Diamond discusses the benefits of preserving different languages (most are becoming quickly extinct), such as some evidence that they can protect against Alzheimer, that they are cultural treasures, etc. but I remained unconvinced by these arguments. In fact, I absolutely love that there are many languages in the world and I hope that this continues to be the case, but I cannot find a better argument for it than a simple “I like languages” (which I think is also Diamond’s real reason and the rest is rationalization).
The “cultural treasures” part may have a point. Many forms of poetry (and witty puns) make sense only in their native language, and translations lead to dull results at best. For example, I’m absolutely not familiar with Haiku, but I suppose they must be a nightmare to translate.
And if we talk about the huge, revered rhymed poems from the past centuries, ensuring that someone will be always around to read the originals seems quite a no-brainer to me. If the whole world switched to English only, we’ll lose forever the ability to read the Divine Comedy (and many other works) taking pleasure directly from the carefully selected rhymes. I acknowledge that some of these translations are actually quite good, and especially this one by Charles Tomlinson, who did his best to preserve the original metrics, but I’m still unconvinced that a single language would be fine for this (or maybe I’m just particularly enthusiastic about strictly metrical poetry).
The “cultural treasures” part may have a point. Many forms of poetry (and witty puns) make sense only in their native language, and translations lead to dull results at best. For example, I’m absolutely not familiar with Haiku, but I suppose they must be a nightmare to translate.
And if we talk about the huge, revered rhymed poems from the past centuries, ensuring that someone will be always around to read the originals seems quite a no-brainer to me. If the whole world switched to English only, we’ll lose forever the ability to read the Divine Comedy (and many other works) taking pleasure directly from the carefully selected rhymes. I acknowledge that some of these translations are actually quite good, and especially this one by Charles Tomlinson, who did his best to preserve the original metrics, but I’m still unconvinced that a single language would be fine for this (or maybe I’m just particularly enthusiastic about strictly metrical poetry).