Babel

by R.F. Kuang

Language was always the companion of empire, and as such, together they begin, grow, and flourish. And later, together, they fall.

Yínfúlù, silver talismans.

Magic system

But this shall never be: to us remains One city that has nothing of the beast, That was not built for gross, material gains, Sharp, wolfish power or empire’s glutted feast. C.S. LEWIS, ‘Oxford’

‘That is the dilemma. Do we take words as our unit of translation, or do we subordinate accuracy of individual words to the overall spirit of the text?’

In Classical Chinese, the characters 二心 referred to disloyal or traitorous intentions; literally, they translated as ‘two hearts’. And Robin found himself in the impossible position of loving that which he betrayed, twice.

‘I don’t think you two quite understand how hard it is to be a woman here,’ said Victoire. ‘They’re liberal on paper, certainly. But they think so very little of us. Our landlady roots through our things when we’re out as if she’s searching for evidence that we’ve taken lovers. Every weakness we display is a testament to the worst theories about us, which is that we’re fragile, we’re hysterical, and we’re too naturally weak-minded to handle the kind of work we’re set to do.’

You take things too far, and you get something like Pope’s translation of the Iliad.’ ‘I thought Pope was one of the greatest poets of his time,’ Letty said. ‘Perhaps in his original work,’ said Professor Playfair. ‘But he injects the text with so many Britishisms that he makes Homer sound like an eighteenth-century English aristocrat. Surely this does not accompany our image of the Greeks and Trojans at war.’ ‘Sounds like typical English arrogance,’ said Ramy.

They could no longer look at the world and not see stories, histories, layered everywhere like centuries’ worth of sediment.

English did not just borrow words from other languages; it was stuffed to the brim with foreign influences, a Frankenstein vernacular. And Robin found it incredible, how this country, whose citizens prided themselves so much on being better than the rest of the world, could not make it through an afternoon tea without borrowed goods.