Rf Kuang Translation Quotes

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.

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?

So, you see, translators do not so much deliver a message as the rewrite the original. And herein lies the difficulty - rewriting is still writing, and writing always reflects the authors ideology and biases.

But what is the opposite of fidelity?' asked Professor Playfair. He was approaching the end of his dialitic; now he needed only to draw it to a close with a punch. 'Betrayal. Translation means doing violence upon the original, it means warping and distorting it for foreign, unintended eyes. So, where does that leave us? How can we conclude except by acknowledging that an act of translation is always an act of 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?

Trying, he thought, to express some unutterable truth about themselves. Which was that translation was impossible. That the realm of pure meaning they captured and manifested would and could not ever be known. That the enterprise of this tower had been impossible from inception. For how could there ever be an Adamic language? The thought now made him laugh. There was no innate, perfectly comprehensible language. There was no candidate - not English, not French - that could bully and absorb enough to become one. 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 endeavor however futile, to move between them.

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.

Travel sounds fun until you realize what you really want is to stay at home with a cup of tea and a stack of books by a warm fire.

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.

The poet runs untrammeled across the meadow. The translator dances in shackles.

You’re a proper little princess, aren’t you? Big estate in Brighton, summers in Toulouse, porcelain china on your shelves and Assam in your teacups? How could you understand? Your people reap the fruits of the Empire. Ours don’t. So shut up, Letty, and just listen to what we’re trying to tell you. It’s not right what they’re doing to our countries.’ His voice grew louder, harder. ‘And it’s not right that I’m trained to use my languages for their benefit, to translate laws and texts to facilitate their rule, when there are people in India and China and Haiti and all over the Empire and the world who are hungry and starving because the British would rather put silver in their hats and harpsichords than anywhere it could do some good.

The poet is free to say whatever he likes, you see – he can choose from any number of linguistic tricks in the language he’s composing in. Word choice, word order, sound – they all matter, and without any one of them the whole thing falls apart. […] So the translator needs to be translator, literary critic, and poet all at once – he must read the original well enough to understand all the machinery at play, to convey its meaning with as much accuracy as possible, then rearrange the translated meaning into an aesthetically pleasing structure in the target language that, by his judgment, matches the original. The poet runs untrammelled across the meadow. The translator dances in shackles.

The origins of the word 'anger' were tied closely to physical suffering. 'Anger' was first an 'affliction', as meant by the Old Icelandic angr, and then a 'painful, cruel, narrow' state, as meant by the Old English enge, which in term came from the Latin angor, which meant 'strangling, anguish, distress'. 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.

This is the ongoing debate of our field...He argued there were two options: either the translator leaves the author in peace and moves the reader towards him; or he leaves the reader in peace and moves the author towards him.... Which seems right to you? Do we try our hardest, as translators, to render ourselves invisible? Or do we remind our reader that what they are reading was not written in their native language?

Translation involves a spatial dimension - a literal transportation of texts across conquered territory, words delivered likes spices from an alien land. Words mean something quite different when they journey from the palaces of Rome to the tea-rooms of today’s Britain.

Robin wondered then how much of Anthony’s life had been spent carefully translating himself to white people, how much of his genial, affable polish was an artful construction to fit a particular idea of a Black man in white England and to afford himself maximum access within an institution like Babel. And he wondered if there would ever be a day that came when all this was unnecessary, when white people would look at him and Anthony and simply listen, when their words would have worth and value because they were uttered, when they would not have to hide who they were, when they wouldn’t have to go through endless distortions just to be understood.

All our silver goes to luxury, to the military, to making lace and weapons when there are people dying of simple things these bars could fix. It’s not right that you recruit students from other countries to work your translation centre and that their motherlands receive nothing in return.

Why do you call them yi? You must know that they hate it.’ ‘But all it means is “foreign”,’ said Commissioner Lin. ‘They are the ones who insisted on its connotations. They create the insult for themselves.’ ‘Then wouldn’t it be easier just to say yáng?’ ‘Would you let someone come in and tell you what words in your own language mean?

For how could there ever be an Adamic language? The thought now made him laugh. There was no innate, perfectly comprehensible language; there was no candidate, not English, not French, that could bully and absorb enough to become one. 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.

The bars were singing, shaking; trying, he thought, to express some unutterable truth about themselves, which was that translation was impossible, that the realm of pure meaning they captured and manifested would and could not ever be known, that the enterprise of this tower had been impossible from inception.

He went back to his first morning in Oxford: climbing a sunny hill with Ramy, picnic basket in hand. Elderflower cordial. Warm brioche, sharp cheese, a chocolate tart for dessert. The air that day smelled like a promise, all of Oxford shone like an illumination, and he was falling in love. 'It's so odd,' Robin said. Back then they'd already passed the point of honesty; they spoke to one another unfiltered, unafraid of the consequences. 'It's like I've known you forever.' 'Me too,' Ramy said. 'And that makes no sense,' said Robin, drunk already, though there was no alcohol in the cordial. 'Because I've known you for less than a day, and yet...' 'I think,' said Ramy, 'its' because when I speak, you listen.' 'Because you are fascinating.' 'Because you're a good translator.' Ramy leaned back on his elbows. 'That's just what translation is, I think. That's all speaking is. Listening to the other and trying to see past your biases to glimpse what they're trying to say. Showing yourself to the world, and hoping someone else understands.

And they don’t get that film is a totally different medium, and requires different storytelling skills,” says Justin. “It’s a translation, really. And translation across mediums is inherently unfaithful to some extent. Roland Barthes. An act of translation is an act of betrayal.

The act of translation is nothing more than the act of betrayal.

We can, through perfecting the arts of translation, achieve what humanity lost at Babel.

The rabbit dies, and the fox grieves, for they’re animals of a kind.

Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal.

Here at Babel, we take inspiration from Psammetichus.’ He peered around, and his sparkling gaze landed on each of them in turn as he spoke. ‘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.

I don’t understand,’ said Robin. ‘Why don’t you just have them cook Cantonese dishes?’ ‘Because English cuisine reminds one of home,’ said Reverend Gützlaff. ‘One appreciates such creature comforts on faraway journeys.’ ‘But it tastes like rubbish,’ said Ramy. ‘And nothing could be more English,’ said Reverend Gützlaff, cutting vigorously into his grey meat.

There was no innate, perfectly comprehensible language; there was no candidate, not English, not French, that could bully and absorb enough to become one. 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

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.

The camera had distorted and flattened the spirit that bond them, and the invisible warmth and camaraderie between them appeared now like a stilted, forced closeness. Photography, he thought, was also a kind of translation, and they had all come out the poorer for it.

he felt also a thrum of excitement at the thought that perhaps his unbelonging did not doom him to existing forever on the margins, that perhaps, instead, it made him special.

its fate teetered between the university centre and the desperate, striving periphery.

what they’d felt that night was a shared sense of mortality, akin to how soldiers felt sitting in trenches at war.

Because you’re a good translator.’ Ramy leaned back on his elbows. ‘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.

Language was just a 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

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.

That's all 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.

London is a blathering mess. It’s impossible to get anything done here; the city’s too loud, and it demands too much of you. You can escape out to places like Hampstead, but the screaming core draws you back in whether you like it or not.

If this organizational competence strikes one as surprising, remember that both Babel and the British government made a great mistake in assuming all antisilver movements of the century were spontaneous riots carried out by uneducated, discontented lowlifes.

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. In weeks, no one was asking him to speak a few words in Chinese for their entertainment. In weeks, no one seemed to remember he was Chinese at all.

The first lesson any good translator internalizes is that there exists no one-to-one correlation between words or even concepts from one language to another. The Swiss philologist Johann Breitinger, who claimed that languages were merely “collections of totally equivalent words and locutions which are interchangeable, and which fully correspond to each other in meaning”, was dreadfully wrong. Language is not like maths.

The Germans have this lovely word, Sitzfleisch,’ Professor Playfair said pleasantly when Ramy protested that they had over forty hours of reading a week. ‘Translated literally, it means “sitting meat”. Which all goes to say, sometimes you need simply to sit on your bottom and get things done.

There's quite a lot you can predict.' Griffin shot Robin a sideways look. 'But that's the problem with a Babel education, isn't it? They teach you languages and translation, but never history, never science, never international politics. They don't tell you about the armies that back dialects.

It doesn't translate well into English. It means "whereabouts". A place where one feels like home, where they feel like themselves. She wrote out the kanji characters for him in the air - 居場所 - and he recognised their Chinese equivalents. The character for a residence. The characters for a place.

Is it really as bad as all that?’ Robin asked Abel. ‘The factories, I mean.’ ‘Worse,’ said Abel. ‘Those are just the freak accidents they’re reporting on. But they don’t say what it’s like to work day after day on those cramped floors. Rising before dawn and working until nine with few breaks in between. And those are the conditions we covet. The jobs we wish we could get back. I imagine they don’t make you work half as hard at university, do they?

books are meant to be touched, otherwise they’re useless,

malcontents from up north,

Up north, those men are pulling off arson, they’re stoning building owners, they’re throwing acid on factory managers. They can’t seem to stop smashing looms in Lancashire.

It's a translation, really. And translation across medium is inherently unfaithful to some extente. Roland Barthes. An act of translation is an act of betrayal.

Translation has its violent moments.

An act of translation is always an act of betrayal

How can we conclude, except by acknowledging that an act of translation is then necessarily always an act of betrayal?

Classicists are dull.

We ought not merely translate each word on its own, but must rather evoke the sense of how they fit the whole of the passage

The choice was his. Only he could determine the truth, because only he could communicate it to all parties.

he’d often translated for sailors in exchange for a tossed penny and a smile.

He’s got the personality of a wet towel: damp, and he clings.

At last he realized he was going about it all wrong. This was not Chinese. Griffin had merely used Chinese characters to convey words in a language Robin suspected was English.

The British are turning my homeland into a narco-military state to pump drugs into yours. That’s how this empire connects us.

The English are never going to think I’m posh, but if I fit into their fantasy, then they’ll at least think I’m royalty.

He argued there were two options: either the translator leaves the author in peace and moves the reader towards him; or he leaves the reader in peace and moves the author towards him.

I bask in imagining my critics’ crestfallen faces as they realize that simply being Asian doesn’t make them historical experts, that consanguinity doesn’t translate into unique epistemological insight, that their exclusive cultural snobbishness and authenticity testing are only a form of gatekeeping, and that when it all comes down to it, they haven’t a fucking clue what they’re talking about.

The silver industrial revolution had decimated both the textile and agricultural industries. The papers ran piece after piece exposing the horrific working conditions inside silver-powered factories

Then what am I supposed to do in the meantime?’ ‘What do you mean? You’re still a Babel student. Act like one. Go to class. Go out drinking and get into brawls. No – you’re soft. Don’t get into brawls.

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

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.

London was voracious, was growing fat on its spoils and still, somehow, starved. London was both unimaginably rich and wretchedly poor. London – lovely, ugly, sprawling, cramped, belching, sniffing, virtuous, hypocritical, silver-gilded London – was near to a reckoning, for the day would come when it either devoured itself from inside or cast outwards for new delicacies, labour, capital, and culture on which to feed.

So you see, translators do not so much deliver a message as they rewrite the original. And herein lies the difficulty – rewriting is still writing, and writing always reflects the author’s ideology and biases. After

This was, Robin thought, the kindest thing anyone had ever had to say about his being foreign-born. And though the story made his gut squirm – for he had read the relevant passage of Herodotus, and recalled that the Egyptian boys were nevertheless slaves – he felt also a thrum of excitement at the thought that perhaps his unbelonging did not doom him to existing forever on the margins, that perhaps, instead, it made him special.

The single most important enabler of this growth is Babel. Babel collects foreign languages and foreign talent the same way it hoards silver and uses them to produce translation magic that benefits England and England only.

There was no question about what had happened. They were both shaken by the sudden realization that they did not belong in this place, that despite their affiliation with the Translation Institute and despite their gowns and pretensions, their bodies were not safe on the streets. They were men at Oxford; they were not Oxford men. But the enormity of this knowledge was so devastating, such a vicious antithesis to the three golden days they’d blindly enjoyed, that neither of them could say it out loud. And they never would say it out loud. It hurt too much to consider the truth. It was so much easier to pretend; to keep spinning the fantasy for as long as they could.

What, you think I came to Babel because I want to be a translator for the Queen? Birdie, I hate it in this country. I hate the way they look at me, I hate being passed around at their wine parties like an animal on display. I hate knowing that my very presence at Oxford is a betrayal of my race and religion, because I’m becoming just that class of person Macaulay hoped to create. I’ve been waiting for an opportunity like Hermes since I got here—

Well – since in the Bible, God split mankind apart. And I wonder if – if the purpose of translation, then, is to bring mankind back together. If we translate to – I don’t know, bring about that paradise again, on earth, between nations.’ Professor Playfair looked baffled by this. But quickly his features reassembled into a sprightly beam. ‘Well, of course. Such is the project of empire – and why, therefore, we translate at the pleasure of the Crown.

Guilt twisted his gut. Words collected on his tongue, cruel and terrible words, but he could not turn them into a sentence. ‘Robin.’ Professor Lovell was at his side, gripping his shoulder so tightly it hurt. ‘Translate, please.

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

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.

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.

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 that someone else understands.

Latin, translation theory, etymology, focus languages, and a new research language – it was an absurdly heavy class load, especially when each professor assigned coursework as if none of the other courses existed. The faculty was utterly unsympathetic.

No, disappeared was not quite the word for it. Robin didn’t have the words for it; it was lost in translation, a concept that neither the Chinese nor the English could fully describe. They existed, but in no human form. They were not merely beings that couldn’t be seen. They weren’t beings at all. They were shapeless. They drifted, expanded; they were the air, the brick walls, the cobblestones. Robin had no awareness of his body, where he ended and the bar began—he was the silver, the stones, the night.

Kay’s flying shuttle, Arkwright’s water frame, Crompton’s spinning mule, and Cartwright’s loom were all made possible with silver-working. Silver-working has catapulted Britain ahead of every other nation, and put thousands of labourers out of work in the process.

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

I think translation can be much harder than original composition in many ways. The poet is free to say whatever he likes, you see – he can choose from any number of linguistic tricks in the language he’s composing in. Word choice, word order, sound – they all matter, and without any one of them the whole thing falls apart. That’s why Shelley writes that translating poetry is about as wise as casting a violet into a crucible.* So the translator needs to be translator, literary critic, and poet all at once – he must read the original well enough to understand all the machinery at play, to convey its meaning with as much accuracy as possible, then rearrange the translated meaning into an aesthetically pleasing structure in the target language that, by his judgment, matches the original. The poet runs untrammelled across the meadow. The translator dances in shackles.

The trouble with writing an Oxford novel is that anyone who has spent time at Oxford will scrutinize your text to determine if your representation of Oxford aligns with their own memories of the place. Worse if you are an American writing about Oxford, for what do Americans know about anything?

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.

Robin wondered then how much of Anthony’s life had been spent carefully translating himself to white people, how much of his genial, affable polish was an artful construction to fit a particular idea of a Black man in white England and to afford himself maximum access within an institution like Babel.

Some may be puzzled by the precise placement of the Royal Institute of Translation, also known as Babel. That is because I’ve warped geography to make space for it. Imagine a green between the Bodleian Libraries, the Sheldonian, and the Radcliffe Camera. Now make it much bigger, and put Babel right in the centre

But what is the opposite of fidelity?' '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?

He could read the language better than he spoke it. Ever since the boy turned four, he had received a large parcel twice a year filled entirely with books written in English. The return address was a residence in Hampstead just outside London – a place Miss Betty seemed unfamiliar with, and which the boy of course knew nothing about.

In 1833, the surgeon Peter Gaskell had published a thoroughly researched manuscript entitled The Manufacturing Population of England, focusing chiefly on the moral, social, and physical toll of silver-working machinery on British labourers. It had gone largely unheeded at the time, except by the Radicals, who were known to exaggerate everything. Now, the antiwar papers ran excerpts from it every day, reporting in grisly detail the coal dust inhaled by small children forced to wriggle into tunnels that adults could not, the fingers and toes lost to silver-powered machines working at inhuman speeds, the girls who’d been strangled by their own hair caught in whirring spindles and looms.

He went back to his first morning in Oxford: climbing a sunny hill with Ramy, picnic basket in hand. Elderflower cordial. Warm brioche, sharp cheese, a chocolate tart for dessert. The air that day smelled like a promise, all of Oxford shone like an illumination, and he was falling in love. 'It's so odd,' Robin said. Back then they'd already passed the point of honesty; they spoke to one another unfiltered, unafraid of the consequences. 'It's like I've known you forever.' 'Me too,' Ramy said. 'And that makes no sense,' said Robin, drunk already, though there was no alcohol in the cordial. 'Because I've known you for less than a day, and yet...' 'I think,' said Ramy, 'it's because when I speak, you listen.' 'Because you are fascinating.' 'Because you're a good translator.' Ramy leaned back on his elbows. 'That's just what translation is, I think. That's all speaking is. Listening to the other and trying to see past your biases to glimpse what they're trying to say. Showing yourself to the world, and hoping someone else understands.

For how could there ever be an Adamic language? The thought now made him laugh. There was no innate, perfectly comprehensible language, there was no candidate, not English, not French, that could bully and absorb enough to become one. Language was just difference. Á thousand different ways of seeing, of moving through the world. No; a thousand worlds within one. And translation however futile, to move between them.

Everything I’ve worked for is this!’ Ramy exclaimed. ‘What, you think I came to Babel because I want to be a translator for the Queen? Birdie, I hate it in this country. I hate the way they look at me, I hate being passed around at their wine parties like an animal on display. I hate knowing that my very presence at Oxford is a betrayal of my race and religion, because I’m becoming just that class of person Macaulay hoped to create.

The full impact of a so-called silver industrial revolution, a term coined by Peter Gaskell just six years before, was just beginning to be felt across the country. Silver-powered machines of the kind William Blake dubbed ‘dark Satanic Mills’ were rapidly replacing artisanal labour, but rather than bringing prosperity to all, they had instead created an economic recession, had caused a widening gap between the rich and poor that would soon become the stuff of novels by Disraeli and Dickens. Rural

But the dream was shattered. That dream had always been founded on a lie. None of them had ever stood a chance of truly belonging here, for Oxford wanted only one kind of scholar, the kind born and bred to cycle through posts of power it had created for itself. Everyone else it chewed up and discarded. These towering edifices were built with coin from the sale of slaves, and the silver that kept them running came blood-stained from the mines of Potosi. It was smelted in choking forges where native labourers were paid a pittance before making its way on ships across the Atlantic to where it was shaped by translators ripped from their countries, stolen to the faraway land and never truly allowed to go home. He'd been so foolish ever to think he could build a life here. There was no straddling the line; he knew that now. No stepping back and forth between two worlds, no seeing and not seeing, no holding a hand over one eye or the other like a child playing a game. You were either a part of this institution, or one of the bricks that held it up, or you weren't.

Theirs was a harrowing and impossible mission, yes, but Robin also found a certain exhilarating pleasure in this work. This creative problem-solving, this breaking up of a momentous mission into a dozen small tasks which, combined with enormous luck and possibly divine intervention, might carry them to victory - it all reminded him of how it felt to be in the library working on a thorny translation at four in the morning, laughing hysterically because they were so unbelievably tired but somehow thrumming with energy because it was such a thrill when a solution inevitably coalesced from their mess of scrawled notes and wild brainstorming.

The papers always referred to the strikers as foreign; as Chinamen, Indians, Arabs, and Africans. (Never mind Professor Craft.) They were never Oxfordians, they were never Englishmen, they were travellers from abroad who had taken advantage of Oxford’s good graces, and who now held the nation hostage. Babel had become synonymous with foreign, and this was very strange, because before this, the Royal Institute of Translation had always been regarded as a national treasure, a quintessentially English institution. But then England, and the English language, had always been more indebted to the poor, the lowly, and the foreign than it cared to admit. The word vernacular came from the Latin verna, meaning ‘house slave’; this emphasized the nativeness, the domesticity of the vernacular language. But the root verna also indicated the lowly origins of the language spoken by the powerful; the terms and phrases invented by slaves, labourers, beggars, and criminals – the vulgar cants, as it were – had infiltrated English until they became proper. And the English vernacular could not properly be called domestic either, because English etymology had roots all over the world. Almanacs and algebra came from Arabic; pyjamas from Sanskrit, ketchup from Chinese, and paddies from Malay. It was only when elite England’s way of life was threatened that the true English, whoever they were, attempted to excise all that had made them.

The problem is that the Chinese have convinced themselves that they’re the most superior nation in the world,’ he said. ‘They insist on using the word yi to describe Europeans in their official memos, though we’ve asked them time and time again to use something more respectful, as yi is a designation for barbarians. And they take this attitude into all trade and legal negotiations. They recognize no laws except their own, and they don’t regard foreign trade as an opportunity, but as a pesky incursion to be dealt with.’ ‘You’d be in favour of violence, then?’ Letty asked. ‘It might be the best thing for them,’ said Professor Lovell with surprising vehemence. ‘It’d do well to teach them a lesson. China is a nation of semi-barbarous people in the grips of backward Manchu rulers, and it would do them good to be forcibly opened to commercial enterprise and progress. No, I wouldn’t oppose a bit of a shake-up. Sometimes a crying child must be spanked.’ Here Ramy glanced sideways at Robin, who looked away. What more was there to say?

Robin leaned back and drained the rest of his Madeira. Several seconds passed before he realized that the poem had ended, and his appraisal was required. ‘We have translators working on poetry at Babel,’ he said blandly, for lack of anything better to say. ‘Of course that’s not the same,’ Pendennis said. ‘Translating poetry is for those who haven’t the creative fire themselves. They can only seek residual fame cribbing off the work of others.’ Robin scoffed. ‘I don’t think that’s true.’ ‘You wouldn’t know,’ said Pendennis. ‘You’re not a poet.’ ‘Actually—’ Robin fidgeted with the stem of his glass for a moment, then decided to keep talking. ‘I think translation can be much harder than original composition in many ways. The poet is free to say whatever he likes, you see – he can choose from any number of linguistic tricks in the language he’s composing in. Word choice, word order, sound – they all matter, and without any one of them the whole thing falls apart. That’s why Shelley writes that translating poetry is about as wise as casting a violet into a crucible.* So the translator needs to be translator, literary critic, and poet all at once – he must read the original well enough to understand all the machinery at play, to convey its meaning with as much accuracy as possible, then rearrange the translated meaning into an aesthetically pleasing structure in the target language that, by his judgment, matches the original. The poet runs untrammelled across the meadow. The translator dances in shackles.