This lively survey asks “what translation has done in the past and does today,” and “whether it is one thing or many.” In thirty-two wide-ranging chapters, Bellos variously corrects bits of misguided folk wisdom (Eskimo, it turns out, does not have a hundred words for snow), explains why Google Translate is so effective, and dismisses literal translation as “the shadow of another, more ancient world.” The chapters brim with insight. One examines how notions of translation have differed across cultures. In the English-speaking world, translation is mostly understood as “the transfer of meaning from one language to another,” a sense derived from the word’s Latin root, which means “to bear across.” Other cultures describe translation as an act not of transferral but of change, more akin to alchemy; in ancient Babylon a translator was emebal, a “language turner.”