That was a great short story.
In contrast, I just read Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir, author of the Martian, and boy is translation between alien languages nice and trivial in that.
In contrast, I just read Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir, author of the Martian, and boy is translation between alien languages nice and trivial in that.
Whereas the aliens in Project Hail Mary are still fundamentally similar organisms. And you just have to come up with a common baseline to understand each other. Humans have been able to learn to translate between different languages for a long time now. It seemed no different than that to me. Especially when you add in machine assistance.
I would actually be quite curious though. If you put two people in a room, and each one only speaks one distinct language, and their only goal is to communicate with each other. How long before they can effectively communicate? Now it wouldn't be a perfect comparison because there is likely shared body language. It would still be interesting.
“Hard” sci-fi, but the neutron star gravity pummels anything hard to goo anyway.
Yes, but an important detail in the plot (possibly a spoiler) is that they experience time differently _because_ of the structure of their language, sort of an extreme outcome of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. A human learning their language will eventually experience time in the same way. Notably this is the pattern used by most of the stories in the collection that Arrival was derived from (Stories of your life and others). The author takes a phrase, hypothesis, etc and creates a story out of an extreme and concretized outcome from it. All of the stories in the collection are well worth reading IMO.
They can (somewhat) effectively communicate right from the start, and third party observers who speak neither language can mostly follow along too. Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3qqYyQC9ww
I would sign up for that even, maybe. I think the main problem with that idea is that willingness to spend time in such an endeavour is highly positively correlated with knowledge of certain well-spread Indo-European languages. ;)
I also recall that the aliens were impressed by humans standing in 'only' two legs. as their entire biology was radially symmetric.
this is why their perception is so unlike ours.