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Traditionally, the translatability of texts has been seen to depend on a logos that transcended the medium in which it was instantiated. When in the Biblical account Adam names the animals, this act of naming is presented not as a willful act of creating arbitrary signs but as a linguistic enactment of the names given by God, guarantor that the link between word and referent is appropriate and correct. Standing apposite to these assumptions is the Tower of Babel, where the nontranslatability of different languages into one another is the divine punishment for the hubris of mortals who, thinking they can come close to heaven, may also harbor designs to infringe upon the divine copyright to know and assign true names.