One structure. Every way a people moves forward. Une seule structure. Quelle que soit la manière dont un peuple avance. Una sola estructura. Cada forma en que un pueblo avanza.

What This Is

Every culture has its own way of gathering momentum — something that moves, carries, and pulls people forward together. A drumline. A fleet. A migration. A harvest. A procession. A river.

Lokomotywa, a Polish poem built on rhythm, accumulation, and unstoppable motion, happens to be a surprisingly open vessel. Its scaffold works across languages and adapts naturally to many traditions, images, and forms of movement.

Rosetta Voice operates simultaneously on artistic and technical levels.

Artistically, it invites reinterpretations of shared rhythmic structures across cultures. The project is especially interested in playful verbal construction, onomatopoeia-focused sound architecture, rhythmic imagination, linguistic musicality, and the different ways these qualities emerge across languages and oral traditions.

Technically, recurring formal patterns across many speakers and languages may eventually help researchers explore new approaches to low-resource speech technologies. Participation in any technical use remains strictly opt-in. At present, this technical dimension remains exploratory and experimental.

So we're building something together. "We" means anyone who decides to show up. Rosetta Voice is an open collaborative initiative rather than a project tied to a single institution.

Not a translation project, but many reinterpretations of the same momentum. Each contributor brings the rhythms, imagery, landscapes, and symbols that matter in their own language and tradition. Each version stands fully on its own. Each also stands in conversation with the others.

You don't adapt your culture to fit our poem. You bring your poem, and the structure meets you.

The ask is small: Lokomotywa is 61 lines, ~30 rhymes. That's the reference scale — enough to build momentum, short enough to do in an afternoon. But use the form that fits your language. Rhyme if you want. Don't if you don't. A full version and a deep engagement are equally welcome. A drawing counts. A commentary counts.

Rosetta Voice values spoken voice as much as written language. Recitation, breath, tempo, repetition, and oral performance are central to the project.

How this works

• You own your work, fully. You choose how you're credited — name, community, language, or anonymous.
• Translations are rights-protected. Your translated text remains yours entirely — legally and creatively. Rosetta Voice posts recitations only, not texts, unless you explicitly grant that separately.
• Recitations: credit granted, reposting allowed. By submitting a recitation, you grant Rosetta Voice a non-exclusive, royalty-free license to post and stream that recording for non-commercial public access. Others may repost it provided credit is given. You may publish your recording anywhere else, at any time. You may request its removal at any time with 30 days notice.
• The person submitting a recitation warrants they have the right to do so — whether that's their own translation, a commissioned one, or a traditional text in the public domain.
• Non-commercial, open access. No AI training without explicit opt-in.
• Contributors retain full ownership and control of their work. Participation in Rosetta Voice does not transfer intellectual property rights to the project.
• This is a choir, not a collection. We're not curating for "quality" or "representativeness." If you speak a language, carry a tradition, or hold a rhythm that deserves to be heard — you already belong.