2023/047: Babel — R. F. Kuang

2023/047: Babel — R. F. Kuang

...if the system is so fragile, why do we so easily accept the colonial situation? Why do we think it’s inevitable? Why doesn’t Man Friday ever get himself a rifle, or slit Robinson Crusoe’s neck in the night? The problem is that we’re always living like we’ve lost. [loc. 7046]

A small boy is plucked from the room in Canton where his mother lies dead. A new name, 'Robin Swift', is bestowed upon him by his saviour, Professor Lowell, who takes him back to London and ensures that he is properly educated in Latin and Greek. Eventually he's enrolled in the Royal Institute of Translation, also known as Babel, which 'alone among the Oxford faculties accepts students not of European origin'. Robin's cohort consists of Ramy, from Calcutta; Victoire, from Haiti; and Letty, an admiral's daughter from Brighton. They're trained to create spells, encoded in silver bars, that capture what is lost in translation when translating a word into a different language. One example: a spell based on the English word 'treacle' (a sweet substance traditionally used to disguise the taste of medicine) and the Old French 'triacle' (an antidote or cure for snakebite), which produces a sweet-tasting antidote for most poisons. Another example, based on 'chattel' (property as wealth) and 'cattle' (livestock): 'they fix those bars to iron chains so that slaves can’t escape. You know how? It makes them docile. Like animals.' [loc. 6264].

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