Kōrero Each to Each

By The Landfall Tauraka Review | Posted: Wednesday Nov 19, 2025

Elizabeth Heritage reviews Te Moana o Reo | Ocean of Languages edited by Michelle Elvy and Vaughan Rapatahana (The Cuba Press, 2025)

My earliest experience of translation was Dad reading us his Asterix comic books, which he owns in the original French. A lot of the humour depends on puns that are notoriously difficult to move from one language to another. One joke depended on knowing that pomme de terre (potato) literally means ‘apple of earth’. It was an early introduction to what’s both lost and gained in translation: ‘potato’ doesn’t get its own name, instead it is called ‘like something else but in a different place’.

Te Moana o Reo | Ocean of Languages is a new anthology from The Cuba Press that celebrates the dozens of languages spoken, written and otherwise embodied by New Zealanders (including NZ Sign Language, which is presented in pictogram form). The anthology includes essays and musings on multilingualism by a number of the contributors, but it is essentially a collection of very short stories, each beginning with a brief note from the author. Some stories are flash fiction, others take the form of poems or short memoirs. Many stories are presented in one or more languages on the left-hand page, with an English translation opposite, although some authors chose to write both pieces in a mixture of languages. Others present one piece written in a blend. The stories are bookended by an introduction from the editors and, at the end, a series of miscellaneous essays and ruminations about language and translation.

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