Flybyreader

“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”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemblance. Satan had his companions, fellow devils, to admire and encourage him, but I am solitary and abhorred.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein

“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.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“Words and phrases you think are carved into your bones can disappear in no time.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel