The Linguist

Chartered Institute of Linguists SUMMER 2026 The Linguist 31 SECTION HEADER REVIEWS In From Language to Language: The hospitality of translation, the Senegalese philosopher Souleymane Bachir Diagne offers an inspiring meditation on translation that places ethical exchange at the heart of any linguistic encounter. Drawing on his own The question of where language comes from and who originally devised it has become increasingly popular in recent years. This is partly due to rapid increases in the use of DNA, and the discovery of more and more human remains and artefacts which appear to put the origins of humanity (and the demise of our close hominid relatives) further back into the very remote past. The Origin of Language: How we learned to speak and why looks at evolution from a biological point of view. It proposes a quite surprising hypothesis: that language emerged as a result of evolutionary changes in the brain which led to human babies being less developed at birth and hence more dependent on their parents. This encouraged the development of social structures to care for them. The author, a professor of evolutionary biology, goes into enormous detail about the growth of the brain as we can understand it from skulls of early hominids and modern chimpanzees. She asks whether it is the development of a particular feature in our DNA that makes speech possible. Dr Beekman is highly erudite and draws on a wide range of sources to make her case, ranging from Sapir Whorf to Chomsky. She makes a cogent and persuasive argument in a lighter style than other notable works on this subject, such as The Language Puzzle (Profile; 2024), making her work accessible for The Origin of Language Madeleine Beekman Simon & Schuster 2025, 320 pp; ISBN 9781398548428 Hardback, £25 From Language to Language Souleymane Bachir Diagne Trans. Dylan Temel Other Press 2025, 192 pp; ISBN 9781635423938 Hardback, £22.99 profound scholarship and multilingual background, he argues that translation is not simply a technical transfer of meaning, but a deeply human pursuit that enables ideas, values and beliefs to cross cultural boundaries. The book puts forward two main theses: that all human languages are of equal value; and that nothing manifests this equivalence better than translation. Addressing linguistic colonialism as a central theme, Diagne references a range of scholars to challenge the misconception that the languages of former European colonial powers are inherently superior to so-called 'indigenous' tongues. In the author's opinion, the simple fact that a way can always be found to translate from one language to another is the greatest proof of their equal status. At the same time, he emphasises the translator's ethical obligation to honour what has been expressed in another language without self- interested embellishments or omissions. Diagne's understanding of translation goes beyond the strictly linguistic to embrace broader notions of cultural transfer. He discusses how early 20th-century modernist artists, impressed by their encounters with traditional African artworks, tried to transfer these objects' inherent power into a Western artistic framework. He suggests, however, that despite their good intentions, Picasso and his peers failed to escape the pervasive colonialist dichotomy of 'sophisticated' European vs. 'primitive' African art. The book explores several intriguing philosophical issues, including the translation of religious texts such as the Quran and the question of whether it is advisable, or even possible, to rewrite the word of God. With a more contemporary and deterministic focus, the author speculates on the potential for cultural enrichment via linguist exchange expressed in Arrival. The film imagines a scenario in which humanity's 'hospitality' towards alien visitors is rewarded with knowledge of a language capable of fundamentally altering our world view. Adeptly translated from French to English by Dylan Temel, From Language to Language is a timely reminder that, beyond the present obsessive focus on language technology, translation continues to be an immensely rich intellectual and humanistic discipline. Ross Smith MCIL the general reader. Indeed, Steven Mithen's more formally academic book, which makes wider use of academic disciplines such as archaeology and anthropology, would be a good companion guide. Beekman covers the ways in which human language has evolved into over 6,000 examples, and how we are capable of managing a vocabulary of around 50,000 words, in enormous and feasible detail. All of which may change with yet another discovery in some remote cave in Tanzania or Indonesia. Whatever the case, the Infinite Monkey Theorem (whereby an infinite number of monkeys typing on an infinite number of typewriters for an infinite number of years would produce the works of Shakespeare) has been well and truly discredited. Professor Tim Connell Hon FCIL

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