It’s been a few days now since we posted Words of a Man’s Mouth. Tons of folks have visited (averaging over 1000 a day) thanks to help from kottke.org, retecool.com (in Dutch, and in the comments they wonder if it’s a hoax – it’s not), and now one of the USAToday.com blogs.

What’s cool about all the traffic is that people have started to translate the book. Particularly neat tidbits include:

• “This classmate copied a quote from Mencius, the great Chinese Warring States period Confucian thinker. The writer also includes his “eternal address” at the end, somewhere in Shanghai.”
• “The year should be 1942, since it is written in the year of the Republic of China, which started in 1911. So the year 31 is 1942.”
• “These entries are like a yearbook or friendster testimonials, just a lot more sophisticated. Lots of quotes from ancient texts (Taoist classic Zhuangzi on this page), poems, sayings, etc. for someone who has just finished his studies and about to embark on his career. And people leaving their contact information.”

Take a peek if you have a moment. Even though it’s a tiny effort it’s interesting to watch both how excitement propagates across the internet, what that excitment translates to in terms of traffic, and how a small percentage of the community gets together to make the site into something even more interesting (via translations and comments).