Signal Boost: The Children of Planet Earth · 3:08pm Jun 30th, 2021
Y’all interested in a hard sci-fi story with a language barrier? Chicago Ted’s got you covered!
"And we are absolutely certain that's a settlement? That Rhysling already has Indigenous populations?"
"Yes, Commander. There is no doubt. An engineer can fix the probe, but he would not know how to talk to them."
"Alright. Forget the engineer, then. Get me the linguist."
Back when I first started writing on FimFic, language barrier fics were a rarity. Human showed up, and conveniently everypony spoke English. First one was okay, but after that my suspension of disbelief got strained.
And I wasn’t the only one who thought that way; when I came across first-contact stories like Just Passing Through, or A Voice Among the Strangers, they had a language barrier.
Likewise, while a lot of early stories relied on convenient portals (or Twilight screwing up a spell), some writers were willing to take on a more sci-fi premise, such as Arrow 18.
Or The Maretian.
It was only a matter of time before somebody took it to the next level and actually came up with a pony language. Not just a few words here and there, but a rather complex language whose grammar is tied into Equestrian culture, as told from the perspective of a linguist.
Another thing I can’t remember seeing in another first-contact fic is a great concern about interplanetary contamination. While that’s something that really ought to be done in any alien exploration sci-fi fic, it almost never is.
Episode Screencap
Thanks for the recommendation! I read one where this was happening. The human protagonist had a device that worked a bit like a universal translator but it had to learn the language first. He was scanning books when his ships AI realized that the written word was derived from Ancient Greek. Sadly the author had to take a hiatus and when they where off of it they found out their notes where gone and they had no clue on how they wanted the story to go. Which was sad because it ended on a minor cliffhanger.
Sounds awesome!
I read the first chapter and that was a pretty good recommendation. I’m looking forward to seeing where that goes.
If I ever write anything on here it will probably be a first contact story. At one point I was about to start working on an equestrian language as well, but I never got around to it.
Sounds quite good -- I'll start reading it when it hits 4 chapters(which is my typical MO for long-form stories) -- If a long-form is going to die, it is very often after 3 chapters, those that reach 4 have more staying power.
I've read all of those. I wish 'Just Passing Through' would be finished.
Reminder that Carl Sagan's Contact is a masterpiece, but the movie was shit. Read the book.
I remember that in Twilight makes First Contact, they did have this concern, albeit the ponies forgot to account for natural earth side microorganisms until the human scientists reminded twilight sparkle about it, after which she proceeded to freak out. It is mentioned that after the end of the story, she would go on to write a book about multiversal hygiene.
In the same story, the ponies begin with a language barrier, but the scientists communicate via numbers and scientific notation to explain how flash memory and digital computing works, over the course of a week. They then hand the ponies a terabyte drive containing an offline copy of wikipedia and several dictionaries. Twilight sparkle constructs a translator by chopping off a small fragment of her mind and growing it in an artificial medium to build a new sentient/sapient being that can interface directly with the USB drive and had a psyche revolving around translation. spoilers.
Hm, looks interesting; thanks! :)
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Minor spoiler, but this guy’s gotta do it the old-fashioned way.
Sometimes when you’re writing longfics, something else comes up in real life which is unfortunate, but what can you do? I’m behind on lots of stuff (as some of my readers know full well) for a litany of reasons, including plenty of IRL stuff.
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It’s the first MLP fic I’ve read where somebody takes a serious, passionate stab at their language.
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The thing about writing a language is I feel like you’ve got to have a good grasp of the nuts and bolts of your native language, as well as what some others do, in order for it to be convincing, and then you’ve got to transfer those ideas to an alien species. It’s something I wish I could do, but I don’t even know all the foundational stuff of English which quickly became apparent when I took foreign-language classes in school.
I might be able to pick up enough of it to get by if I were just dropped in a foreign country and had to figure it out, but I have my doubts on that, too.
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I can’t fault you for that, a lot of authors do have trouble keeping up with long-runners. And yes, I know that I’m one.
The good news is that Chicago Ted is wiser than I am, and the entire thing is written. It’s not fully edited yet, but it is written and I have read it from beginning to end, so I’m not just taking his word for it.
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I wish it would, too.
I suppose I could poke the author on Discord, but that’s not likely to accomplish anything.
Jar of Hearts started updating his story again, so that’s something.
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Honestly, I can think of very few cases where you weren’t better off reading the book.
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How the ponies deal with various local infectious diseases or even pests isn’t really covered in the show, as far as I know. I think all the maladies we’ve seen have been magical instead of mundane. At least they have enough medical knowledge to have a hospital, know to set up a field hospital for the ‘baked bads’ incident, and going off some background shots, have a decent grasp of treating mental illness.
I don’t really like the idea of any kind of quick or machine-based language learning, it’s just not that realistic IMHO, but I also recognize from a storytelling point of view, it’s sometimes difficult to say what you want to when the ponies and humans can’t speak to each other to communicate. And depending what the story’s meant to focus on, that’s something that you can handwave away. Obviously, Chicago Ted is mainly focused on linguistics, so he’s going the long route on that.
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Everyone wants to be Tolkien but very, very few want to put in the effort Tolkien did. Tolkien was a professor of languages so he knew your environment, culture and societal relationships influence the way you think which influences the way you construct your language. The best most writers can do is to fake it well.
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Another great fic I wish would be finished.
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Now I'm wondering how a broad-spectrum antibiotic might work on an infection that turns you into a frikkin' tree.
But the big biotic threat from a truly alien world would most likely be something like an unfortunately-folded protein fragment (e.g. a prion) rather than a virus or bacterium that had evolved along with the alien lifeforms.
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The Andromeda Strain and Princess Bride are equal to or better than the original books.
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Well hopefully you will be able to find the time. I bet you are busy as ever at your main job and that probably will not be getting any easier for the foreseeable future.
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I didn't do that to much, I found the process daunting enough as it was. I did a few things though. I thought about how equstrian changed with the addition of other species (as an example griffins probably wouldn't be able to make p, b, or m sounds easily as they require lips) and I looked a bit of how they would have written as physically how letters are written affects their shape.
honestly, that's not a huge deal. You probably don't want your language to be a clone of english and you're making the foundational stuff.
If you're interested, i'd recomend How to make a language by biblaridion as well as Artifexian. The first one is a pretty thourough overview of how to make a natural looking language and the second has a bunch of videos on assorted linguistics topics.
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Pathfinder 5, perchance?
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Yup.
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There's also stuff like the Peter Jackson LotR, where you can barely even call it an adaptation but they're both good on their own respective merits.