Dealing with Languages

[Clifford]

The characters in my SF book Vengeance is a Wheel are mostly speaking something I call t-common, which I don't really identify, but I personally think of as 24th Century English. As the author, I also think of myself as writing a translation -- not a direct translation, but a translation into modern idiomatic American English. I remember when the Hercules & Xena TV shows were out thinking these people would be speaking some form of ancient Greek, but the writers are "translating" that to modern idiomatic English.

What do you think? How do you handle language as a part of your work?

Also, I have some parts of the book where the dialogue is in an alien tongue. How do you handle something like this? I'm using footnotes, but that still doesn't feel quite right to me.

[R.]

I think you can simply say what is happening. This is what I did in "The Thirteenth Commandment":

(Tai Chung is the Big Boss in the drug trade.)

TC was calling to me to come the other way. I followed him to the left of the desk and into a room lit by barred windows high in the unpainted concrete walls. There was a trestle table to one side, and beside it four office chairs. On the table were notebooks, pens and bottled water. Facing it were two hard wooden chairs.
TC sat Harry at the right hand end, me next to him, took the next place himself and was joined on his left by a young Chinese. TC introduced him as Philip Ng, a monosyllable that I completely failed to pronounce correctly.
There was a clatter outside, and two guards frogmarched a robed and bearded youth into the room, then forced him into the chair furthest from the door.
"Ibrahim," said TC. "Have you reconsidered your actions?"
Ng translated.
The youth snapped a reply, which Ng rendered as, "Never! I will not give up until this trade is ended."
"Even though you could profit from it yourself? I could pay you to encourage your people to increase the quantities they supply, even negotiate better prices for improved quality."
"I will not do this. I spit on your money."
"Perhaps your sister can convince you."
"Rangina, she is here?"
TC nodded, and two more guards brought in a young woman whose matted hair half concealed smouldering dark eyes.
"Rangi! Are you all right?"
The woman mumbled something that Ng didn't translate.
"Rangina, what have they done to you?"
She looked up. "Get me another. Can't think until they get me another."
TC fixed the youth with his eyes. "We have been injecting your sister regularly for a week. She is now a heroin addict."
"You pigs! You sons of whores!"
Ng looked apologetically at TC. "I'm sorry, but that is an accurate translation."
TC issued an order in Cantonese, then turned back to the youth. "We can continue until she dies if you do not give in."

And this is one with an alien language, and some computer translation. The backstory to this is very complicated:

Grattak took the thing. "This is the headset you were wearing when we found you. We've altered it a little." He handed it to me. Annakath took the cable that dangled from the headset and dropped it in Eve's tank.
"Laaantz. Caaan you zeer me?"
"Eve? You're a bit distorted but I can make out what you're saying."
"How about this, Lance?" It was Eve's rich contralto.
"You're doing this? How?"
"In the samma. I know everything you know about English."
I tried the obvious, let myself go and thought in Eve's language. I gave off a long rustling, crackling sound.
There was a distinct giggle in the headset. "You're quite good in bed as well."

[Ronnie]

I suppose you could go the Han Solo/Chewbacca route.

Chewie says something in his own language, and you get the gist of what he said from how Han replied to it.

[Steph]

Ronnie wrote: "I suppose you could go the Han Solo/Chewbacca route. Chewie says something in his own language, and you get the gist of what he said from how Han replied to it."

That's the way I went with my aliens. My inspiration however was the librarian in Terry Pratchett's Discworld books, which is probably the best example of how to do this in writing.

[Micah]

POV characters, no matter what language they're supposed to be speaking, should be written in whatever your readers' native tongue would be ... modern idiomatic American English in your case.

Anyone speaking a different tongue you have to ask yourself, is it important that the reader understand them? If No, then I wouldn't even write their conversation; I'd just say "The two creatures chattered and squeaked to each other in their own language."

But if your readers have to know what they're saying, then you've either got to just translate it -- "Sea devils damn you, human! Must you muck up everything you touch?" the alien said in its own tongue. -- Or you've just got to tell them in some other way (a character translating, the narrator translating, etc.).

Readability is the important thing.

Or, of course, you could do a bit of handwavium and conjure up a translation device. No shame in that. A lot of big time writers have.

[Clifford]

One of my short stories features a translation device as a work in progress. It's part of the central mystery of the story, but it's more of a prototype for communicating with a race that's non-verbal to begin with. They speak by changing their color.

[R.]

Micah wrote: "POV characters, no matter what language they're supposed to be speaking, should be written in whatever your readers' native tongue would be ... modern idiomatic American English in your case.

Anyo..."

Unless of course you are Heinlein and the Lunar dialect of English is more appropriate.

[R.]

Clifford wrote: "One of my short stories features a translation device as a work in progress. It's part of the central mystery of the story, but it's more of a prototype for communicating with a race that's non-ver..."

You can have a lot of fun with machine translation, like this: Tom's reply lit the "improper" indicator on the translator.

[Ronnie]

I'm sorry, a frog in which bidet? ;)

[Trike]

Clifford wrote: "Also, I have some parts of the book where the dialogue is in an alien tongue. How do you handle something like this? I'm using footnotes, but that still doesn't feel quite right to me. "

I've enjoyed the gambit where someone is either learning a language or there's a translator, and they often hit a stumbling block because a concept doesn't translate directly.

I've seen authors borrow from comics putting brackets < > around foreign or alien dialogue and noting that means it's translated from whatever.

Then there are people like George R.R. Martin who just do what you indicated by writing the dialogue in English and throwing in foreign words for flavor. He's done this so effectively that he's fooled people. One guy wrote to him asking for the syntax of dothraki and Martin replied, "I've written seven words of dothraki. When I need an eighth, I'll make that up, too."

[Ronnie]

My hovercraft is full of eels. :)

[Steph]

Is it likely that intelligent beings from another world would communicate in way we might recognise as spoken words? The evolution of the human vocal tract is such a bizarre, improbable thing. Aliens might have better luck talking to dolphins...

[Ronnie]

I suppose you could even make a joke about it.

A crowded bar, the hero accidentally jogs the elbow (or equivalent) of an alien. Alien banks something in his own language, hero thinks to himself "No need for a translation on that one. I'd know 'Did you spill my pint?' in any language."

[Trike]

Ronnie wrote: "I suppose you could even make a joke about it.

A crowded bar, the hero accidentally jogs the elbow (or equivalent) of an alien. Alien banks something in his own language, hero thinks to himself "No need for a translation on that one. I'd know 'Did you spill my pint?' in any language." "

Which is fine for lightweight sci-fi, but it's much more interesting when an assumption proves to be completely incorrect.

Instead of, "Did you spill my pint?" what if the alien said, "My apologies, a sacrifice will be made," their shorthand version of, "My apologies for occupying the space you were clearly moving into; I shall have one of my retainers sacrificed to the gods of Yarmak to atone for my sin." Because in their culture, obstructing someone's free movement is the second greatest offense one can make.

Meanwhile, our human goes about his day after having paid for another drink, which has brought shame to the alien's family and means the human now has a vendetta against him.

[Clifford]

Steph wrote: "Is it likely that intelligent beings from another world would communicate in way we might recognize as spoken words? The evolution of the human vocal tract is such a bizarre, improbable thing. Alie..."

I play with that exact idea in my story "Why the Weirwan?" I have a cephalopod race that communicates by changing their skin's tone and texture along with movements of specific tentacles in specific patterns. They have no ears, so vocal communication is useless. The story involves a murder investigation and a scientific team trying to build a translation device to communicate with the weirwan (the cephalopods).

[R.]

I did this in "Love's Illusion", a human-alien romance. Lance is human, Eve is alien and they are talking via a virtual reality hookup:

Then Eve had got wind of the Big Project. Something was happening, something that was connected with an undersea volcano. She'd found a kandret heading in the right general direction and followed it across the sea bed, defying the predators - my little Eve was one hell of a brave squid. It led to a temporary encampment where workers were busily packing the volcano with explosives. At the tidal maximum the top of the volcano broke surface. Fire the shot and it'd blow.
Dumping a couple of million tons of lava spiked with sulphuric acid on our colony.
We linked hands an looked into each others eyes. There was nothing we could do - we couldn't even get out of the cottage. About now two sentient races were dying for the sake of one individual's political ambition.
"Eve," I said. "It doesn't matter now but I'd simply like to know. What is a kandret?"
"It's a way of communicating. It transfers the aura from place to place."
"How?"
"It contains two or more strands of copper wrapped in a material that keeps the water out. It-"
"You mean it's a telephone cable?"
She nodded.
"Oh God, no. You mean what we've being calling the aura is simply an electric field?" I kicked myself mentally for not seeing the obvious sooner. I'd read about electric eels, and I was vaguely aware that fish could sense electricity through their lateral lines. Naturally an aquatic sentient race would talk with their electric fields. Only displaced mammals like seals and whales used sound underwater.
Eve nodded. "I didn't think you'd understand."
"Eve - back home I was an electronic technician. No, love, it's not your fault, you weren't to know."
She was crying again. I held her. I wanted to cry myself. If I, if anyone, had simply thrown the open end of a cable into the ocean, without the hydrophone, and listened to what it was picking up we'd have heard Eve's people talking. The whole damned war needn't have happened.

[R.]

Trike wrote: "Ronnie wrote: "I suppose you could even make a joke about it.

A crowded bar, the hero accidentally jogs the elbow (or equivalent) of an alien. Alien banks something in his own language, hero think..."

This reminds me of "Draco's Tavern" in Niven's Known Space series.

[Mary]

Hal Clement, that icon of hard science, admitted that he gave his characters translators that were basically magic.

Though he occassionally used linguistics even then. In Still River, I remember a woman asks her alien teammates if they all have a word for luck and contemplating after that they all do.

[Brian]

It was a difficult choice in my novel. I went back and forth quite a bit, but finally decided on just adding "he said in English" or whatever language it was, when it felt appropriate. Most of the time it was to distinguish when a character was present who would not understand the language, and so point out that there was either no communication or a miscommunication happening. The protagonist aliens in my book do have translation implants in their brains which help avoid many of the problems.