Babel : Or the Necessity of Violence: an Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution (9780063021440)

‘Of course I don’t. The most devout Christians think it does, but you’d think if the Holy Word were so innate and unambiguous, there’d be less debate about its contents.’ He shook his head. ‘There are those who think that the Adamic language might be English – might become English – purely because the English language has enough military might and power behind it to credibly crowd out competitors, but then we must also remember that it was barely a century ago that Voltaire declared that French was the universal language. That was, of course, before Waterloo. Webb and Leibniz once speculated that Chinese might, in fact, have once been universally intelligible due to its ideogrammatic nature, but Percy debunks this by arguing Chinese is a derivative of Egyptian hieroglyphs. My point being, these things are contingent. Dominant languages might keep a little staying power even after their armies decline – Portuguese, for instance, has far outstayed its welcome – but they always fade from relevance eventually. But I do think there is a pure realm of meaning – a language in between, where all concepts are perfectly expressed, which we have not been able to approximate. There is a sense, a feeling of when we have got it right.’

‘Like Voltaire,’ Robin said, emboldened by his wine and rather excited that he could remember the relevant quote. ‘Like what he writes in his preface to his translation of Shakespeare. I have tried to soar with the author where he soars.’

‘Quite right,’ said Professor Lovell. ‘But how does Frere put it? The language of translation ought, we think, as far as possible, to be a pure, impalpable, and invisible element, the medium of thought and feeling, and nothing more. But what do we know of thought and feeling except as expressed through language?’

‘Is that what powers the silver bars?’ Robin asked. This conversation was starting to get away from him; he sensed a depth to Professor Lovell’s theorizing into which he wasn’t prepared to follow, and he needed to bring things back to the material before he got lost. ‘Do they work by capturing that pure meaning – whatever gets lost when we invoke it through crude approximations?’

Professor Lovell nodded. ‘It is as close to a theoretical explanation as we can get. But I also think that as languages evolve, as their speakers become more worldly and sophisticated, as they gorge on other concepts and swell and morph to encompass more over time – we approach something close to that language. There’s less room for misunderstanding. And we’ve only begun to work out what that means for silver-working.’

‘I suppose that means the Romanticists might eventually run out of things to say,’ said Robin.

He was only joking, but Professor Lovell nodded vigorously at this. ‘You’re quite right. French, Italian, and Spanish dominate the faculty, but their new contributions to the silver-working ledgers dwindle by the year. There’s simply too much communication across the continent. Too many loanwords. Connotations change and converge as French and Spanish grow closer to English, and vice versa. Decades from now, the silver bars we use from Romance languages might no longer have any effect. No, if we want to innovate, then we must look to the East. We need languages that aren’t spoken in Europe.’

‘That’s why you specialize in Chinese,’ said Robin.

‘Precisely.’ Professor Lovell nodded. ‘China, I’m quite sure, is the future.’

‘And that’s why you and Professor Chakravarti have been trying to diversify the cohorts?’

‘Who’s been gossiping to you about departmental politics?’ Professor Lovell chuckled. ‘Yes, there are hurt feelings this year because we only took one Classicist, and a woman at that. But that’s how it has to be. The cohort above you are going to have a tough time finding jobs.’

‘If we’re talking about the spread of language, I wanted to ask . . .’ Robin cleared his throat. ‘Where do all those bars go? I mean, who buys them?’

Professor Lovell gave him a curious look. ‘To those who can afford them, of course.’

‘But Britain is the only place where I’ve ever seen silver bars in wide use,’ said Robin. ‘They’re not nearly so popular in Canton, or, I’ve heard, in Calcutta. And it strikes me – I don’t know, it seems a bit strange that the British are the only ones who get to use them when the Chinese and Indians are contributing the crucial components of their functioning.’

‘But that’s simple economics,’ said Professor Lovell. ‘It takes a great deal of cash to purchase what we create. The British happen to be able to afford it. We have deals with Chinese and Indian merchants too, but they’re often less able to pay the export fees.’