Babel, or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of The Oxford Translators' Revolution

The mechanisms for magic in Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of The Oxford Translators’ Revolution are silversmithing and translation. When a person translates between a word in English and a word in another language, the mismatch in meaning generates potential that causes tangible and intangible changes in the world when collected in a silver bar. For example, Richard Lovell uses this potential to cure Robin’s illness, and the Hermes Society uses silver to nudge angry Oxford townspeople to break into smaller groups and disperse. Silversmiths have to make the match-pairs plausible, however; if the words in a match-pair are too different in meaning, they won’t produce magic.

Becoming an effective silversmith requires mastering the art of translation. Translation is an art because effective translation isn’t a mechanistic process in which one word can be matched to another in a different language. Effective translation requires that the translator be fluent in both the original and target languages. In addition, the translator needs to be knowledgeable about the content and context of the material they are translating. That context might include the genre, the expectations of the original and target audiences, and the purpose of the piece for both the original and target audiences. Translators may also encounter challenges in capturing the mood or connotations of words, especially when they translate literary works. You can see this problem in action by using Google Translate to take a poem from English to Spanish, then running that Spanish translation back into English; “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? / Thou art more lovely and more temperate” becomes “Shall I compare you to a summer day? / You are more beautiful and warmer.” Unavoidably, something of the original text will be lost in translating it. “Traduttore, traditore” (“Translator, traitor” in Italian) is an old saying that highlights the compromises the translator must make to capture the true sense of a text.

In the novel, Babel optimizes the chance of creating functioning match-pairs by taking children away from their families and home cultures. For Babel and the empire that relies upon translation magic, childhood is an optimal moment to uproot someone because the child will be deeply rooted enough in both languages and cultures to be a productive translator in the future. Additionally, a child can be molded to their captors’ purpose; if they are raised in an imperialist framework, they are less likely to see this framework as exploitative. This is a cruel practice, but the British Empire sees this cruelty as the cost of doing business. Kuang uses Griffin, Robin, Ramy, and Victoire’s character arcs to show the trauma that this kind of separation wreaks on children. That trauma is compounded as these young translators discover that being good at translation has implications for the power dynamics between their home countries and the British Empire.

Because the British Empire is politically dominant, the Babel Institute’s focus is translating from other languages into English; doing so benefits British commerce, often to the detriment of speakers of that other language. Languages that don’t benefit British interests are ignored or even die due to a lack of study and preservation in an increasingly interconnected world. Victoire experiences both dynamics when her professor insists that she reveal what she knows of Kreyòl to help him refine bars that be used to control enslaved people. Refusing him means her efforts to document Kreyòl will be ignored because there isn’t enough financial benefit to British interests while helping him will sustain slavery. The status quo in the novel requires Robin, Ramy, and Victoire to betray who they are or the empire they serve, which is fitting given that translation is often conceived of as a kind of betrayal.