Babel

by R.F. Kuang

Que siempre la lengua fue compañera del imperio; y de tal manera lo siguió, que junta mente començaron, crecieron y florecieron, y después junta fue la caida de entrambos.

The word loss was inadequate. Loss just meant a lack, meant something was missing, but it did not encompass the totality of this severance, this terrifying un-anchoring from all that he’d ever known.

He buried his past life, not because it was so terrible but because abandoning it was the only way to survive. He pulled on his English accent like a new coat, adjusted everything he could about himself to make it fit, and, within weeks, wore it with comfort.

‘But that’s the beauty of learning a new language. It should feel like an enormous undertaking. It ought to intimidate you. It makes you appreciate the complexity of the ones you know already.’

‘Every language is complex in its own way. Latin just happens to work its complexity into the shape of the word. Its morphological richness is an asset, not an obstacle. Consider the sentence He will learn. Tā huì xué. Three words in both English and Chinese. In Latin, it takes only one. Discet. Much more elegant, you see?’

Words and phrases you think are carved into your bones can disappear in no time.’

A lie was not a lie if it was never uttered; questions that were never asked did not need answers. They would both remain perfectly content to linger in the liminal, endless space between truth and denial.

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’.

He could have cried then. He’d been so desperately lonely, and had only now realized it, and now

he wasn’t, and this felt so good he didn’t know what to do with himself.

This was a pattern, Robin noticed – the initial authors all tended to be white British men rather than native speakers of those languages.

‘Translation, from time immemorial, has been the facilitator of peace. Translation makes possible communication, which in turn makes possible the kind of diplomacy, trade, and cooperation between foreign peoples that brings wealth and prosperity to all.

enormous and very pretty doe-like eyes. He liked listening to her speak; every sentence felt like she was pulling laughter out from inside him.

It’s intricately tied to the business of colonialism. It is the business of colonialism. Ask yourself why the Literature Department only translates works into English and not the other way around,

‘Betrayal. Translation means doing violence upon the original, means warping and distorting it for foreign, unintended eyes. So then where does that leave us? How can we conclude, except by acknowledging that an act of translation is then necessarily always an act of betrayal?’

Language is a resource just like gold and silver. People have fought and died over those Grammaticas.’

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.

Griffin had been robbed of everything – a mother tongue, a motherland, a family.

It should have been distressing. In truth, though, Robin found it was actually quite easy to put up with any degree of social unrest, as long as one got used to looking away.

It’s shackling you. You’ve identified so hard with the colonizer, you think any threat to them is a threat to you. When are you going to realize you can’t be one of them?’

He did not know that impressing a white man could be as dangerous as provoking one.

Hide, Ramiz. 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. Hide your faith, hide your prayers, for Allah will still know your heart.

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.*

I think decolonization must be a violent process.’

‘Violence shows them how much we’re willing to give up,’ said Griffin. ‘Violence is the only language they understand, because their system of extraction is inherently violent.

The whole world was on the verge of some cataclysmic shift, it seemed, and he could only cling on to what was around him as they all hurtled towards the breaking point.

Grief suffocated. Grief paralysed. Grief was a cruel, heavy boot pressed so hard against his chest that he could not breathe. Grief took him out of his body, made his injuries theoretical. He was bleeding, but he didn’t know where from.

Let the pain slide off you like raindrops, without acknowledgment, without reaction, because to pretend it is not happening is the only way to survive.

he remembered they would not be in it, and then the tears flowed again, and the suffocating boot of grief came down again on his chest.

Power did not lie in the tip of a pen. Power did not work against its own interests. Power could only be brought to heel by acts of defiance it could not ignore. With brute, unflinching force. With violence.

If the people could not be won over by words, they would be persuaded by destruction.

How could you love someone who had hurt you so badly?

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.

‘That’s just what translation is, I think. 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.’