A review by mikeblyth
After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation by George Steiner

2.0

I mistakenly got this book thinking it would be an interesting book for the general public about language and the issues of meaning and translation. Instead, it's a scholarly book probably suitable for those with graduate studies or equivalent in literature. It assumes a wide knowledge of literature which few people outside academia will have. My rating of two stars doesn't mean that this is a bad book, simply that it wasn't one I could enjoy; I gave up partway through.

A couple of quotes give some idea of the style.

"Feminine uses of the subjunctive in European languages give to material facts and relations a characteristic vibrato. I do not say they lie about the obtuse, resistant fabric of the world: they multiply the facets of reality, they strengthen the adjective to allow it an alternative nominal status, in a way which men often find unnerving."

"White and black trade words as do front-line soldiers lobbing back an undetonated grenade. Watch the motions of feigned responsiveness, menace, and non-information in a landlord’s dialogue with his tenant or in the morning banter of tally-clerk and lorry-driver. Observe the murderous undertones of apparently urbane, shared speech between mistress and maids in Genet’s Les Bonnes. So little is being said, so much is ‘being meant,’ thus posing almost intractable problems for the translator."