The problem is Kristin associates speaking Swedish with her difficult workplace, the National Museum of Immigration, where she dresses up as an ancient Swedish settler and is banned from speaking English. She’s also nervous about the real reason Ciaran is so keen to learn Swedish: her pregnancy. While How We Are Translated is ostensibly about language, what Gaitán Johannesson (who speaks Spanish, Swedish and English) reaches towards is how and why we communicate with each other.