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Terminology

What is the Urantia Book?

The Urantia Book is a spiritual and philosophical book published in English in 1955. It has 2097 pages, and is divided into 4 sections, explaining complex concepts about God, the Trinity, the universe organization, science, the history and evolution of our planet, and the life and teaching of Jesus. It asserts that there are billions of planets in the universe inhabited by multitudes of intelligent bipedal humans, that there are Thought Adjusters, entities of God who spiritually reside in our minds to slowly evolve us spiritually and personally, and that our life goes on after death with a supermaterial form. It agrees with many scientific facts, such as the slow biological evolution from bacteria to man.

What is Esperanto?

Esperanto is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Created by Warsaw-based ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, it was intended to be a universal second language for international communication, or "the international language" (la lingvo internacia). Zamenhof first described the language in Dr. Esperanto's International Language (Esperanto: Unua Libro), which he published under the pseudonym Doktoro Esperanto. Early adopters of the language liked the name Esperanto and soon used it to describe his language. The word esperanto translates into English as "one who hopes".

When he was young, Zamenhof experienced the pervasive animosity between the four peoples in Białystok where he lived: Russians, Poles, Jews, and Germans. Perceiving that it was mainly due to the language barrier, he decided to create an international language that would be used as a neutral language between all nations on Earth. His book was first published in 1887. The roots of Esperanto are heavily influenced by European languages, while its grammar—simple, regular, and expressive—is more akin to other language families. Esperanto grammar has been designed to be easy to learn, making the language about 10 times quicker to learn than other European languages.

The translation

In the early 2000s, JeanMarie Chaise, a Frenchman, completed the translation of the entire Urantia Book into Esperanto. However, he died suddenly in 2004, and his translation sat on the shelves for years. But there were problems with his draft: it was based on the French translation, and needed a lot of improvement. It not only needed revision, but its terminology needed to be harmonized as well. More work would be needed to complete the translation.

In 2020, a new international team was established to undertake this gigantic project. The Urantia Foundation agreed to our proposal to translate the book, and provided us with documents to help us translate better. We finished revising the terminology, which has more than 2000 terms, and started revising each of the 197 papers of the book one by one.

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