First contact between the humans and the Victims occurs in a prison cell on the Antagonists' spacecraft. I need a viable way for the humans and victims to communicate.
This is hard SF, so I need concrete ideas.
Thanks.
actually, what i actually mean is that they would translate first into Antagonist, and then into English, from Victim, or from English into Antagonist, and then into Victim.
there is absolutely no reason for a translation system to be incapable of working this way. however, since this is hard SF, and translation is a lossy process, the loss from English to Victim should be pretty extreme. same with Victim to English.
i would say that they should still be able to communicate, but in very broken sounding language.
I'm not buying this scenario. Why can't it translate? If they have the technology to do one translation, then it's a relatively simple thing (in my mind) to do the others.
What might happen is a several second delay to allow for the translation subroutines to work it out as it is translated twice.
I recall reading that in the United Nations, some of the speeches are translated through several different languages before finally arriving at a final translation. I don't know exactly which, but it might go something like:
Russian > English > French > Swahili
Obviously, this will take a bit of time before the final translation is made.
That said, you are writing a book. Non-verbal, non-written communication is not easy to describe.
One solution. Make at least one of your Human prisoners a linguist, someone who already speaks several languages and likes to study new ones in her (or his) spare time. Sort of like the one chick on "Star Trek: Enterprise". Or you could just make them highly observant with an ear for language like Antonio Bandaras's character in the "13th Warrior". Of course, there are always hand signs and diagramming in the dirt. That works fine in a visual medium such as movies or T.V. but it can be difficult to put into writing.
How much time do you have to work with? If it's only days, the level of communication will probably not rise much above what can be communicated with gestures. If it's years, then I could believe reasonably fluent dialogue between the two species.
Otherise, you're going to need a technological solution. What happens if you reverse the polarity on the translating devices?
Worse: A smile could be taken as an agressive move. Heck, just picking your nose might have unintended consequences. It could be a mating signal.
You can't rely on gestures. You have to rely on translators or some other method. But gestures is right out unless it is clearly action oriented, like pointing at something. Even then, you're asking for trouble. No?
If the psychology is anywhere nearly similar (as in, they don't like death and they do like eating and they can form alliance relationships), some communication could be as easy as putting food in front of the other, as a way of saying, "Have this." It's conventional to try math, which would work if the alien is a mathematician.
Various ideas:
* vervets, which use sign language. See Mike Pinker's work
* a minor alien character in Calculating God, Robert Sawyer. Its thoughts were alien enough than even after magic translation they were hard to follow
* The Mote in God's Eye, Niven & Pournelle. They were great communicators. (Also a comment on using math: a scientist is trying to do this with an Engineer; members of that subspecies don't talk much. It couldn't care less about his diagram of the Pythagorean theorem, but it took the computer apart and put it back together. I think it was Kate Wilhelm (?) who pointed out what would happen if a big many-legged monster appeared downtown and tried to interest people in the Pythagorean theorem.
* Startide Rising, the language Trinary. Statements must rhyme to be grammatical, and have 3 levels of meaning.
I tend to agree with Niven: if they're aliens, simply distinguishing and reproducing the sound (if they use sound) is an issue. Psthhh(pok), a character in Protector, pronounced his name by hissing and clacking his beak shut.
High five, man!
Lot of good ideas here.
quote:
First contact between the humans and the Victims occurs in a prison cell on the Antagonists' spacecraft.
I'm going to make some assumptions based on this. First, even if you don't mean they were literally being kept in the same cell, they were in the same cell block, and both can survive in the same environment. Second, the Antags have a distinct prison environment, so it wouldn't be hard for humans (or the Vics) to figure out that both species were being held captive. Third, this first contact becomes known, which means that at least some of the humans or Vics involved eventually escaped.
From this, I'm going to infer that there doesn't need to be much in the way of initial communication other than being nice and helpful. "Hey, I've got some extra food" (or maybe not) all the way to "Yo, we're bustin' out of here, you wanna come?" The situation is one such that the humans and Vics could hardly help but have common interests. Where there are identifiable common interests, communication is almost inevitable.
+ On the antagonist translation device...neither humans nor victims have access to the device.
+ The antagonists throw both species into what is basically just a secure room. They don't generally keep prisoners, they prefer to dismember their captives bit by bit until they give up information or die. In this instance, they don't know which species has the information, and torture hasn't worked on the first victim captive. They attempt trickery instead.
+ The humans have the information, the action occurs at the home planet of the Victims (orbiting Alpha Centauri A). The Antagonists believe the information is here, not on Earth. (They tortured an alien from a fourth race to learn the information exists, but did not get all the facts). The humans are desperate not to allow the Antagonists to discover where they are from.
+ Earth and Charold's Planet (home planet of the Victims) are very similar. The Victims look something like humanoid giraffes. That's about all the humans know upon first contact.
+ The humans and Victims must work together to win the scenerio, and no antagonist will change sides.
+ Just FYI, it is essential to the next book that these humans are stranded on Charold's Planet, unable to communicate back to earth.
+ And, of course, the fate of the universe hangs in the balance.
[This message has been edited by Spaceman (edited May 27, 2005).]
I have a sneaky suspicion that this important information is going to turn out to be some common bit of knowledge on Earth. Fairly antique knowledge, at that. I can see a couple of possible directions. One involves Stonehenge, the Pyramids, Atlantis, or something like that. The other involves one (or more) well established Earth religions having been founded by aliens.
On the other hand, maybe you just mean that humans have invented a fabulous new technology that the Antags are dying (or killing, anyway) to get.
Either way, the story is potentially interesting, but full of risk because there are so many borderline cliche elements.
More relevant to the immediate question, you haven't given us information we requested. First, how long do they have to figure out a means of communication, and how much communication do they need?
I'm thinking that, initially, they only need enough to communicate "we're all friends here" and "look at this". After they escape, they have plenty of time to figure out more.
Oh, and (not saying this information will help us answer the question) what the heck does "humanoid giraffes" mean?
The important bit of information is, in fact, of great strategic importance. There has been an interstellar war raging between the Antagonists and another race (the previously mentioned fourth race) for millions of years...all of it in sublight spacecraft. The humans have a theory and a prototype that could change everything. (In fact, it is the main thread connecting this story with my previous novel.) In fact, the prototype is only large enough for a mouse and it doesn't work properly.
The time span for the humans and victims to learn to communicate is minimal. I can think of two options, gesturing or stealing one of the translation devices. The problem with the latter option is that it might get all the protagonists killed before they escape. Then again, there's a lot of tension built into that option by default.............The more I think about it, the better that might work.
I use "humanoid giraffe" because I haven't written that part of the book, so I haven't gone through a full-blown description yet. That's just my working descrition. Basically, they look sort of like giraffes (only smaller) that evolved into intelligence and walk on their back legs, while the front feet evolved finger-like digits.
meaning dependent on highly contextual religious/cultural information or caste status. (the culture one was done on star wars, and the religious one recalls the Klingon biblical translation conundrum.)
We can't speak with whales or dolphins, though many people believe they have language.
Perhaps your hero that figures out the language has a touch of telepathy. Or is an idio savant.
It is entirely possible for a computer to translate one language and another because some languages just have more in common than others.
Maybe the language is a series of colors and patterns displayed on the face and they never developed writing.
Did you know that signers who read and write have to be bilingual because there is no way to write sign practically?
Generally, I don't think that you could rely on something like that for two species that evolved on different planets, even if there are commonalities of body form. But complex communication of semi-abstract modes isn't necessary.
All you need to share basic information and get some working level of cooperation between two intelligent entities is "we're friendly" and "look at this". I can say that much to a snake or lizard, and reptiles fall well outside the mammal commonality (whether they believe me is another matter ).
In fact, communication at that level might be better than more complex communication, because it seems likely that the Antags are monitering the cell in the hope of overhearing something. If they've jury rigged a cell and monitering equipment (including translators), then it seems that escaping and stealing a set of translation machines shouldn't be impossible, particularly since you say the Antags aren't usually in the business of keeping live captives.
Really, the sharing of complex information assumes that anyone has any immediately relevant complex information to share. Since the Antags are behaving atypically in this instance and they probably don't do a lot of catch and release anyway, it seems unlikely that anyone would have useful prior information on the subject of breaking out of an Antag prison and stealing some translators.
P.S. Are you species names inspire at all by the "Persecutor, Victim, Rescuer" triangle model of dysfunctional relationships? It's a pattern that causes people to mess up their present relationships based on past abuse. Relationship addicts often have this, where as soon as they get married to someone the spouse becomes the tormentor and they start looking for a rescuer.
[This message has been edited by franc li (edited May 29, 2005).]
quote:
Did you know that signers who read and write have to be bilingual because there is no way to write sign practically?
I don't know about other areas, but in North America that would actually depend on which sign language they are using. Signed Exact English (SEE) is pretty much just like it sounds. This is most often used for deaf children of hearing adults. American Sign Language (ASL) has a completely different syntax and is most often considered part of a different culture. ASL users would be bilingual, but not SEE.
Still, even with different sign languages you would run the risk of stepping on toes culturally. I know that the signed letter 't' in North America actually means the equivalent of something like 'Your wife fornicates with the goats when you're not home' in certain South American countries.
A lot would depend on the giraffe culture's taboos and body language. I can easily see a human's gestural representation of eating being considered vulgar by a group of long-necked aliens, if not done specifically.
Are the giraffe creatures capable of mimicing the noises necessary for certain other languages? Maybe there could be a similar thread in languages known.
"Your offer is too low!" Translation: "Look up!"
"Is it a quality item?" Translation: "What do you see?"
"Everyone owns one on my planet." Translation: "We're being watched."
It may take a while for each party to catch each hint, but it'd be fun to read!
Simple counting (shown representationally) would probably be understood by most sentient races. For example, if I started making marks as follows, you would probably understand what I was doing:
|
||
|||
||||
|||||
||||||
|||||||
From there, it's probably possible to come up with common symbols for numbers and mathematical operations.
| = 1
|| = 2
||| = 3
|||| = 4
1 + 1 = 2
2 - 1 = 1
1 - 1 = 0
Gestures such as pointing at an object to indicate the object are probably about as close to universally understood as gestures can be. Other concepts can be developed from there.
Using representational drawings may also be a method for initial communication.
Just remember that the beginnings of communication will have to be as representational as possible. More complex forms of communication can develop in time, based on the representational foundation.
If I've got the gist of that correct, wouldn't be in the best interest of the Antags to make the translators available to the Humans and the Victims?
They wouldn't have to do it at first, but perhaps have one of the Antags realize that the two species they have captive can't communicate. They could then provide translation devices to each of the prisoners.
Or, since manipulation is the goal, the Anatags could let the captives have the translation devices, but in such a way that the captives think they have secretly got a hold of them. They only use it when the guards aren't around and say things that they believe are private, not knowing that the Antags have the place bugged.
Just a few more brainstorming thoughts... 
That's why I said "some form", not to imply that I would expect them to actually use Morse Code. Morse code spells out letter-by-letter a word or acronym of a known language, so that would be pointless (unless the Vics learn English or something), but there are other means to formulate a tapping code, even something as simple as once for "yes", twice for "no" (sorry, my Trekieness is showing). As you said, "...---..." would be meaningless if it was intended to mean S-O-S, but you could create some how a common bond between the two subjects to make such a thing come out as words or phrases, similar to the whole "Father tongue" concept.
I was leaning away from the universal languages of pointing, etc. because I think that it would make it hard to believe that someone couldn't figure out the meaning of those.
If you want to really hurt your brain, you could even develop a tapping language by using any computer language, binomial, hex, etc (that hurts my brain just thinking about it).
[This message has been edited by RavenStarr (edited May 31, 2005).]
OK. I'm an alien completely unfamiliar with human lanuages. You decide that you will communicate with me by teaching me a tapping code. Please explain how you would use tapping to explain to me the concept that a certain number of taps means yes, and a different number of taps means no. Even if I somehow instinctively knew once was yes and twice was no, the tapping code isn't very useful unless you can ask me a yes-or-no question, which means you somehow need to build up tapping codes sufficient to ask a question.
It's actually possible to build a tapping code for simple math, and from that to assign a pattern for true and a pattern for false. But if you want to ask questions about anything more than math, you're going to need gestures or pictures or some other way to build a language by directly referring to things.
By the time the humans arrive, the antags probably know the Chirafes don't have the information, but they won't admit a mistake, and a politician is too big a prize to simply release.
There are a lot of details yet to be worked out on the final relationship between all the different species. My first novel was laid out in my head for several years before it was written. It started as a short story (that was, unfortunatly, published). The sequel to this novel is also completely laid out in my head. This novel is different. I've been actively creating it as I go along. I have the major plot points, but the details are very sketchy.
I'm starting to understand what the veteran pros mean when they say that writing doesn't get any easier, it's just hard in different ways.
Sorry for rambling.
quote:
It started as a short story (that was, unfortunatly, published).
As writers we grow and mature. I'm sure that most look back at some of their work and say, "Boy, that was crap." But hey, if someone bought it off you, who cares how bad you think it is. Just use it as experience to write better.
Anyways, best of luck with this, sounds like an interesting concept.
For one, they'd be mutually teaching each other (that does make a difference).
"It's actually possible to build a tapping code for simple math"
Exactly why I brought up the concept of computer codes... computers only speak in math and math is universal, but not universally understood (hence two people with some level of mutual understanding can find a common bond to comprehend the tapping, flashing, etc., but an outside party may not be so likely):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binomial
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexidecimal
If I was Spaceman, I of'course would actually approach this by only revealing the basic concept (like OSC did for Father Tongue, etc), rather than explaining it in detail... because detail is accentually pointless, you don't need to be able to do it yourself to understand that someone else is doing it.
Spaceman:
Do you at least get the basis of what I’m saying? Or even agree enough for me to even bother trying to figure out a further means to explain it (I choose not to develop your code for you, I am only willing to come up with the very basic ideas).
If you do agree a bit, I can easily give you way more ideas on the concept, my entire mind does nothing but develop and figure out patterns constantly throughout my day (wake or sleep)… I could simply give you a small taste of some of the insanity that goes through my head. Although I’m not going t bother with more than that because as I’ve said before, you really couldn’t understand it without actually being in my head.
For me… every day, number, letter, word, etc. has its own shape color and sound (completely separate from the sounds and shapes that they’d normally have when normally spoken or written). So… yea… that’s just the top of the surface…
[This message has been edited by RavenStarr (edited June 01, 2005).]
> For one, they'd be mutually teaching each
> other (that does make a difference).
Not enough of one.
My point is that with tapping codes alone, you can't get beyond math. For "some form of Morse Code," as you originally suggested, you'd need to build an alphabet, and words to be spelled with the alphabet, and those words are meaningless unless both you and the alien agree on their meaning -- which is going to be extremely difficult if you have no way of communicating other than tapping codes. Thagt's true even if you skip the alphabet step and just give each word its own pattern.
Tapping codes are useful as a method of communication between people who already have a method of communication in common. (That's why they will work for simple math, because both humans and sentient aliens would already share that foundation.)
Once the humans and aliens have a communication foundation built on gestures, pictures, or some other directly representational method of communicagtion, it would be possible to implement a tapping code to transmit information. But a tapping code will not work as the foundation.
But then you can still always take the easy route of the philotic connection type of thing that I mentioned. It's somewhat over done, but it still has room to be worked with if you approach it right...
quote:
I myself have figured out many languages without any visual references (gestures, pictures, English comparisons, etc)... I simply figure out the patterns (that's the harder part to explain without you being in my head).
Also, I'd like to point out that if you have both sides trying to teach the other how to communicate, that actually makes it far more difficult to develop high level communication. This has been experimentally proven in case after case. The same is true if you have both sides trying to learn communication, though the results are somewhat less hilarious.
Even so, the theoretical difficulty Eric mentions really is insurmountable. Patterns of taps can never inherently communicate anything other than patterns of taps. Thus, it can not communicate anything beyond "I think that tapping in this manner forms a meaningful pattern". Even this message is quite fragile, it is very easy for the recipient to exclude the idea that the tapping is supposed to be a message.
All this is something of a diversion. The chiraffes and the humans are being kept in the same cell, and they have somewhat similar physiologies. They are not limited to tapping in any case, nor would such a code be of much use.
You should research the condition sometime; it's actually more common than you'd think. If I can come across any articles about it, I'll pass them along to you, if you'd like...
Spaceman:
"RavenStarr: I'm going to defer the decision until I get further along in the manuscript. I'll probably let the alien take the initiative because, being one myself, I know how humans will react."
That works...
[This message has been edited by RavenStarr (edited June 02, 2005).]
I'll send you $100 if you can give me a translation of any five consecutive lines from the play on this page, without using outside reference materials: http://www.ericjamesstone.com/weird_stuff/translation.php
Each word in the play has been replaced by a number. Each occurrence of the same number indicates the same word. For someone like you, who has "figured out many languages without any visual references (gestures, pictures, English comparisons, etc)...," translating it should be simply a matter of figuring out the patterns, which you can do in your head, so here's your path to an easy $100. Not only that, but you'll prove I don't know what I'm talking about.
True, that doesn't come very close to being a translation, but since it's a play there's a fair chance of simply recognizing it after you get the sentance structure worked out.
Not a $100 dollars worth of chance, but if you were offering a million I'd find it worth my while to try working it out. I probably wouldn't be able to match it up, because it's not like I remember every play I've read or anything like that, but this is very different from the scenario you were talking about before. There is no theoretical barrier to solving this problem.
I hope we are, otherwise it would take me about 2 months (probably more because I'd start getting bored after about a week).
"We can figure out that some of the more frequent words are articles, and from that we can deduce that words following them are nouns or adjectives, sort those out according to order, and eventually figure out the verbs as well."
You're actually grasping the idea of figuring out the basic patterns to all languages... except, not every language puts adjectives and nouns in the same order, so that's what would cause most of the problems if it was something other than English.
"but since it's a play there's a fair chance of simply recognizing it after you get the sentence structure worked out."
Assuming I've read/saw it, or at least heard of it enough to have some reason to recognize it.
"but this is very different from the scenario you were talking about before"
I agree... but I still like the challenge... it's fun (I was one of the kids that complained when the math teacher forgot to give homework)... even if I do it, I don't expect $100, the fun of it is enough for me...
Since the point is to prove that you can work out the meanings without using outside referents, why should it matter whether the play is in English or not?
http://www.planetmag.com/pm27/neandert.html
I should point out, however, that the novel is very, very different from this short story, though the core idea is the same.
[This message has been edited by Spaceman (edited June 03, 2005).]
On a completely different note, what on earth does the linked story have to do with the novel you've been discussing? Or do I want to know? I've found each possible connection more frightful than the last.
This link was a side-conversation about fifteen posts ago, where I mentioned that there were some threads linking my first noved with the novel we've been discussing. In the course of that side discussion, I mentioned that the first novel was originally a short story that I considered to be "crap." The link is to the short story.
The general flow of the Neanderthal's life is similar in short story and the novel, but much of the detail is expanded upon, names are changed, and I think the novel is much more believable (in a willing suspension of disbelief kind of way). Many things also are different. The short story was written maybe nine or ten years ago, when I first started writing seriously.
So, there are four main hanging threads available from the first novel. The first will ruin the novel if you ever read it, and it is irrelevent to the second novel, so I won't discuss it. The second is that one of the Neanderthal's professors in Tokyo is a world authority in cryogenics (about 80 years in our future). He is named to the planning team for the Deep Space mission to Proxima Centauri. First connection.
The Neanderthal is not a stereotypical caveman. He is very intelligent, and a great mathematician and physicist. He invents a theory for faster than light travel. The Antags want that theory because war is space is a chess game, and whoever can move the chessmen first, win. Second Connection.
In the novel, it is implied that the Neanderthal has an offspring--half Neanderthal, half Japanese. We learn somewhere in the current novel that he had a son named Kinji Kitamura. Kinji picked up where his father left off, developing a prototype. Third connection.
On the planet Labrynth, orbiting Proxima Centauri, the two humans that survive an enormous stellar flare make humanity's first contact with an alien race. They meet a Betel Seer inside Labrynth, a mined-out world converted to Betel outpost. A very limited number of Betels exist in four dimensions rather than three (ignoring time). The few humans extend into this fourth dimension have what we call ESP. The Betels with this ESP are called Seers, and they have the gift of clairvoyance. They post Seers in strategic locations. The Betels have humanity selected as the race to which they plan to pass the torch of freedom, defending against the Antags.
The Betels are, unfortunately, wimps when it comes to torture. The Antags found the Betel first and tortured until he spilled everything he knew about the theory, though he was able deceive the Antags enough that they don't know where to look for it. So they look everywhere.
Meanwhile, Dr. D.F. Chareld discovers an earth-sized planet circling Rigel Kentaurus (Alpha Centauri A) about the same time that Kinji completes the first FTL prototype with the range to get out of the solar system.
Earth instructs Deep Space to divert to Chareld's Planet to look for life and to retrieve and return the FTL prototype and it's mouse passenger.
Unfortunately, the Antags get there first and confiscate the prototype after torturing the Chirafe president and nuking several of his cities. When the humans arrive, the Antags deduce they are there to retrieve the prototype and beging to try extracting the information from the humans.
I know the general ending, but the details are still sketchy. The two humans win, but can't get back home or warn Earth. Thread to next book.
(Witch wasn't my first choice of words, but I don't where hatrack draws the line.)
I already answered that: "not every language puts adjectives and nouns in the same order, so that's what would cause most of the problems if it was something other than English"
I'd be able to figure it out still (the "2 months" was mostly an exaggeration... although the getting bored after a week was right... that's why whenever I agree to look at anybody's work on here, they know that it can't be something that will take more than a week), It'd just slow me down because no matter what language it is, I'd always be referencing English, since that is my first language...
If you really believe that this cannot be done, then it must be astonishing to you that language even exists to begin with.
Besides... as we said, it doesn't really get into the whole point with tapping codes... not talking about have a full conversational dialog between people, we're talking about getting basic concepts across. Even Morse only does that (it can do more, but it's not intended for that purpose). "SOS" doesn't actually mean anything other than "help"... and that's a universal concept...
Spaceman:
Um... interesting... if you get a publisher, they'd very likely latch on...
[This message has been edited by RavenStarr (edited June 06, 2005).]
quote:
If you really believe that this cannot be done, then it must be astonishing to you that language even exists to begin with.
But without outside referents, how do you build up a tapping code in order to convey the idea of "rock"? Word order alone -- even if you somehow managed to establish a common grammatical framework with the aliens -- is insufficient to convey the meaning of rock. Without an actual rock to point to, you would have to define "rock" by using other words, such as "hard mineral substance." How do you define "hard" just by word order? How do you define "mineral"? How do you define "substance"?
Why would you be talking about a rock to begin with then?
Why not? But since the concept of a rock is apparently beyond comprehension within your otherwise almost infallible method of comprehending languages solely by word order, let's look at a word that our human and alien prisoners might need in their communications: "door," as in the door to a cell.
Without pointing to a door, using a picture of a door, imitating a door, etc., -- just using a pattern of taps -- how do you convey the concept of a door? Unless you somehow convey the meaning of "door" directly, you must be defining it in terms of other words, either directly or through context. But unless the aliens understand those other words, they won't understand "door." And you run into the same problem with those other words -- unless the taps can convey their meaning directly (as a simple numerical tapping code conveys numbers), then those words remain undefined.
But Eric is the one that chose that term in the first place and hasn't done much to explain it other than using it in context. Which is enough if you already know what the term means, but not entirely sufficient if you have no clue.
Of course, the fact that Eric and Ravenstarr are having such difficulty communicating proves that Eric is right
Not entirely on the subject, but let's say that the aliens have no sense of rhythm, they can't tell the difference between a long pause between taps and a short one. They can only hear tapping, then can't hear a specific pattern in it because they lack the necessary sense, just as they would have trouble knowing there was tapping if they happened to have no sense of hearing.
quote:
I myself have figured out many languages without any visual references (gestures, pictures, English comparisons, etc)... I simply figure out the patterns (that's the harder part to explain without you being in my head).
I'm merely claiming this is impossible once you get much beyond math.
Oh, and as to your claim that there is no theoretical barrier to solving the problem of the play translation, I think you're wrong: I specifically said that translation had to be done without using any outside reference materials. While it might be possible to work out a plausible grammatical structure of the play, I don't think an actual translation is possible without some of those outside referents.
[This message has been edited by Beth (edited June 07, 2005).]
http://www.rnib.org.uk/xpedio/groups/public/documents/publicwebsite/public_keller.hcsp
Helen Keller's story proves my position, not yours.
What the breakthrough point? It's when Helen realizes that a certain pattern of fingerspelling meant "water."
Under your theory, Helen should have been able to understand that the fingerspelling meant "water" just because of the way it fit in some pattern of fingerspelling.
But the breakthrough came when Anne fingerspelled water while pumping water over Helen's hand. That gave Helen something outside the fingerspelling language to which she could associate the word.
If all Anne had ever done was fingerspell things for Helen, without associating the words with anything outside the patterns of fingerspelling, Helen would never have learned that the fingerspelling of "water" meant water.
That is to say, you couldn't communicate anything about math that the reciever didn't already understand. The essence of communication is for one entity to impart information to another entity which does not already have that information.
For instance, consider if the aliens have no concept of, say, multiplication and a geometric series. You can tap out a geometric sequence all day long, but they won't be able to figure out the pattern.
Anyway, I would like to point out that in both your quote and his own recent post, Ravenstarr has convincingly demonstrated to me that he doesn't know what you're talking about. That's not the same as proving that he's making sense or has a valid alternative point of view that you can't see. I'm just saying I don't see the point of the conversation anymore.
I can see this going into an interesting alternative direction, such as the communication problems that arise if two species don't share certain concepts. For instance, what if we were to meet aliens that didn't concieve of the existence of something like a spirit? Not even that they couldn't imagine such a thing, just that they never had?
One thinks of the Japanese concept "shinikami". "Shinikami" is the Japanese translation of an incoporeal personification of Death, what we would call "The Grim Reaper". But, apparently due to how the Japanese understand the work "kami", they have always thought of "shinikami" as being a type of spirit rather than being a single entity. Of course this is a minor, unimportant translation error, but the result is a unique concept that seems quite novel to westerners but is very natural to the Japanese, so much that they (and we) now recognize it as a new and distinctively Japanese concept different from Death.
Okay, one only thought of that because one was trying to explain Bleach to another earlier today.
quote:
The essence of communication is for one entity to impart information to another entity which does not already have that information.
So have you figured out what "bleach" refers to? Is it spelled and pronounced like the laundry whitener? Or is it a misspelling of "blech" Maybe they tried to back-form a verb out of "bleachers".
[This message has been edited by franc li (edited June 09, 2005).]
quote:
That is to say, you couldn't communicate anything about math that the reciever didn't already understand. The essence of communication is for one entity to impart information to another entity which does not already have that information.
Both sender and receiver must understand the medium of communication in order for communication to happen, but that does not mean both sender and receiver already have all information that can be communicated via the medium.
For example, let's say I briefly glipse and alien creature I've never seen before in a cell before I'm put into the cell next to it. Shortly thereafter, I hear the following pattern of taps coming through the wall separating my cell from the creature's:
||
|||
|||||
|||||||
|||||||||||
|||||||||||||
The fact that I am familiar with the numbers 2, 3, 5, 7, 11 and 13, and know that they are six consecutive prime numbers, doesn't mean the tapping conveys no information that I didn't know before.
It conveys the new information that the creature doing the tapping is intelligent enough to know what prime numbers are.
First, let's define what language is. Language is just one particular type of communication system. In talking about communication systems, linguists often make use of the terms SIGNIFIER and SIGNIFIED. A signifier is anything that exists in the physical world that can be perceived. This could be a picture, flash of light, a particular type of sound wave (whether a beep or a spoken word), a smell, a texture, etc. A signified is something that exists in someone's brain -- a meaning or concept. In a communication system, a signifier is paired with one or more signifieds -- by producing the signifier you can evoke in someone else the concept of the signified. In human language, this happens in a particularly complex and versatile way, but idea of signifier and signified remains at the heart of the system. Other types of communication systems include traffic signs, heraldry, and animal communication systems. Codes, such as Morse code, are not really communication systems in and of themselves, since the signifiers there only point to OTHER signifiers. A code is just an alternate way of representing a signifier that exists as a part of some other system.
When a signifier is paired with a signified, this dyad is referred to as a SIGN. There are three main types, depending on the relationship between signifier and signified. If the signifier resembles the signified, the sign is iconic (ex: picture of a gas pump means the highway exit has a gas station). If there is a cause-effect relationship, it is an indexical sign (animal tracks near a river). If the relationship is purely arbitrary, the sign is symbolic. For iconic and indexical signs, it can be possible to "figure out" the sign given your knowledge of the world. For a symbolic sign, this is not possible. You have to LEARN a symbolic sign, not figure it out. To put it another way, for a symbolic sign, the link between signifier and signified is based on convention alone.
Human language almost exclusively uses symbolic signs. There are some iconic aspects of human language, such as onomatopoetic words, but these are clearly of marginal usefulness. This means that there are only TWO ways to come to understand a word that you don't already know:
(1) you observe it being used in context
(2) you are told what it means
For (1) the idea is that you perceive the signifier when the signified is present. It could be either physically present (the Chiraffe says "blorble" while pointing to a knife), or conceptually present (the Chiraffe pantomimes using a knife, or a knife is obviously needed to do something, etc.) For (2), you can either have the idea EXPLAINED to you (as in: a "blorble" is a long pointed weapon and cutting device), or you could have it translated into a language you already know ("blorble" means "knife").
Without a context, and without an already shared communication system, it is impossible to understand what an unknown word might mean. In the case of the Rosetta stone, mentioned by EricJamesStone, the crucial thing that is provided was translation into a shared communication system -- the same text was engraved on the stone in two languages, Egyptian and Greek (and for Egyptian, in two orthographies, one of which was partially decipherable using knowledge of a third language, Coptic). Since Greek and Coptic were both known, the Egyptian could be figured out. In linguistics classes, we often have our students "decipher" an unknown language (much as, I believe, Ravenstarr is referring to), but in order for that to be a possible thing to do, we have to provide English glosses (translations) of at least some of the sentences we provide. For example, consider the following hypothetical sentences of Chiraffe:
Flimatumbi. "I see you."
Maflitumbi. "You see me."
Flivotumbi. "I see him."
Voflitumbi.
From this, you can hypothesize that "fli" means "1st person", "ma" means "2nd person", "vo" means "3rd person masculine", and "tumbi" means "see". Further, that the subject is placed in the first position, the object in the second position, and the verb after that. You can also figure out that the last sentence I provided means "He sees me" even though no translation is provided. But without the translations for the first four sentences, you can't get anywhere. By observing the patterns in the Chiraffe sentences, you can deduce which bits of Chiraffe correspond to which bits of English, and what the grammar of Chiraffe is like, but that's it.
There are, by the way, gifted linguists who would be able to figure out the above example without the translations, given only a monolingual speaker of Chiraffe to interact with. To do that, you would need to observe the sentences being used in context, as explained above. This would obviously take a lot longer, and would probably only work well if the Chiraffe were willing to cooperate with you. (This should also make you a little skeptical of the idea that the Antags could decipher English well enough to make a useable translation machine only through observing their captives, but hey, lots worse things have been done in the name of fiction. If the Antags also have access to the earthlings spaceship, with a computer and so forth on board, it would be a lot more believable.)
By the way, a lot of people were making reference to sign languages like ASL as a possible means for communication between species. For the record, natural human sign languages like ASL are exactly like spoken languages is every significant way except modality -- signed languages are visual while spoken languages are, well, spoken. Use of pointing, gesticulating, pantomiming, etc., to communicate is so different from use of a sign language that they are not properly referred to using the same term. ASL is a sign language (or signed language) while pointing/pantomiming is just "gestural communication". Not even a language.
One of the similiarities between signed and spoken languages is the almost exclusive use of symbolic signs. If you already know what a given ASL sign means, you can often see some sort of shadow of iconicity in it. However, for the vast majority of signs, if you just see it, you have NO CLUE what it could mean. And there is good evidence that, even for signs that you or I would see as clearly iconic, native signers treat them as symbolic. A good example of this are the signs for "you" and "me" and the phenomenon of pronoun reversal. In ASL, these consist of pointing towards youself to mean "me" and pointing towards your interlocutor to mean "you". The phenomenon of pronoun reversal is something that happens with young kids -- hearing kids, originally -- who were learning a spoken language, such as English. If you think about it, in the language that is directed towards a child, "you" always means the child, and "I/me" always means mommy or daddy. A certain % of children acquiring English (or any spoken language for that matter) will not quite realize that the meanings of these pronouns are supposed to shift according to who is talking: "you" means whoever is being spoken to, for example. When you ask such a child "Do you want a cookie?" they'll respond with "Yes, you want a cookie." Very common. Now, flashback to ASL. Remember the 'clearly iconic' signs for 1st and 2nd person pronouns? Turns out a certain % of children acquiring ASL as their native language reverse them in exactly the same way! The only way to make sense of this is that they are processing the signs symbolically, not iconically. I also remember a good example of the symbolic nature of ASL from when I was a TA for a big introductory linguistics class. A guest lecturer, a hearing child of deaf parents, came in and talked about ASL. She started by demonstrating a particular ASL sign. To make this sign, first make a fist, then without unbending any of your fingers, cause the knuckle of your index finger to stick out from the others. Now put that knuckle on your jawbone and pivot your hand at the wrist back and forth in a circular motion. She asked people, what could this sign mean? A lot of people gave guesses. What would your guess be? Well, I'll tell you at the end of this post what the actual meaning is. The point is that, none of the guesses were right, and furthermore, once you know the right meaning, you can see a shadow of iconicity, but it is of no practical value in deciphering a previously unknown ASL sign. So the idea of using ASL or any other signed language for communication between species is just about as hopeless as using English, Greek, or Russian. Case in point: signers of ASL cannot understand other sign languages (like British Sign Language) without having studied those languages just like you or I would study French or Italian.
For the record, I have always thought that the most likely, most believable universal translation device ever conceived by science fiction is the babble fish!
Best wishes,
Katherine
answer to ASL question: potato
Thanks for sharing your expertise on this subject. And welcome to Hatrack.
In answer to the question, the main objectives of the communication are a) to get off the antagonists ship, b) to gain access to the FTL prototype, and c) to rescue the alien so the residents of the planet don't think they are hostile.
I feel so terse!
Spaceman - OK, so the first thing they need to do is to get out of the cell. Put yourself in the situation. Pretend you and an alien are locked in a cell. You want to get out.
Maybe, you start looking around for hole in the mortar (if it is some sort of building) or stick a piece of your clothing in the forcefield or something (if it's a Star Trek type cell). Maybe the Chiraffe sees what you are doing and becomes curious, so he starts trying to help.
He must be reasonably intellegent, right? Surely he can see you are up to something. Why would you really need to translate anything? You both want out of the cell. Maybe you have differant reasons for it, like maybe you want to get out and steal the ship, and maybe he wants to get out to release his commander. But you both have the basic goal of getting out.
Work it from there.
If your human character needs the chiraffe to help with something specific, then gesture to it or mime it.
You might want to read Enemy Mine (by Barry Longyear), or at least watch the movie. That had a situation that might be similar.
Also a good source is Barry Longyear's book titled - Science Fiction Writer's Workshop 1: An Introduction to Fiction Mechanics
[This message has been edited by NewsBys (edited June 09, 2005).]
By the way, I can understand Eric's confusion over what I meant by "about math". I don't commonly count the fact that a given person understands some mathmatical series as a fact "about math", but it can be classed that way.
And I still don't know why the show is called "Bleach". My best theory is still that it is Engrish for "Breach", which would make some sense. It also might simply be because the main character has blond hair, but this is supposedly his natural color (and not in the same way that green, blue, pink, and interpolations of these colors also seem to be "natural" in anime).
Anyway, Kate, you might want to try out our discussion of universal tranlators...that also invoked the "babel fish". My own answer was something about "decompiling the subject's brain" or a similarly distasteful sounding notion.
http://commtechlab.msu.edu/sites/aslweb/browser.htm
You can find potato on the same site. This is a great site for visually referencing ASL, but many signs also differ according to region.
Survivor -- decompiling the subject's brain? Does sound distasteful, but OK, I'll go with that as a possibility. Have you checked into human subjects approval for that?
Spaceman -- sorry to lead your discussion off on a tangent. A suggestion that hasn't been given yet is to simply back off on the first contact assumption. Maybe one of the Chiraffes has had some exposure to earth tv and radio broadcasts, or maybe a janitor on the Antag ship is a space hippy who hung out on Earth for a few months back in his youthful adventuring days and can translate. Could the Chiraffes have found a Voyager (I forget your time line)? Maybe we found a deep space probe of theirs? Only thing that comes to mind right now. Best of luck!
-K.
Anyways, you're welcome for the clarification. I'm a signer, and your description was very good, so I recognized the sign from the paragraph. But you're the linguist, and I almost didn't say anything. Thanks for being cool about it.
Thanks again,
-K.
1. The Antags are relying on machine translation, and that has its pitfalls. If the humans realize this, they can do things to slip up the machines. If the Antags learned English by observing their prisoners, their translations will be limited. Even if they fully grasp English grammar, there is no way the machines can translate words the prisoners have never used in captivity before. So, "there", "good", and "water" can be translated, but the machines are stymied with "yonder", "copacetic" and "aqueous libation", especially since the humans are smart enough to use such words only once. Problems likewise pop up with "Whither goest thou?". The machines go offline for an hour altogether when the humans decide to go into Pig Latin. A human interpreter wouldn't be bothered by that for over a few minutes, but the Antags' reliance on machines lays them open to such things.
2. The Antags are the type of cold, cruel race that do not allow "imperfect" children to live beyond infancy. If a deaf antag baby cannot have its hearing restored surgically, it is put to death. There has never been a community of deaf Antags that needed to communicate with one another, hence the idea of a signed language is unknown to the Antags. They know about gesture, surely, but do not realize that this can be developed into a full-fledged language. The humans and the Chiraffe could be holding a meeting of the United Nations in their cell using a signed language, and the Antags would never realize that they are doing anything other than point-n-grunt type of stuff. If the information the Chiraffe and humans need to share is detailed, complex, or abstract, all the better, since the Antags would think precisely that sort of thing cannot be conveyed through the modality of sign.
3. Chiraffes and humans have different linguistic abilities. Human children can learn language with amazing ease and speed, but this ability wanes with age, until for adults, learning a new language is somewhat painful. This is not so with Chiraffes, who maintain this ability throughout their lifespan. Even a pretty stupid Chiraffe speakes at least 12 languages. And they do that naturally, just like human babies do, simply from interacting with others who speak the languages. Chiraffes would have no use for foreign language classes, except possibly those Chiraffes going into diplomacy and politics. Such callings would naturally attract those Chiraffes who are exceptionally linguistically gifted.
4. Back off on the first contact idea. Maybe the Chiraffes studied our radio and TV broadcasts, but ultimately decided we are too violent to make contact with. In any event, the captive Chiraffe knows English. To make that work, there has to be some reason the Antags would let him be in with the humans. How about if he is injured by the torture? He is now deaf and mute -- the narrow-minded Antag conception of language makes them think that this means he cannot use language. Maybe the humans are bound with their hands behind their backs, and one of them does fingerspelling to keep his fingers from being numb. The Chiraffe, being linguistically gifted, realizes after a while that he recognizes English words in those gestures.
OK, those are the ideas I came up with. Maybe there is something useful in there, but probbably not. I just thought I would put them out there -- it was fun thinking about it in any event.
Best,
K.
I've settled on what I'm going to do, and here it is.
The Antags are pretending to be peaceful to gain the trust of the Chiraffes. As part of this plan, the Antags leaves one of the junior officers on the planet to live with them for a year. This junior officer discovers that these Chiraffes are people with culture, class, and taste. He grows to like them over the course of that year.
Now, at the end of the year, when the Chiraffe president is taken aboard the Antag spacecraft and they revert to their normal selves, the junior officer has conflicting loyalties, and ultimately abandons his people in favor of the Chiraffe and humans (who arrive about this same time). He aids them using his Antag-issued translator.
Now, the question I have is whether all of the Antag-related chapters should be in this junior officer's POV. In chapter one, a junior officer that COULD be this guy abducts a Chiraffe, takes her up to the ship, and is the one who tortures and kills her. The events will stand, but right now, it is written in third person, light penetration with the Chiraffe as the POV character. It moves to limited omnicient so the torture and death can take place offstage.
The Chiraffe character offers some interesting opinions about being the first Chiraffe in space. I also like the idea of killing a POV character early. It sets a precident that the writer is willing to anything.
I originally planned to stay omni or light penetration because in the first two thirds of the book, there are no humans in this story line. After bootcamp, I'm not so sure that is the right approach.
Would anyone be willing to read chapter one and tell me their opinion on POV? It's 1139 words. I'm not looking for crits, just a quick read and tell me what you think about the POV question.
Thanks.
[This message has been edited by Spaceman (edited July 15, 2005).]