The Power Of Babel

 

One of my favourite books is Douglas Adams, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. In that book he mentions a device, or more correctly a species of fish, that has the ability to read your brain waves and translate anything said to you in any language that your brain understands. 

The author comes to the conclusion that a) the fish provides evidence of the non-existence of God and b) that breaking down all barriers of communication between peoples, it should lead to a more peaceful universe. 

But in reality everybody knew when they are being insulted and so it had rather the reverse effect of causing more war than every before. 

Douglas Adams described the Babel fish as a small, yellow, leech-like creature that is "probably the oddest thing in the Universe."

View from my editing balcony

                                         

                                                         From the BBC programme of THGTTG

"When inserted into a person’s ear, it feeds on brainwave energy from those nearby—not from its host. It absorbs unconscious mental frequencies and then excretes a telepathic matrix into the host’s brain, allowing them to understand any spoken language instantly." I think Douglas put it better than I did.

Ironically, by removing all communication barriers, "the Babel fish has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in history."

                                                

                                             The international language of Crime Fiction

The Tower of Babel (Genesis? ) symbolizes humanity’s ambition and divine intervention. After the Great Flood, people united under one language and tried to build a tower to reach heaven. God, seeing their pride and defiance, broke up their language and scattered them across the earth... hence our  linguistic diversity. 

One of my patients is a Professor of something- Ancient Greek, but with a passion for how language evolves and where we pick it up from. Old Scots for example has many words stolen from German, and that are in common use in German today. Scot to Scot understands it, Scot to German understands it but Scot to Englishman would get a quizzical look.

Also low land Scots sound like Germans when in full flow.  

Unlike those who live in the north- here's a clip of the Hebridean baker- and a very recognisable Lewis accent. Donald Trump's mother would have spoken like this. ( The link does take you there eventually...to the baker I mean, not Mrs Trump)

The Hebridean Baker - Spiced Tea Loaf Recipe | TikTok

Anyway, the point of all this is that I have been informed by people in the know,  that technology is not far away from being "the Babel fish". 

Obviously phones have the ability to auto translate and then to speak on auto translate. We had a Ukrainian refugee with us who used to work in a big hospital in Kiev. He had to leave when the Russians invaded because he was an ethnic Russian/ Ukrainian rather than a Ukrainian Ukrainian. He fled with his wife and two young children with what they could cram into 4 suitcases.

He came to us because my colleague is Russian, from Moscow. Vadim and Pavel could converse but not in quite the same language. They used something that was more like fractured Polish. Pavel did entire consultations with patients using the phone to translate, but that is obviously a prescriptive conversation with lots of hand signals thrown in. 

I’m not sure how a chip in the ear would manage. 

My experience with dictation of the novel is hilarious. I obviously speak with no accent whatsoever ( everybody else does obvs) , but every time I said the name of my character "Sean McTiernan" …. The dictation system would write "make tea and Anne". 

And then it would go off in the huff every time the Airbus A380 flew overhead on its way to Dubai. 

I’m sure things since then have been improved since my second book but I’m not sure by how much. 

And in any case, I’m sure that the dictated book differs from the words in the typed book. The typed book differs from the version written by hand. 

The best version is always written by fountain pen in a beautiful notebook.

With blood red ink.  

                                                 

                                                         Lots of crime in the hotel bookcase

Brits are unbelievably bad at learning other languages. If we go abroad and try to speak their tongue, chances are they will reply in perfect English. 

I’m sure I’ve related the story of being at the Neuschwanstein castle, waiting in the ticket queue. I had my school German all ready for "two tickets for both castles, please." The young German man handing out the tickets asked me in perfect English if I was from Glasgow. Without a moment's hesitation.

 I picked up from him, a slight Australian twang in his English and he picked up the Glaswegian in my German. He had lived with a Glaswegian flatmate whilst studying English in Australia. 

                                             

At the moment I’m far from home in a sunny climate with a big deadline. 

We were sitting at dinner, a couple sat down at the table next to us. The man took a sip of the water and said to us 'The water is very good, it's Dutch.' To which we replied, 'yet it is very good water. Tastes lovely, clear and sparkling.'  The tap water here is undrinkable.

 Then Alan said to him 'You have just voted in a new Prime Minister. Is that a good or a bad thing?'

 The man thought for a moment and said 'I’ve have little knowledge of the situation. We are from Germany. Are you not Dutch?'

We said no. We were Scots.

'Ahh, but you sound so Dutch'!

So we had a laugh, agreed that the water was very good. They said they were here because their usual holiday, in the next bay to ours, was getting so expensive, they just couldn't afford it.

We said that everything you get here in the all inclusive deal was fabulous including the selection of red and white wine. The German gentleman pulled a wry smile and said ' That's good to know, as you Scots don’t like paying for anything.'

As this is true, we raised a glass to this. 

 

                                                       

                                                                          Harlan Coben is everywhere.

Something tells me I must get this book finished before I go to Iceland. I’m already bracing myself for the temperature differential.