Latest editorial
EWAN CAMERON picks out two fascinating music shows, fusing the Korean, and the Celtic, with the modern
Fascinating language explorations with a global reach
BENJAMIN POTHIER suggests that Palaeolithic cave paintings in Spain point to the ceremonial use of hallucinogenic flora
The bard confirms that the right has a humour bypass, and replays the English Revolution on period instruments
MARIA DUARTE and ANDY HEDGECOCK review Sunny Dancer, Tony, Songs of Forgotten Trees, and The End of Oak Street
JOHN GREEN relishes a powerful and moving drama that explores the lived realities of west London’s Punjabi community
MARTIN HALL welcomes a plea for greater compassion between believer and non-believer via the framework of philosophical enquiry
Babel: Around the World In 20 Languages
by Gaston Dorren
(Profile Books, £14.99)
IT SEEMED like far-flung whimsy when Douglas Adams created the Babel fish, a universal language translator, in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
The idea is nonetheless revisited in Gaston Dorren’s whirlwind tour of mother tongues, in which the author suggests that the silicon translator being developed by Google could help bring English’s status as a lingua franca to an end.
Similar stories
RON JACOBS is enthralled by Roberto Saviano’s portrait of heroes and deplorables, that calls for people to stand up for themselves and the things they believe in
JAN WOOLF relishes an extensive history of our long relationship to trees in Britain that underlines the current emergency
GORDON PARSONS is intrigued by a biography of the Marxist intellectual and author, made from the point of view of his son
KEN COCKBURN relishes the memoir of a translator, but wonders whether the autobiography underlying the impulse would make a better book