An Existentialist Challenge to the Babel Fish

Could advanced translation technologies solve linguistic injustice in the world? Activists and scholars hear this question being asked quite often, and sometimes with a slight skeptical tone suggesting the timing, if not futility, of linguistic justice debates. The argument goes like this. Linguistic injustice only occurs when a person does not have the linguistic competence to communicate in a given language. If that’s correct, then providing everyone with effective translation devices would eliminate such communication barriers and thereby also eliminate linguistic injustice. Therefore, the argument suggests, we may be better off rechanneling our resources away from discussing interpersonal and institutional remedies, which could only partially address these injustices, toward developing translation technologies, which would solve the problem at once for all.

The kind of translation technology required for this techno-optimist argument is not available yet, but a famous figure from Douglas Adams’ novel series the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is often used to illustrate the conceptual possibility of such technology: the Babel Fish. Adams describes this fictional creature as a small, yellow, leech-like fish that is capable of living in a human ear and providing its host simultaneous translation from all languages. As opposed to the Tower of Babel myth in which all people spoke the one and only language, the Babel Fish fantasy involves a world where people speak different languages but understand each other as if they are speaking the same one. Naturally, it has been a popular figure among those who work on developing translation technologies—there are multiple translation products that are named after the Babel Fish today. None of these products approach the level of efficiency close to the fictional Babel Fish, but the rapidity of advancements is put forward as a reason for optimism.

My goal in this essay is to clarify what a manufactured Babel Fish can and cannot do for linguistic justice. The positive side first. It seems like advanced translation technologies do promise a solution to linguistic injustices that occur due to communication failures, which have been at the center of most scholarly work. Consider, for example, individuals who lack proficiency in a country’s official languages and therefore face barriers to essential legal and medical services. These barriers could be effectively removed with advanced translation technologies, the use of which in state institutions alone could eliminate a substantial portion of these communication-based linguistic injustices.

However, communication (or the absence of it) is only one dimension of linguistic injustice. As many scholars and activists have pointed out, another dimension is linguistic identity. Linguistic identity is not merely a personal trait; it plays a crucial role in the power dynamics of a society. Van Parijs, for example, illustrates this point as follows. When a formal or informal linguistic regime systematically selects a certain language as the language of communication in a given society, he says, “… it can easily lend itself to an interpretation analogous to situations in which it is always the members of the same caste or gender that need to bow when meeting members of the other…” (2011, p. 119)

A translation device may not seem capable of addressing linguistic-identity-based linguistic injustices at first glance, but I contend otherwise. In a world where everyone wears earbuds in their daily lives and communicates by speaking their preferred languages, any obligation to speak another’s language would disappear. In such a world official linguistic regimes would lose significance—no one would need to bow in front of others to maintain effective communication.

So it seems like for communication and identity related linguistic injustices, a seamless translation technology could provide significant improvement. But note that this is only true if it is made universally available. This is no easy challenge. Consider, for example, the fact that currently, only 67.5% of the global population has internet access^[1]. This suggests that producing and distributing an extremely sophisticated translation tool affordably and equitably might not be as feasible as it seems. Thus, at best, a Babel Fish technology would likely remain accessible primarily to affluent countries and individuals, refashioning linguistic injustice as a new form of class-based inequality. This would result in a scenario where, for example, communication and knowledge-sharing improve among the global elite, while the gap between them and the poor expands.

For the sake of this argument, let’s imagine that this technology is developed and universally adopted. Even in this case, problems could arise. With less incentives to learn new languages, public and private institutions offering language education might face a crisis. Rising costs could further dishearten those few who still have an interest in language learning. As a result, more people would gravitate toward monolingualism. Provided that linguistic cross-pollination is vital for cultural enrichment, this could lead to significant cultural stagnation.

Perhaps this stagnation is a price we are willing to pay to achieve linguistic justice. But there are further challenges inherent to the nature of translation itself that could undermine the ambitions of the Babel Fish project. Take the domestication-foreignization^[2] dilemma familiar to anyone with translation experience. For example, in Italy, the unlucky day is the 17th, while in Spain, it is Tuesday. When translating ‘Friday the 13th’ into Italian or Spanish, we face two options: leave the phrase in the writer’s foreign world by translating it as ‘Venerdì 13’ or ‘Viernes 13’, or bring it closer to the reader’s domestic world by translating it as ‘Venerdì 17’ (Friday the 17th) or ‘Martes 13’ (Tuesday the 13th). Now the problem is that the norms of translation do not help us to make this choice. The translator as the artist needs to settle these issues by making subjective judgment calls, some of which constitute their personal style.

This is a problem because if the goal is to create the perfect translator, then it will take some philosophical argumentation to establish that one particular way of translating in fact is the best way. But maybe the goal is to instead create the perfect translation technology which will equip listeners to be their own translators. For example, maybe we can leave it to the consumer to pick how they like their translation by allowing them to choose from (1) going all the way to the target context and settling on ‘Venerdì 17’, (2) staying in the original context and settling on ‘Venerdì 13’, and (3) doing something in between.

Here this discussion is not meant to show that the unresolved issues in philosophy of translation make it impossible to develop effective and instant translation technologies. Rather, it is meant to show us that the closer we study this idea of ‘the most advanced translation technology’ and spell out how it would actually work, we get a better sense of its limitations that are not caused by the lack of advanced technology, but by the nature of language and translation.

This brings me to my last point. Language is, of course, a tool for communication and a symbol that unites us with others under a shared identity. Yet beyond that, I believe we establish a direct subject-object relationship with words themselves. For example, when we use language in daily conversations, we aim to convey certain thoughts to our audience, and we achieve this through the meanings of words. But we could fulfill this aim in many different ways. The specific combination of words we choose and the way we arrange them is significant—not merely as an aesthetic function but as an authentic reflection of our individual linguistic decisions.

We usually acknowledge this stylistic dimension of producing language that is traditionally considered to be of artistic value, such as in writing and translation. But most of us only realize that our relationship with the language also involves these choices when we try to communicate using a language in which we don’t have native-like fluency. It is when we do have the ability to ‘get our point across’ in such a language that the absence of something becomes apparent, revealing the phenomenological relationship we have with language. If it were merely about achieving certain outcomes with the use of language, we wouldn’t feel inadequate or superficial in languages where we lack native-level mastery. My suggested explanation is that the temporal dimension of speaking a language—the countless choices we make over time—is perhaps why we feel ‘at home’ in languages we speak as fluently as our native tongue and not so much in others.

In a world where everyone uses the Babel Fish and regularly communicates with speakers of different languages, this relationship with our own words might be at risk, even in our native tongues. Part of this relationship involves others witnessing our linguistic choices. They are public-facing choices and in part constitute our linguistic character. If others never witness the exact words we utter and only hear a translation which communicates an idea we aim to express with these words, we would find ourselves in linguistic confinement and our relationship with language would be reduced to mere functionality.

The Babel Fish would not only fail to resolve this alienation, it would potentially expand its scope and cause even more existential threat. Today, this overlooked dimension of linguistic injustice already affects those who cannot speak their native language due to dominant language regimes. Those who rely on the Babel Fish in their daily communication, regardless of the status of their language today, would risk losing the opportunity for authentic linguistic existence.

Bibliography

Adams, D. (1981). The hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy. Pocket Books.

Searls, D. (2024). The Philosophy of Translation. Yale University Press.

Van Parijs, P. (2011). Linguistic Justice for Europe and for the World. Oxford University Press.

We Are Social & Meltwater (2024), “Digital 2024 Global Overview Report,” retrieved from

https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2024-global-overview-report on 13 January 2025.

^[1] We Are Social & Meltwater (2024)

^[2] Searls (2024) explains this dilemma in detail.

Photo: Babel Fish by Anna-Maja Oléhn on Flickr