Babel: Translation as Empire-Building

Babel (or Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution), the 2022 bestseller novel by R.F. Kuang, has as its slogan the idea that translation is inherently a betrayal. Many translation experts have helped us understand what that actually implies. There will always be a loss of meaning when translating from one language to another.

While Vladimir Nabokov insisted on a strict word-for-word translation, no matter how strange it sounds, Walter Benjamin advocated preserving the meaning of the original text while making changes to syntax or vocabulary. In any case, part of the original text is always lost. Each translator must choose how they will “betray” the original because there is no such thing as a perfect one-to-one translation.

However, in Babel, Kuang gives the phrase a deeper meaning. The novel is set in a Victorian fantasy setting, reimagining Oxford, where the ideal setting for exploring the concept of “betrayal” in translation is a self-created translation institute called Babel.

Kuang emphasizes the harm done by translation by showing the real costs that language imposes on individuals. The translation of words in Babel; translation also had a sinister function in British colonialism. British industrialization and imperial authority were supported by the practice of translating colonial languages into English.

The “betrayal” of translation thus has two meanings. The students, who were transported to Oxford from their home countries, actively helped the growth of the British Empire in addition to translating. Then, using their authority, the British returned to the same colonies and caused chaos. Translation is thus a betrayal of the speakers of the language as well as a betrayal of the language itself. The act of translation is an act of empire-building.

Kuang presents her idea of translation in Babel by creating the term “silver-working.” This idea gives the book a magical quality while providing translation with a real influence on its setting. The protagonist, Robin Swift, and his fellow Babel initiate the discovery that silverworking is the primary engine of Britain’s industry and colonial development.

Kuang progressively reveals the complexities of silverworking, keeping its mechanisms a mystery at first. Because of this, it is challenging to define silver-working in a single, precise way. Fundamentally, however, it functions as a tangible depiction of the meaning which is “lost in translation.” The lost significance is etched into pure silver and turning it into actual power. After such, Britain used the electricity to power its machinery, upgrade its infrastructure, speed up transportation, and, most significantly, solidify its colonial and military supremacy.

Kuang provides readers with a tangible means of comprehending her thesis through silver-working: translation is a tool that tangibly advances British industrial and imperial goals rather than only being a verbal act.

The protagonist of the book is a youngster in Canton, China, who eventually adopts the name Robin. He is just barely alive after his mother passes away from cholera when Professor Lovell storms into his house, heals him with a miraculous silver bar, and transports him to England for a prestigious education. Since he has no family remaining, Robin is forced to accompany Lovell even if he does not truly know who he is.In addition to speaking Mandarin with Lovell, Robin receives Latin and Greek instruction in London. He gradually comes to understand that he is being prepared to attend Oxford’s Translation Institute, Babel, and begins to suspect that Lovell may be his biological father.

Years later, Robin starts attending Oxford, where he becomes friends with Ramy, an Indian student; Victoire, a Haitian student; and Letty, an English student, all of whom are studying translation. They become inseparable despite some initial tension.

One evening, Robin discovers a gang robbing Babel of miraculous silver bars. Because one of the robbers resembles him, Robin decides to assist them. He finds out later that the thief is Griffin, his half-brother and a member of the Hermes Society, a covert organization opposing British colonialism. Griffin enlists Robin in the resistance after revealing that Babel’s efforts are essential to preserving England’s imperial dominance.

Initially, as he pursues his education and becomes closer to his companions, Robin assists the Hermes Society in stealing from Babel. However, Robin hesitates and leaves the gang when Griffin suggests employing explosives.

When Robin learns in his fourth year that Ramy and Victoire have also been working covertly for the Hermes Society, he is astonished. Robin assists them in escaping a magical trap inside Babel, but he is also caught. He is confronted by Lovell, who offers to conceal his involvement in exchange for his vow to sever his connection to the Hermes Society. Robin grudgingly concurs.

Soon later, Lovell takes Robin and his group to Canton to help with trade talks. There, Robin discovers that, in spite of the terrible consequences, the British are abusing China and promoting the opium trade. He cautions Chinese diplomat Commissioner Lin that the British will not engage in sincere negotiations. Later, Lin infuriates the British by burning a huge opium stash. They are quickly deported back to England after Lovell places the blame on Robin.

Lovell taunts Robin’s late mother on the ship, which makes Robin lose it. He uses a silver bar to murder Lovell in a fit of wrath. He covers it up with the help of his pals, who dump Lovell’s body over the side and say he passed away from disease. When Robin returns to England, he learns that the British government had always intended to invade China using the failed negotiations as a pretext. He and his companions go into hiding with the Hermes Society because they are determined to stop them.

Letty betrays them to the cops while they plot their next course of action. Following a raid, Robin and Victoire are taken prisoner and subjected to torture, while Ramy is shot and murdered. Later on, Griffin manages to break them free, but he perishes during the escape.

Victoire and Robin decide to seize control of Babel and destroy much of England’s silver bar supply. Robin is forced to decide as the government dispatches the army to seize the tower. By setting off a tremendous explosion that devastates Babel, depletes England’s silver stores, and halts the empire’s invasion plans, he gives his life.

While Robin dies, guaranteeing that Babel (and the power it stood for) falls with him, Victoire lives to continue the resistance.

While putting Oxford (and Babel in particular) at the center of the colonial endeavor, Kuang expands on preexisting translation theories to create her interpretation of the topic. Therefore, comprehending translation is essential to Babel itself. Fortunately, it is fundamentally a Dark Academia book. Thus, Kuang assigns a professor the responsibility of elucidating translation. Alongside the characters, the reader gains knowledge of its foundations.

When Kuang first introduces her characters to the concept of translation, she has Professor Playfair explain how it works. He gives a lecture:

“I will try to impress upon you the unique difficulty of translation, Considering how tricky it is merely to say the word “hello.” “Hello” seems so easy! “Bonjour.” “Ciao.” “Hello.” And on and on. But then, say we are translating from Italian to English. In Italian, “ciao” can be used for both greeting and parting; it does not specify either; it simply marks etiquette at the point of contact. When we bring “ciao” into English, if we are translating a scene where the characters are leaving, for example, we have to decide that “ciao” means “goodbye.” Sometimes this is obvious from context, but sometimes it is not. Sometimes, we have to add new words to the translation. And that is just “hello”; we have not even gone beyond that yet.”

Throughout history, translation theorists have attempted to address this subject in various ways, frequently in conflict with one another. For instance, Benjamin and Nabokov’s translation frameworks are diametrically opposed.

Benjamin makes the case in his essay The Translator’s Task that the goal of translation should be to capture the spirit of the source material. “The relationship between language and content in the original is completely different from that in the translation,” he says. Here, he rejects the notion that a translation can be flawless and proposes that, although a text’s content should be maintained, language can and should be modified to convey its ideas better. He maintains that “word-for-word translation threatens to lead directly to incomprehensibility and completely thwarts the reproduction of the sense.”

Benjamin defines “reproduction of the sense” as encapsulating the feelings and concepts that a piece of literature is attempting to express. He cautions that giving individual terms more weight than the translation’s overall meaning risks making it unintelligible.

His argument aligns with Playfair’s analysis of the term “ciao,” as both assert that “we must add new words in our translation” when a word’s meaning is not clear from context. Benjamin’s approach mirrors Playfair’s, prioritizing the transfer of emotions and ideas between languages over strict adherence to syntax and word-for-word accuracy.

Kuang’s idea of silver-working expands upon many translation theory interpretations to produce her own theory-based translation vision with practical applications. Silver-working propels the British imperial project and the institution itself in Babel. Once more, Kuang introduces the concept through Playfair.

“The [silver] bar manifests it into being, and we capture what is lost in translation because there is always something lost in translation,” he says. In order to elicit a response, two words from different languages that have comparable meanings are engraved onto a silver bar and then spoken aloud. Since every translation loses something special, the effect changes according to the words chosen.

The French-English “parcelle-parcel,” which the Royal Mail employs to lighten goods so that a single horse and carriage can carry more, is one example of a “match-pair,” a pair of phrases engraved onto the silver bars, that Kuang offers. She clarifies:

“Both French and English had once used “parcel” to refer to pieces of land that made up an estate, but when it evolved to imply an item of business in both, it retained its connotation of small fragmentariness in French, whereas in English it simply meant a package. Fixing this bar to the postal carriage made the parcels seem a fraction of their true weight.”

To put it another way, the silver bar “manifests into being” the French definition’s lost meaning, which is the idea of being divided into smaller bits, making packages appear lighter. Throughout the British Empire, silver working had innumerable uses; some were insignificant, while others were unquestionably beneficial, but they were all ingrained in society. Britain’s dominance in Babel depends on its ability to work silver; without it, the empire would not be as strong.

Even if her silver-working idea is already complicated, Kuang goes one step further by highlighting how important Robin and his team are to the endeavor. “Words have no meaning unless there is someone present who can understand them,” explains Playfair. Furthermore, it cannot be a superficial degree of comprehension. Instead of only recognizing a language as a collection of letters on a page, we must be able to think in it, to live and breathe it.

Kuang frequently emphasizes the value of “thinking, living, and breathing,” a language in both academic research and practical silverworking applications. These three phrases serve as catchphrases that are repeated frequently in the narrative, highlighting the amount of work the protagonists must do to improve their language skills in order to continue their education.

In addition to coming up with new match pairs, Robin and his group must continue to speak at least two languages, if not more, in order to participate in silver-working at all. Someone who can genuinely “think, live, and breathe” both the source and destination languages of the translation is necessary for the incantation part, which actually unleashes the power of the silver bars. To be able to embody another language in this way fully is a really valuable skill, and it is necessary for silver-working to continue to be successful.

Kuang suggests a secret that may have remained buried in the depths of academia had she not intervened by using the word “arcane” to characterize the past weaved into Babel. In the halls of knowledge, the past of colonial exploitation and the use of marginalized bodies to support the growth of academic institutions persists like a ghost, masked by time and deliberate ignorance. Kuang pulls back the curtain with the complex framework she creates, exposing the dark intertwining of the British imperial project with the underpinnings of “Western” culture.

The discovery is not unique to Babel; rather, it casts a shadow over the whole Dark Academia subgenre, revealing hidden truths about corruption in organizations that frequently deny their own sinister beginnings.

Kuang, however, does not let such realization rest; she adds a third force to such a web of power, further entangling the riddle. Translation is not a harmless act of language interchange in Babel; rather, it is a tool of control that distorts and breaks reality itself. Kuang reveals how the act of translation itself promotes invasion by turning language into an instrument of empire and knowledge into a weapon through the alchemy of silver working.

As he learns of the subtle betrayal woven into his work, Robin’s journey becomes one of slow, dreadful revelation. What he earlier noticed as soft scholarship and aristocratic ideal of learning slowly exposes itself to be something far more ominous. The more resonant he delves, the more he recognizes that he is a researcher or a thinker and a means in a considerably more extensive system, one that works in shades and says in the language of force.

The more he saw, the clearer it became: the system extended far beyond the borders of Babylon into the realm of the empire alike. It was never a party; it remained a machine, carefully placed and shaped for a purpose he never understood. Thus, the question lingers, haunting and inescapable: “How can we conclude, except by acknowledging that an act of translation is then necessarily always an act of betrayal?”

References

• Ashcroft, B., Griffiths, G., & Tiffin, H. (2002). The Empire Writes Back. Routledge.
• Benjamin, W. (1996). The Translator’s Task. In M. Bullock & M. W. Jennings (Eds.), Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 1 (pp. 253-263). Harvard University Press.
• Bourke, J. (2023). The Dark Academia Library. Bloomsbury Academic.
• Dunlop, R. (2022). Dark Academia: How Universities Die. Zero Books.
• Kuang, R. F. (2022). Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution. Harper Voyager.
• Munday, J. (2016). Introducing Translation Studies: Theories and Applications (4th ed.). Routledge.
• Nabokov, V. (1955). On Translating Eugene Onegin. The Hudson Review, 8(3), 324-342.
• Said, E. W. (1978). Orientalism. Pantheon Books.
• Spivak, G. C. (1992). The Politics of Translation. In M. Barrett & A. Phillips (Eds.), Destabilizing Theory (pp. 177-200). Stanford University Press.
• Venuti, L. (1995). The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. Routledge.