The Linguist

30 The Linguist Vol/63 No/2 ciol.org.uk/thelinguist REVIEWS those interested in interrogating the language industries. The story follows Anisa, a Pakistani woman living in London who makes a living as a subtitler of Bollywood films. When she becomes involved with Adam, a British man who has mastered an unbelievable number of languages, she is eventually let in on his secret: Adam has been educated at a place simply known as 'the Centre'. Accepting Adam's offer to win her a place at this elite institution, Anisa submits herself to its admission process in the hope that acquiring more languages might increase her chances of finding success as a literary translator – and it does. While Anisa becomes increasingly fascinated by the language-learning technique that has granted her the career of her dreams, she faces an obstacle: regular guests at the Centre do not have the privilege of knowing how it all works. She decides to journey closer to the heart of the mystery, whatever it takes. While the unravelling of the mystery was, for me, completely unexpected, leaving me with more questions than answers – marking a successful novel by my standards – it is those complex social and linguistic commentaries, interspersed into Siddiqi's unadorned writing, that won me over. Linguists will appreciate Anisa's candid musings on translation, and I was especially taken by her thoughts on intercultural dynamics: "I had never dated an English guy before… despite his extreme attempts at diplomacy, his imagination of where I came from was skewed." The Centre pulls at some difficult yet necessary issues that we must interrogate further as members of the language industries: How and why do we acquire languages? Who has access to this profession, and why? How do we ensure that respect and responsibility are integral conditions to being a linguist? A must-read for any linguist. Anam Zafar MCIL The Centre Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi Picador 2023, 320 pp; ISBN 9781529097825 Hardback, £16.99 eccentricity, with the most curious and, indeed, unexpected stories behind the people who worked on the dictionary. Its origins were, perhaps, conventional enough, when in 1857 a dictionary was proposed to the London Philological Society that would not only give definitions but also citations showing usage. The real drive began with James Murray, who called for volunteers to send in slips to his office – an iron shed in the garden called the Scriptorium. Over 3,000 people responded enthusiastically. There was the man who stole as many books as he reviewed and the maiden ladies who sent in 15,000 slips in eight years, not to mention the celebrated pornographer (a pioneer in the field) who caused a headache for the British Museum by leaving it his library of 1,600 erotic items along with 384 copies of Don Quixote. (There were serious concerns about including obscenities and these did not appear until the 1970s.) The index ranges from A for Archaeologist to Z for Zealots, with Kleptomaniacs, Lunatics and Murderers in between. This is not a book to be read (literally) from cover to cover. Every chapter is an episode in itself, and the characters and the details of their lives are quite implausible, so they must be true. Many of them were enthusiastic amateurs with the possible exception of Karl Marx's daughter Eleanor, who was very insistent about being paid for her work (which Murray thought was quite inadequate). There is so much wonderful detail behind every category of contributor that each chapter could be developed into a book (if not a film) in its own right. The Dictionary People displays an encyclopaedic knowledge of the OED and its many contributors. It finally acknowledges the number of unsung heroes and heroines who laboured through any source (whether likely or not), ranging from medieval texts to works discovered on worldwide travels (and there was no shortage of American contributors). The greatest of them all was James Murray, who was knighted in 1908 but received no recognition from Oxford itself till the year before his death in 1915. Professor Tim Connell HonFCIL The Dictionary People Sarah Ogilvie Chatto & Windus 2023, 384 pp; ISBN 9781784744939 Hardback, £25 The Centre is a thrilling, surreal novel set in a familiar world where new languages can be acquired in an unfamiliar way – if you're invited, that is. Deftly weaved with commentaries on racism, sexism, class and diasporic identity – and, of course, translation – this sci-fi-tinged novel is for fans of RF Kuang's Babel and Yellowface, and The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is a monumental work by any standards, but the story behind its production between 1858 and 1928 is even more remarkable. The Dictionary People is subtitled 'The unsung heroes who created the Oxford English Dictionary' and it is a monument to good old-fashioned amateur dedication, interlaced with a fair amount of English

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