The report starts with a fairly common analysis: how meaning differs between languages, and how translation isn't just the act of finding analogues between tongues, but touching the intimacy of a society and bridging it elsewhere. Meaning is not universal across languages: while the Russians might have two separate words for blue, the "Zulus possess... only specific words denoting "red cow," ;black cow" and "white cow."" and the "Mohicans have... several special terms for cutting various objects." (Page 1).
In essence, language exists as a framework of "meaning" defined by socially curated perceptions- Ontologies. The ontology of Russian-speaking society, for instance, places a heavy emphasis on flowery, metaphorical language, and as a result places more semantic importance in color. The natural corrolary (logical extension) of this observation is whether or not there's a "universality" to how languages arise. Enter our first external reading.
External reading 1: Universality of language: the Boba-Kiki effect
While you might have heard of it from a meme, the Boba-Kiki effect
addressess an extremely important linguistic question: are there aspects of organization/language that are universally derived? Furthermore, is there a universal visual symbological "language" that we can draw logic from?
As high-level as these questions are, the experiment that produced the effect is quite simple: Speakers from 25 languages were presented with two shapes, and asked to name one as Boba, and the other as Kiki, or, alternatively, as Takete and Maluma. The result was almost entirely universal: in 95% of responses, the sharp shape was named Kiki/Takete, while the round shape was named Boba/Maluma. The implications here are interesting: that there is, at some basic level, a human allignment with perception, symbology, and language.
This ties into the idea of semiotics: the study of meaning encoded through symbols via signs and visual effects.