ABSTRACT
Saskia Sassen’s global upbringing has given her an unparalleled perspective. She grew up in three different countries speaking five different languages. From her point of view, she ‘was always a foreigner and yet always at home’. She observes that although she doesn’t ‘speak one language perfectly’, she feels totally comfortable in all five. For her, being able to think across several different languages at once allows for a more creative engagement with language where particular turns of phrase are invented and neologisms emerge; but it also draws attention to the deficiencies of language, the gaps and silences that result as certain concepts become lost in translation.
