One question I’ve been thinking about for a future SF space setting loosely analogous to The Expanse is the question of what to do about foreign languages. The idea being that there are a range of characters with backgrounds from different parts of Earth in which they would reasonably be fluent in different languages. The Expanse uses Belter creole as a new hybrid language, but I’d really rather not use this approach.
The simple approach as used by Star Trek and a few other settings is just to give the characters a universal translator. If this works in all situations with an extremely low failure rate, especially also including things like handwritten notes, it would imply rather advanced machine learning. The question I have with this approach is whether it implies that AI is too advanced to still have the strong need for human piloted spacecraft.
The other alternative that comes to mind is to not explain things and just have everyone speak English without much of an explanation, but this doesn’t seem as satisfying.
-Adam
Hey Adam, great to hear from you again!
Language is a tricky thing in fiction, and you’re right that both The Expanse and the Star Trek approaches have issues. It’s very difficult to phonetically write out dialect or accent without sounding silly, or worse, playing into negative stereotypes. Unfortunately, The Expanse does both on a few occasions. Also, why are the Belters the only ones whose language has evolved? Earth still has thousands of languages last time I checked, but in the future, everyone speaks standard 21st-century English? According to the lore, a big percentage of Martian settlers were Indian, but somehow no Hindi made its way into their language?
Likewise, the perfect translations of Star Trek are beyond anything modern technology can offer. The Universal Translator can not only pick up a new language in minutes; it understands context, idioms, and even intent for a smooth translation every time. Unless the writers want Worf to say something in untranslated Klingon, and the UT is mysteriously absent. This level of technology is effectively magic, along the lines of replicators and transporters.
So, what are your options?
First, I wouldn’t discount a magic translator if it fits with your setting. Language barriers are really boring in most stories, and audiences will suspend a lot of disbelief not to worry about them. You don’t necessarily have to go full Star Trek either. If your characters aren’t encountering aliens each week, it’s fairly believable that they could all have earpieces which translate all known Earth languages.
Second, real time translation software already exists, and it will probably get better in the future. Of course, it will probably never be as good as the UT. The software will make mistakes, especially around things like memes or idioms. People will misunderstand each other, but it’s still a lot better than not sharing a language at all. That could be used to create some drama or comedy in your story without going full language barrier.
Third, you can deploy some handwavium, which is what I usually do. In a written story, it doesn’t take long to establish that while there are multiple languages in the world, your characters all happen to share a language you can use for communication. They might all communicate in Mandarin or Spanish, which your narration helpfully translates into English. Or maybe there’s a popular constructed language in the future that anyone in the space exploration business happens to speak. Unless you plan to make major drama out of language barriers, this solution will usually work fine.
Hope that answers your question, and good luck with your writing!
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I’d also say that it depends on the setting you write in. If you have a group of people who work together, despite having different backgrounds, they’ll probably have a common language to rely on. Simply write all conversations in English, perhaps with new words for objects we don’t have, that’ll be fitting (languages evolve), and don’t go into any details about it.
On earth, English has taken that spot in a lot of places, which is why all non-English-speaking countries teach the children English as a secondary language early. Even within the English language, there are variations through dialects, but there’s also the ‘high’ one which is usually also what the written language is based upon.
When it comes to speaking to alien species never encountered before, it is difficult – a handwaved UT may be the way to go there, unless you want to make it part of your story how the humans learn to converse with the aliens, of course. If there have been prior encounters with the aliens, then a translator (living or technological) would be a normal thing. Either some of the Aliens speak the human language or some humans speak the alien one – or both. If it’s physically impossible to speak both (because one species can’t produce a sound necessary to speak the other species’ language), a technology will take that spot to translate.
In Alistair Reynolds “Blue remembered earth” books, most of the characters speak Swahili, but of course the books (including dialogue) are still written in English. There’s at least one point where the main character switches to English in-universe to speak with someone who doesn’t know Swahili, and it’s mentioned, but the narration is English all the time.
This was just a random example. Authors do this kind of stuff all the time, it’s not weird. It’s like with translations: when I read the Three Body Problem series, it’s not like the translator left the dialogue in Chinese – everything was translated to English (would have been a bit hard to read otherwise…).
In my own book series, Latin has become a shared language that everyone knows (yep there are in-universe reasons for this, that exist in this world although not in our own). Since it’s used so much I imagine that people can speak casually and naturally in Latin, it’s not as if people in our world who did some Latin in school try to communicate in that language. I’ll just note in passing which language people speak in, but I write it all in Swedish.
That’s the normal way things are, yes. You just write dialogue in the language in which you write the rest of the book and mention it if something is different, such as languages switching.
As a matter of fact, I usually mention if a dialogue is in another language than standard – if a character doesn’t speak the language they hear, I mention that. In a story I’m currently copy-editing, a character switches from English to Irish at some point (for in-story reason), but the dialogue stays in English, as this is the language the story is in.
Keep in mind that people who speak the same language tend to cluster together. This can be done on purpose: when gathering a crew you want to make sure they can all communicate with each other. But also naturally: if the working language on a ship is Japanese, someone who doesn’t speak it probably doesn’t want to join in the first place.
On the other hand, in multilingual environments it’s normal to know multiple languages (especially for merchants, diplomats, etc.). So you can just say that the characters just happen to have a language in common.
I think it would be cool to write everything in preferred language, in this case English i presume, but describe the speech as accented and use literally translated idioms from the speaker’s native language. Like, I not jokingly said “Everyone has their own cockroaches in their head” as if it’s normal thing to say and my German friend was delighted, exclaiming “WHAT DOES IT MEAAAAN?! That’s so gross! I love it!” We were both speaking English.
This would work with translators too, I think.
One benefit a universal translator offers to the writer is a convenient way to increase tension. A universal translator works somehow–it’s biological, or psy, or technology–and thus can be disabled. Command and control are critical to any military campaign, and shutting down communications is a major component of attack and defense. If you can’t talk to your allies you can’t coordinate attack or defense, and you’re much weaker than if you could coordinate.
It’s something extremely realistic, yet something that I’ve never seen done in a sci-fi setting.
From a story standpoint it’s an easy way to up the drama/tension in a believable way. Just when the heroes need it most, they lose the ability to contact their allies and are on their own. You can have the enemy drop communications blackout from time to time for their own purposes, allowing you to fine-tune the tension without breaking the story. Alternatively it works as a sub-arc by itself–the plucky starship needs to find a way to communicate despite enemy counter-measures.
I believe that the first David Tennant episode of Doctor Who dealt with a similar issue, that while the Doctor is unconscious, the TARDIS can’t translate, leaving humanity to desperately attempt communication with hostile aliens until he woke up.
Just have everyone speak English. Right now, English is the official language of civil aviation. All air traffic controllers and pilots must speak English. In the future, it’s likely that English will be the de facto language for space agencies, and really the world in general. With increasing travel and communication around the world, it’s not far-fetched to have one language become universal in the near future.
In my setting, the universal translator is a definite element, but I wanted to have linguistics play a part too. Thus, I decided to have unique languages officially constructed for various purposes, such as a language specifically for all to understand, a language for scientific matters, etc. These languages can grant bonuses as well, and linguistics is a field of study that is more important than usual.
Why does nobody mention STAR WARS?
I always asked myself how can Han Solo not only understand Wokee but also the language of the bounty hunter etc.
Yes, there are people who can speak many languages, but how does someonne know the meaning of R2-D2 beep-twoot-beep compared to beep-twoot-bap?
There are millions of planets in the STAR WARS galaxy.
Or was many years in the past decided that there are only a few allowed languages and every other language was ordered to be forgotten at gunpoint?
Han and Chewie have been a team for a while, it makes sense Han learned enough Wookie to understand his first mate – Chewie clearly understands human language, but is physically unable to speak it. There’s also a suggestion in the EU (no longer fully accepted) that among the criminals, Huttese was the general go-to language.
Luke understood R2 after working with him for a while and had, when they were in a fighter, a computer translation of what R2 said. Afterwards, he would have been able to interpret what R2 said, if not word by word (or beep-twoot by beep-twoot).
For one thing, a large number of planets seem to either have no population or they were colonized by humans. In addition, we mostly see planets where the populace has been dealing with the Empire and the Republic beforehand for a while – they would be teaching whatever is standard administration language there as a secondary language. And, yes, the Empire very much forced non-humans to speak administrative languages instead of their native tongue. There might also be translation modules or suchlike – after all, there are protocol droids programmed with a large number of languages, too, as C3PO.