This is a book about languages, what they can and can't do.

In this conversation between a Nobel laureate and a pioneering translator, provocative ideas emerge about the evolution of language and the challenge of translation.
Language has historically been ambiguous. Two dictionaries offer two different maps of the universe: which is right, or are both wrong? Speaking in Tongues—a dialogue between Nobel Prize-winning novelist J.M. Coetzee and eminent translator Mariana Dimopoulos—explores questions that have long troubled writers and translators, today more than ever. Among them:

How can a translator liberate the meanings restricted in the language of the text?
Why is the masculine dominant in gendered languages, while the feminine is treated as an aberration?
How can we confront the spread of monolingualism?
Should a translator monitor racist or misogynistic language?
Does mathematics tell the truth about everything?
Like Walter Benjamin's seminal essay "The Task of the Translator," Speaking in Tongues stands out as an engaging and accessible philosophical work that sheds light on some of the most important linguistic and linguistic issues of our time.