Numerical answer
The four sentences below, numbered 1–4, can be arranged into a coherent paragraph. Decide on the correct order.
1. This is why libraries in ancient Alexandria and Baghdad devoted enormous resources to translating texts from one language into another, treating translation as a form of preservation in its own right.
2. Long before printing made books cheap to copy, a text existed in only as many places as scribes had physically reproduced it by hand, making any single manuscript's survival fragile.
3. Modern digital archives face an analogous fragility: a file format that becomes unreadable in fifty years can erase a text as thoroughly as a fire once did.
4. A manuscript housed in a single library, written in a single language, could vanish entirely if that library burned or that language fell out of use.
Enter the correct order as a 4-digit number (e.g. 2413).
1. This is why libraries in ancient Alexandria and Baghdad devoted enormous resources to translating texts from one language into another, treating translation as a form of preservation in its own right.
2. Long before printing made books cheap to copy, a text existed in only as many places as scribes had physically reproduced it by hand, making any single manuscript's survival fragile.
3. Modern digital archives face an analogous fragility: a file format that becomes unreadable in fifty years can erase a text as thoroughly as a fire once did.
4. A manuscript housed in a single library, written in a single language, could vanish entirely if that library burned or that language fell out of use.
Enter the correct order as a 4-digit number (e.g. 2413).
Show answer and solution
Answer: 2413
Sentence 2 sets up the general fragility of hand-copied manuscripts, sentence 4 sharpens this into the specific risk (a single library, single language), sentence 1 gives the historical response (translation as preservation), and sentence 3 draws the modern parallel (digital fragility). The order is 2-4-1-3.
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