In Kuang’s best-selling, award-winning novel, translations also enable the supremacy of an invading, cruel and cunning imperialist power over other nations. Every language is powerful in its own right, but translations have the power to move ideas, commodities, even people. Studying and interpreting languages require a unique comprehension of the cultures and histories they draw from. Kuang’s most recent novel, Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence - An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution. The acquiring of language skills, translating and then moulding them for an entire empire’s political and economic lust is at the heart of Chinese American writer and translator Rebecca F. Someone learning a foreign language might agree, understanding that mastering a new language and its morphological richness is bittersweet: one’s growing command over the foreign words enthrals, but the subtlety lost in translation disappoints. Such is the justification given by Professor Richard Lovell of the fictional Royal Institute of Translation, otherwise known as Babel. It makes you appreciate the complexity of the one you already know.” It should feel like an enormous undertaking. “But that’s the beauty of learning a new language. Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence - An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution
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