Marek Kohn: Why Babel fish will make us value languages more, not less

Why-Babel-fish-will-make-us-value-languages-more-not-less

Imagine having something small enough to put in your ear, that would translate what anybody said to you into the language of your choice. The humorous author Douglas Adams imagined it in the form of a living creature, the Babel fish. That was some forty years ago. Now technology is catching up with Adams’s imagination. […]