To bilingual (and multilingual) enthusiasts of wilderness:

We are searching for authors who would like to contribute very short descriptions of their favorite _non-English_ term for wilderness.  If one wishes to save wilderness, or sets out to recreate or rewild it, what does this mean in places where people predominantly speak Polish or Icelandic or Basque or Serbian, and where wilderness does not exist--cannot exist--at least by name? What does it mean to protect or bring back any of the following ...?

Wildnis  Vildmarken  Divočiny  Eyðimörkinni  Villmark  Kõnnumaa  Desierto  Pustkowie  Deserto  Sauvage  Vadon  ερημιά  Erämaa  Wildernis  пустыня  Eyðimörkinni  Pustie  Divjine  Basatia

The plan is to collect your descriptions of these wilderness-equivalent terms and make them available online.  The subtleties of meanings, say, between human presence or absence in the above terms, is what we hope to explore.  Our focus is less the history of wilderness than the linguistics of wilderness, even though word meanings have their own histories.

So far, we have wilderness delegates representing Finnish, Swedish, Estonian, Hungarian, Italian, and German, but we would like to have a good sampling of the rest of Europe's and the world's main language groups.  See and hear how 'wilderness' might be translated into your favorite language at:  http://translate.google.com/

If you are interested in any of this (or know someone who  might be), please get in touch with me.

-Marcus Hall

marc.hall@ieu.uzh.ch

University of Zurich