
152)ĭuring your time at York, you will often encounter and study texts originally written in languages other than English, which you will access in an English translation. Irene del Corral, in Theories of Translation: An Anthology of Essays from Dryden to Derrida, ed. (Octavio Paz, ‘Translation: Literature and Letters’, trans. Universality of the spirit was the response to the confusion of Babel: many languages, one substance.’ And they can do so because in any language men always say the same things. Although language is not universal, languages nevertheless form part of a universal society in which, once some difficulties have been overcome, all people can communicate with and understand each other.

We become aware that language is not universal rather, there is a plurality of languages, each one alien and unintelligible to the others. ‘The sounds of a tongue we do not know may cause us to react with astonishment, annoyance, indignation, or amused perplexity, but these sensations are soon replaced by uncertainties about our own language.
