Mohini Gupta is the inspiration, architect and gentle driving force behind MTT. As she once said, ‘in an increasingly polarized and divisive world, cross-cultural understanding can be a blessing’. More than a blessing, I think it’s essential, and language is so often where it begins, whether between countries or within them. My contact with Mother Tongue Twisters has been through the wonderful Translation Thursdays through which connections across continents are made. Maureen Freely called her talk about translating the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk “Opening Locked Gates” and that’s exactly what translation does. A favourite Translation Thursday for me was Madhav Ajjampur on the Kannada poet D. R. Bendre. I look forward to learning about many more poets and writers in many languages and to counting the undoubted blessings of translation as presented through Mother Tongue Twisters.