Multilingual inscriptions are important for the decipherment of ancient writing systems, and for the study of ancient languages with small or repetitive corpora.
Examples for multilingual inscription used for deciphering ancient scripts and for studying their respective languages, indicating the languages of the inscribed texts and the scripts systems used, with the script or language it was used for deciphering pointed out.
Important bilinguals include: The manuscript titled Relación de las cosas de Yucatán (1566; Spain) shows the de Landa alphabet (and a bilingual list of words and phrases), written in Spanish and Mayan; it allowed the decipherment of the Pre-Columbian Maya script in the mid-20th century.
Important trilinguals include: Important quadrilinguals include: Important examples in five or more languages include: Notable modern examples include: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948; Paris, France) was originally written in English and French.
In 2009, it became the most translated document in the world (370 languages and dialects).