Babel, or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution

by R.F. Kuang

The English made regular use of only two flavours – salty and not salty – and did not seem to recognize any of the others. For a country that profited so well from trading in spices, its citizens were violently averse to actually using them; in all his time in Hampstead, he never tasted a dish that could be properly described as ‘seasoned’, let alone ‘spicy’.

This is hilarious!

‘Languages aren’t just made of words. They’re modes of looking at the world.

This is a thought I've been having for a long time now. It was so nice to read it from someone else.

the history of the word does not describe just a change in language, but a change in an entire social order.

Rather, he was afraid of how he might react if he did go home; if he stepped back into the world of a forgotten childhood. What if, upon return, he couldn’t bring himself to leave? Worse, what if he felt nothing at all?

Reality was, after all, just so malleable – facts could be forgotten, truths suppressed, lives seen from only one angle like a trick prism, if only one resolved never to look too closely.

Show the world what they want; contort yourself into the image they want to see, because seizing control of the story is how you in turn control them.

Professor Lovell opined strongly that, though the traders could have been more delicate, such heightened tensions were fundamentally the fault of the Chinese. ‘The problem is that the Chinese have convinced themselves that they’re the most superior nation in the world,’ he said. ‘They insist on using the word yi to describe Europeans in their official memos, though we’ve asked them time and time again to use something more respectful, as yi is a designation for barbarians. And they take this attitude into all trade and legal negotiations. They recognize no laws except their own, and they don’t regard foreign trade as an opportunity, but as a pesky incursion to be dealt with.’ ‘You’d be in favour of violence, then?’ Letty asked. ‘It might be the best thing for them,’ said Professor Lovell with surprising vehemence. ‘It’d do well to teach them a lesson. China is a nation of semi-barbarous people in the grips of backward Manchu rulers, and it would do them good to be forcibly opened to commercial enterprise and progress. No, I wouldn’t oppose a bit of a shake-up. Sometimes a crying child must be spanked.’

Free trade. This was always the British line of argument – free trade, free competition, an equal playing field for all. Only it never ended up that way, did it? What ‘free trade’ really meant was British imperial dominance, for what was free about a trade that relied on a massive build-up of naval power to secure maritime access? When mere trading companies could wage war, assess taxes, and administer civil and criminal justice? Griffin was right to be angry, thought Robin, but he was wrong to think he could do anything about it. These trade networks were carved in stone. Nothing was pushing this arrangement off its course; there were too many private interests, too much money at stake. They could see where it was going, but the people who had the power to do anything about it had been placed in positions where they would profit, and the people who suffered most had no power at all.

It was so obvious now that he was not, and could never be, a person in his father’s eyes. No, personhood demanded the blood purity of the European man, the racial status that would make him Professor Lovell’s equal. Little Dick and Philippa were persons. Robin Swift was an asset, and assets should be undyingly grateful that they were treated well at all.

He had become so good at holding two truths in his head at once.

Anger was a chokehold. Anger did not empower you. It sat on your chest; it squeezed your ribs until you felt trapped, suffocated, out of options. Anger simmered, then exploded. Anger was constriction, and the consequent rage a desperate attempt to breathe. And rage, of course, came from madness.

Cold, blunt, severe: all the words one might use to describe a girl who demanded from the world the same things a man would. But only because severity was the only way to make people take her seriously, because it was better to be feared and disliked than to be considered a sweet, pretty, stupid pet;

Professors talked down to her as if she were stupid. Clerks kept trying to glance through her shirt. She had an infuriatingly long walk to every class because the faculty forced women to live in a building nearly two miles north, where the landlady seemed to confuse her tenants with housemaids and yelled if they refused to do the sweeping. Scholars would reach past her at faculty parties to shake Robin’s or Ramy’s hand; if she spoke up, they pretended she did not exist. If Ramy corrected a professor, he was bold and brilliant; if Letty did the same she was aggravating. If she wanted to take a book out of the Bodleian, she needed Ramy or Robin present to give permission. If she wanted to get around in the dark, alone and unafraid, she had to dress and walk like a man.

Strikers in this country never won broad public support, for the public merely wanted all the conveniences of modern life without the guilt of knowing how those conveniences were procured.

‘We have to die to get their pity,’ said Victoire. ‘We have to die for them to find us noble. Our deaths are thus great acts of rebellion, a wretched lament that highlights their inhumanity. Our deaths become their battle cry. But I don’t want to die, Robin.’

Language was just difference. A thousand different ways of seeing, of moving through the world. No; a thousand worlds within one. And translation – a necessary endeavour, however futile, to move between them.

Beautifully written

That’s all speaking is. Listening to the other and trying to see past your own biases to glimpse what they’re trying to say. Showing yourself to the world, and hoping someone else understands.’