic­tures, idea pat­terns. This is a form of per­ma­nent record­ing un­known on the ma­te­rial realms, and by this method I could gain more knowl­edge in one hour of your time than you could gain in one hun­dred years of pe­rus­ing or­di­nary writ­ten lan­guage.

44:4.63. Ideo­graph re­cord­ers. We have the equiv­a­lent of both your writ­ten and spo­ken word, but in pre­serv­ing thought, we usu­ally em­ploy con­cept pic­tur­iza­tion and ideo­graph tech­niques. Those who pre­serve ideographs are able to im­prove one thou­sand­fold upon the work of the con­cept re­cord­ers.

44:4.74. Pro­mot­ers of or­a­tory. This group of re­cord­ers are oc­cu­pied with the task of pre­serv­ing thought for re­pro­duc­tion by or­a­tory. But in the lan­guage of Neb­a­don we could, in a half hour’s ad­dress, cover the sub­ject mat­ter of the en­tire life­time of a Uran­tia mor­tal. Your only hope of com­pre­hend­ing these trans­ac­tions is to pause and con­sider the tech­nique of your dis­or­dered and gar­bled dream life—how you can in a few sec­onds tra­verse years of ex­pe­ri­ence in these fan­tasies of the night sea­son.

44:4.8The or­a­tory of the spirit world is one of the rare treats which await you who have heard only the crude and stum­bling ora­tions of Uran­tia. There is har­mony of mu­sic and eu­phony of ex­pres­sion in the ora­tions of Sal­ving­ton and Eden­tia which are in­spir­ing be­yond de­scrip­tion. These burn­ing con­cepts are like gems of beauty in di­adems of glory. But I can­not do it! I can­not con­vey to the hu­man mind the breadth and depth of these re­al­i­ties of an­other world!

44:4.95. The broad­cast di­rec­tors. The broad­casts of Par­a­dise, the super­uni­verses, and the lo­cal uni­verses are un­der the gen­eral super­vi­sion of this group of thought con­servers. They serve as cen­sors and ed­i­tors as well as co-or­di­na­tors of the broad­cast ma­te­rial, mak­ing a super­uni­verse adap­ta­tion of all Par­a­dise broad­casts and adapt­ing and trans­lat­ing the broad­casts of the An­cients of Days into the in­di­vid­ual tongues of the lo­cal uni­verses.

48:3.125. In­ter­preters and Trans­la­tors. Dur­ing the early man­so­nia ca­reer you will have fre­quent re­course to the in­ter­preters and the trans­la­tors. They know and speak all the tongues of a lo­cal uni­verse; they are the lin­guists of the realms.

48:3.13You will not ac­quire new lan­guages au­to­mat­i­cally; you will learn a lan­guage over there much as you do down here, and these bril­liant be­ings will be your lan­guage teach­ers. The first study on the man­sion worlds will be the tongue of Sa­ta­nia and then the lan­guage of Neb­a­don. And while you are mas­ter­ing these new tongues, the Mor­ontia Com­pan­ions will be your ef­fi­cient in­ter­preters and pa­tient trans­la­tors. You will never en­counter a vis­i­tor on any of these worlds but that some one of the Mor­ontia Com­pan­ions will be able to of­fi­ci­ate as in­ter­preter.

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Cited alongside: interpreters and translators, language