The so-called "Voyager Golden Records" are golden records with data and sound recordings that were transported into space in 1977 on board the space probes Voyager I and Voyager II. The golden records were conceived by NASA as a message to extraterrestrials who might one day encounter the space probes. Therefore, the records contain peaceful, friendly greeting messages in 55 languages.
Our picture book "Am I small?" will be available from September 2025 in all 55 languages of the "Voyager Golden Records" greetings as softcover, hardcover and e-book. The Voyager I spacecraft is currently the most distant man-made object from Earth. The following list contains links to all editions of the children's book in the 55 languages of the "Voyager Golden Records" greetings. All editions that are not published in English also contain an English translation for better understanding, so they are bilingual:
- 📘 Akkadian
- 📘 Amoy (Min dialect)
- 📘 Arabic
- 📘 Aramaic
- 📘 Armenian
- 📘 Bengali
- 📘 Burmese
- 📘 Cantonese
- 📘 Czech
- 📘 Dutch
- 📘 English
- 📘 French
- 📘 German
- 📘 Greek (Ancient); also available: Greek (Modern), cf. note 2
- 📘 Gujarati
- 📘 Hebrew
- 📘 Hindi
- 📘 Hittite
- 📘 Hungarian (Magyar)
- 📘 Ila (Zambia)
- 📘 Indonesian
- 📘 Italian
- 📘 Japanese
- 📘 Kannada (Kanarese)
- 📘 Kechua (Quechua)
- 📘 Korean
- 📘 Latin
- 📘 Luganda (Ganda)
- 📘 Mandarin Chinese (Simplified); also available: Mandarin Chinese (Traditional), cf. note 3
- 📘 Marathi
- 📘 Nepali
- 📘 Nguni (Zulu)
- 📘 Nyanja
- 📘 Oriya
- 📘 Persian
- 📘 Polish
- 📘 Portuguese (Portugal); also available: Brazilian Portuguese, cf. note 4
- 📘 Punjabi
- 📘 Rajasthani
- 📘 Romanian
- 📘 Russian
- 📘 Serbian; also available: Bosnian, Croatian and Montenegrin, cf. note 1
- 📘 Sotho (Sesotho) [South Africa]; also available: Sotho (Sesotho) [Lesotho], cf. note 5
- 📘 Sinhala / Sinhalese
- 📘 Spanish
- 📘 Sumerian
- 📘 Swedish
- 📘 Telugu
- 📘 Thai
- 📘 Turkish
- 📘 Ukrainian
- 📘 Urdu
- 📘 Vietnamese
- 📘 Welsh
- 📘 Wu; also available: Editions in over 250 languages and dialects, cf. note 7
Notes: Since an eventful period of time has passed since the launch of the space probes in 1977, we feel that some additions to the above list make sense for the following reasons:
The language formerly known as "Serbo-Croatian" (cf. Carl Sagan et al. (1980): "Murmurs of Earth: The Voyager Interstellar Record") is now called either Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian or Montenegrin for political reasons and has differentiated, therefore editions in all these languages are available. Incidentally, NASA currently (in 2025) lists the language on the official website as "Serbian", therefore the language "Serbian" was also used primarily in the list above, but this is not to be understood as a weighting or rating, but merely serves to sort the languages.
The language referred to by NASA as "Greek" is, if you analyze the greeting message, strictly speaking "Ancient Greek". This was also confirmed to us by the speaker of the greeting message via email. Therefore, editions are available in both Modern Greek and Ancient Greek.
Since Mandarin can be written with simplified or traditional Chinese characters and of course no characters were used in the spoken greeting message, book editions are available in both variants.
Since Portuguese is spoken differently in different countries, e.g. Portugal and Brazil, an edition in Brazilian Portuguese is also available.
The language referred to by NASA as "Sesotho" is also spoken in different countries, e.g. Lesotho and South Africa, and here too there are regional differences, therefore different editions are available.
All books are available as eBook, softcover and hardcover in the store. It is not known whether NASA has already radioed a digital edition of the book to the space probe and stored it in its memory. ;) By the way, the second language on the cover of the book in the illustration at the beginning of this blog post is Sumerian, written in cuneiform.
Since NASA's intention was to let as many languages and speakers as possible have their say in the greeting messages, to build linguistic bridges and to enable communication, we have continued this idea and created editions in over 250 languages and dialects in thousands of language combinations, so that every country on earth is represented with at least one national language. Thousands of new bridges between the languages and dialects of this planet have thus been successfully built: With every book, more communication is created for a peaceful, friendly coexistence.
