MICK MCSHANE is roused by a band whose socialism laces every line of every song with commitment and raw passion
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Fascinating language explorations with a global reach
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ALEX HALL is disgusted by the misuse of ‘emotional narratives’ to justify uninformed geo-political prejudice
SUE TURNER welcomes a thoughtful, engaging book that lays bare the economic realities of global waste management
JOHN GREEN welcomes an insider account of the achievements and failures of the transition to democracy in Portugal
SIMON PARSONS applauds an imaginative and absorbing updating of Strindberg’s classic
PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river
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.
It’s one of many fascinating facts and ideas detailed in his book, which explores the world’s 20 most widely spoken languages. Learn these, Dorren notes, and the speaker will be able to communicate with three-quarters of the world’s population. It’s a mind-boggling figure at a time where there are approximately 7,000 living languages.
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