[Mediterraneo10]

> there are a total of 10 Manchu native speakers left in the world. This is a problem because many Qing-dynasty documents are in Manchu

The lack of Manchu native speakers is not a problem for dealing with Qing-era state documents. The Manchu language is well-described and for many, many decades Han Chinese scholars (and then foreign scholars in Europe and North America) have been trained to work with Manchu sources. Does the lack of Latin native speakers hinder anyone from working with a new Roman-era text or inscription?

Furthermore, those handful of remaining native Manchus heavily code-switch with Chinese, and they have lost a great deal of their native Manchu vocabulary (a common phenomenon as a language dies), so even if you did show them a Qing-era text, they would probably be unable to understand much of its terminology without special training.

I am all for protecting language diversity, but your Manchu example is uninformed.

[bobthepanda]

A lack of native speakers can inhibit context. How many translations exist of, say, the Aeneid, or Beowulf?

If Manchu didn't need to be protected because of how widely known it is, the notoriously assimilationist PRC would not be launching an initiative to translate all the documents, and would not be promoting Manchu language use and education[0]. You don't see similar efforts with, say, Shanghainese.

[0]: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/1982570/quie...

[Mediterraneo10]

Language changes, and texts that were written before in a language are not necessarily intelligible to native speakers today. 2000 years after the Aeneid was written, ordinary native speakers of the language it was written in (i.e now French, Italian, Spanish, Romanian, etc.) are unable to make much sense of it, let alone provide valuable insights to scholars. It is trained non-native speakers who are able to read it at all.

Similarly, even if Manchu had not become so moribund, its native speakers probably would have been no more proficient in Qing-era texts, especially considering that they represent an elite literary style and bureaucratic terminology, than trained non-native speakers.