The Rosetta stone
The Rosetta Stone was found in 1799 in the city of Rashid (Egypt) – the French conventionally named the city Rosetta – and is now on display at the British Museum. The stone has three textual parts (hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek) and imposed on researchers a task of both deciphering and translating that material. Thomas Young understood in 1814 that the three parts of text do not correspond exactly to three languages, because hieroglyphs (elaborate drawings) and demotic (equivalent to a shorthand of hieroglyphs) did not refer to different languages, but to different notation systems. Ten years later, Jean-François Champollion published a grammar of Egyptian. In the end, deciphering the Rosetta Stone (aided by many other texts) meant waking a language from oblivion. So, more than deciphering and translating, the Rosetta Stone symbolizes a movement of natural languages.
The new Roseta Magazine
At Roseta, we understand that popularization is more than translation – and in that sense, the new visual identity is more appropriate: it’s a desire to communicate with people outside of Linguistics about what linguists consider important for the public to keep on their radar. In doing popularization, those who research Linguistics can be creative in their communication!
Navigating this inspiration, Roseta’s new visual identity allows for various interpretations. The new logo can be interpreted as a tunnel, that is: an invitation to delve into a topic… but it can also be interpreted as the opposite movement, of expansion, of reaching other audiences, that is the popularization of Linguistics. This current identity is more abstract, allowing for a more open reading.
But it’s not just the logo that has changed! The way of communicating and interacting with Roseta Magazine has also changed. The new Roseta page offers greater accessibility: the contrast of colors, the typography, and also the fact that the reader can be a listener if they wish. Furthermore: the voice that reads the text can be that of the person who produced it – or a mechanized voice. The multimodality of Roseta lies in the conjunction of image, text and sound. And since Roseta was conceived as a platform for reflection or even material to be used in class, it has become interactive: whoever reads it can tell us how they used the text read/heard and share what effects it had in their school practice. Thus, every edition ceases to be just reading and becomes an exchange.