C2 reading · Proficient

في مديح ما لا يُترجم

Every language harbours words that stubbornly resist translation. Portuguese has saudade, a wistful longing for something absent and perhaps unattainable; Japanese has komorebi, the dappled light that filters through leaves. Arabic offers tarab, that ineffable state of ecstatic absorption a listener experiences when music and voice achieve perfect union. Rendered into English, each becomes a clumsy paraphrase, its emotional resonance diminished in transit.

طغيان المقاييس

"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." This maxim, a paraphrase of an observation by the economist Charles Goodhart, captures a predicament that has become ubiquitous in modern institutions. Hospitals, schools, police forces and corporations are increasingly governed by quantitative indicators, on the seemingly unimpeachable premise that what gets measured gets managed.

دفاعاً عن الملل

Boredom has an image problem. It is the affliction of the restless child on a long car journey, the employee watching the clock, the guest trapped by a verbose dinner companion. We treat it as an inconvenience to be eradicated, and for the first time in history we possess the means to do so instantly: a device in our pocket that can banish any idle moment with an endless supply of distraction.

سفينة ثيسيوس

The Greek writer Plutarch recorded a puzzle that has vexed philosophers for two millennia. The ship in which the hero Theseus returned to Athens was preserved for generations as a memorial. As its wooden planks decayed, each was replaced with new timber, until eventually not a single original plank remained. Was it, Plutarch asked, still the same ship?

عندما تموت اللغات

Of the roughly 7,000 languages spoken today, linguists estimate that as many as half may fall silent by the end of this century. Most are spoken by small communities, and many have never been written down. When the last fluent speaker of such a language dies, an entire system of sound, grammar and meaning vanishes with them, often leaving scarcely a trace.