The Bible tells us that men, curious to reach heaven and meet God, began construction on a tower tall enough to reach Him. When God saw this tower He realized that humanity had gotten out of His control, and that men were capable of achieving anything. To counteract this, He broke down their means of communication by abolishing their universal language, thus explaining the diversity in the peoples that populate the world today. The point of this story of the tower of Babel is that we all think in separate languages, and can only understand each other if we share a common language. Language is a interesting issue in films – should you watch a foreign movie with subtitles, or overdubbed with English voices? Should a director have their characters all speaking in English, possibly with an accent that identifies their country? In the James Bond film From Russia with Love all the characters speak English, despite the fact that the villains are Russian a...
Malcolm Coates