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Even while the recording sessions were going on, we were still trying to find and recruit speakers of languages not yet represented. After finding such a person, we had to determine whether he or she would be available during the hours when the recording sessions had been scheduled. sometimes it meant sitting for hours, telephoning friends of friends who might know someone who could speak, let's say, the Chinese Wu dialect. Other speakers were more difficult to find.

We contacted various members of the Cornell language departments, who cooperated with us on very short notice and provided numerous speakers, even though school was ending and many people were leaving for summer vacations.

The master table, reproduced on pages 134 through 143, which shows each of the languages, the speaker's name, their comments in the original language, an English translation, and the real and fractional number of human beings who speak that language, was largely Shirley's idea. "The organization of recording sessions and the arduous legwork involved in finding, contacting and convincing individual speakers was handled by Shirley Arden, Carl's executive assistant, Wendy Gradison, then Carl's editorial assistant, Dr. After all, by sending a spaceship out of our solar system, we are making an effort to de-provincialize, to rise above our nationalistic interests and join a commonwealth of space-faring societies, if one exists." The greetings are an aural Gestalt, in which each culture is a contributing voice in the choir. At least the fact that many different languages are represented should be clear from the very existence of a set of short statements separated by pauses and from internal evidence - such as the initial greeting "Namaste," which begins many of the greetings from the Indian subcontinent. We felt it was fitting that Voyager greet the universe as a representative of one community, albeit a complex one consisting of many parts. We were aware that the latter alternative might have given the extraterrestrials a better chance of understanding the words precisely, though it would have raised the thorny question of which two languages to send. We recorded messages from populations all over the globe, each representative speaking in the language of his or her people, instead of sending greetings in one or two languages accompanied by keys for their decipherment. "We were principally concerned with the needs of people on Earth during this section of the recording. The following is an excerpt by Linda Salzman Sagan from the book: They were given no instructions on what to say other than that it was to be a greeting to possible extraterrestrials and that it must be brief. Many of the speakers were from Cornell University and the surrounding communities.

Unfortunately, not much information is given about the individual speakers. The story behind the creation of the "interstellar message" is chronicled in the book, "Murmurs of Earth", by Carl Sagan, et al. Linda Salzman Sagan was given the task of assembling the greetings. Because of the launch schedule, Sagan (and those he got to help him) was not given a lot of time. NASA asked Dr Carl Sagan of Cornell University to assemble a greeting and gave him the freedom to choose the format and what would be included. In addition to pictures and music and sounds from earth, greetings in 55 languages were included. One of the purposes was to send a message to extraterrestrials who might find the spacecraft as the spacecraft journeyed through interstellar space. A golden phonograph record was attached to each of the Voyager spacecraft that were launched almost 25 years ago.