Swiss publisher Lars Müller had the ingenious idea to publish my »Genesis« in five languages, all together in one book. After all, the biblical text is the same in every language!
To coincide with this edition, I replaced some of my pictograms with others. The ladle that I had used as a symbol for the German title was replaced by a hand on a light switch, as the metaphor and synonym of ladling and creating, »schöpfen«, only works in German. The icon of the gesture for »very good« – thumb and index finger tips put together, the other three fingers splaying out – means something vulgar and insulting to Italians. I therefore kept the internationally familiar thumbs up. I only learned much later that this gesture too symbolises something offensive in another culture (I’m afraid I forget which one).
All of this made clear to me that an internationally, unambiguously comprehensible Icon Esperanto would involve an inordinate amount of effort.
Ofschoon het gebod geen beelden te snijden met voeten wordt getreden biedt dit boek vermakelijke stof tot nadenken.
Rudolf van Wezel, items
Maybe this booklet at some time in the future will be a kind of a »Rosetta stone«, as the sequences of pictograms are being translated into five languages, and can comfortably be decoded. A nice idea for those who love riddles, language, and stimulating puzzle games.
Robert Schäfer, amazon