Babel

by R.F. Kuang

‘So there it is. It’s all quite easy once you’ve grasped the basic principle. We capture what is lost in translation – for there is always something lost in translation – and the bar manifests it into being. Simple enough?’ ‘But that’s absurdly powerful,’ said Letty. ‘You could do anything with those bars. You could be God—’ ‘Not quite, Miss Price. We are restrained by the natural evolution of languages. Even words that diverge in meaning still have quite a close relationship with each other. This limits the magnitude of change the bars can effect. For example, you can’t use them to bring back the dead, because we haven’t found a good match-pair in a language where life and death are not in opposition to each other. Besides that, there’s one other rather severe limitation to the bars – one that keeps every peasant in England from running around wielding them like talismans. Can anyone guess what it is?’ Victoire raised her hand. ‘You need a fluent speaker.’ ‘Quite right,’ said Professor Playfair. ‘Words have no meaning unless there is someone present who can understand them. And it can’t be a shallow level of understanding – you can’t simply tell a farmer what triacle means in French and expect that the bar will work. You need to be able to think in a language – to live and breathe it, not just recognize it as a smattering of letters on a page. This is also why invented languages* will never work, and why ancient languages like Old English have lost their effect. Old Engli...