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Barbara Cassin is a philosopher, philologist, and Research Director at the CNRS, who edited “Vocabulaire européen des philosophies. Dictionnaire des intraduisibles” (2004). In this interview she explains that languages are not interchangeable, as was decisively shown by Humboldt in the 19th century: this analysis still holds good in the age of Internet and Google. It is both absurd and dangerous to think the “English-only option” is the cure of all evils, on the pretence that it is simpler, more economical and more democratic. It is absurd because language plurality is an asset (particularly for Europe), and so is translation. It is dangerous because trying to rid languages from their ambiguities and translation from the untranslatable is tantamount to impoverishing thought irrevocably: this would prevent us from understanding today’s world in all its diversity and from taking advantage of current globalization.