Translators sometimes put amazing spins on a work. When I read Yevgeny Zamyatin's We, it was a recent translation. The name of the dystopian global state in the

Translators sometimes put amazing spins on a work. When I read Yevgeny Zamyatin's We, it was a recent translation. The name of the dystopian global state in the novel is, translated literally from Russian, something like "unified state". However, instead of that phrase, to avoid confusion with the United States, to which Zamyatin was not alluding, the translator opted to translate it as "OneState", with the pascal casing and everything. He specifically cited marketing from the software industry as his inspiration for this convention. It worked. It perfectly conveyed the dry, false passion and excitement that citizens of OneState were expected to communicate -- like the fake smile on a North Korean schoolgirl greeting Western tourists.