The fading genre of the phrase book is unlikely to be missed by most people. They offer a chance to eavesdrop in the more humdrum everyday cruelties of an empire. Robert Frost, the American poet, once said that poetry is what gets lost in translation. There's something about all those dislocated phrases put together and in many places the hopefulness of what's written.
Cows are venerated in India, but precisely how intensely often depends on politics. And being venerated does not necessarily yield a pleasant life for the creatures. Economists rarely consider how policies will affect birth rates and the yet-to-be-born; we examine the thorny topic of “population ethics”. And foreign-language phrasebooks may be in decline but they maintain huge historical value.
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