Lost (in) translation: language barriers between worlds

 

Photo by Jeffrey Czum at www.pexels.com

 When you visit a foreign country in real life, how do you communicate? Well, if you speak the native language – voila, no problem! Or, vice versa, if your language happens to be a popular foreign language in the country you’re visiting, all the more if it’s the lingua franca of the day (like English is today), you can traverse around the globe relatively freely without any knowledge of foreign languages, counting on the natives speaking your language. If neither is the case, it still might be that both you and the natives will speak the same foreign language that you can communicate in (again, probably English nowadays). If even that fails… well, what can you do? You can rely on someone translating – if it’s an official visit or you are rich, it will likely be a hired professional translator, while if you’re just an anonymous tourist, it is always nice if you have a local friend who speaks your language. If no translator can be found, you can go around with a dictionary, or, today, with a translating app, looking up words and phrases you need. If all else fails, and the need is great, you may just test your pantomime skills. Language is a wondrous and complex subject!

Both fantasy and science fiction have their share of cultural variety, that should come with appropriate linguistic implications. And with planned contact between cultures, all of the above options have their place in these genres. However, a trope is often present in them that rarely corresponds to real-life experience in this day: namely, that of unexpectedly coming into contact with a completely alien culture. Usually, someone crash-lands onto a completely foreign planet (or is at least forced to make an unexpected stop there, minus the crashing), or travels through a portal into a dimension until then unknown to them – in both cases usually making first contact with an alien race or culture. In those cases, it’s highly unlikely even that both parties will speak Galactic Common, let alone have an available translator who knows both of their languages! (Sorry, C-3PO, you’re not always there.) So how do the genres handle this?

It should be fairly easy, right? As Clarke so aptly put it: “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. Unless you’re writing a low-tech sci-fi or a low-magic fantasy, and you specifically want the language barrier to be a problem, you can just poof it away by snapping your fingers. One sentence is sufficient to inform your readers (viewers, players etc.) that character such-and-such possesses the right magic or technology to blast the language barrier into oblivion.

In science-fiction, we have ample evidence of this. From Leinster’s universal translator, over very similar technology in Star Trek and TARDIS’s telepathic translation field, to the wacky solutions such as the babel fish, we see advanced technology (errr, or a fish which happens to make God a Schrödinger’s cat, but let’s move on from that one) hard at work at making alien races understand each other. Sometimes, the translation technology is focused on as part of the plot, or at least explained to give a deeper flavour of the universe: we remember problems with the universal translator malfunctioning in Star Trek, or the technology struggling with the unusual Orz language in Star Control games. Most of the times, though, the translation technology is merely there in the background, serving the purpose of letting all characters understand each other and moving on with the plot.

Magic should be an equally easy solution, whether a spell is cast to help someone understand all languages, or to miraculously quickly learn a particular foreign one. However, for some reason, fantasy, and particularly portal fiction, more often than not simply fails to address the problem entirely. The travellers – be it Dorothy falling into Oz, Thomas Covenant coming to the Land or Sienna dashing through a portal into Mixia – simply happen to understand everyone in the new world they’ve just arrived to. Naturally, not all: there are positive examples of the contrary (e.g. The Beginning Place, The Homeward Bounders), but for the most part, as exotic as the new landscape can be, everyone just keeps speaking English (or whatever the language of the work is) as if that went without saying. And many fantasy novels of otherwise high quality are as guilty of this as your run-of-the-mill isekai or action RPG.

Of course, I have no statistics to prove that the problem is more prevalent in fantasy than science fiction – and the very idea of making one sounds like an epic quest – but at least the random sample of my experience throughout the years seems to point in that direction. True, there’s a lot of “science fiction” that is really more space fantasy and is far from explaining the technology that it uses, but even in such settings it seems to me that some sort of universal translator is often at least passingly mentioned, while fantasy so very often just skips even mentioning the issue.

I tried coming up with an explanation for this difference, but none that I’ve pondered on seem satisfactory. More fantasy content is targeted at children and younger audiences, and thus less likely to tackle complex issues such as language barriers? Dubious on multiple accounts. Translating technology being easier to explain that translating magic? Hardly. At least to me, the magic seems easy enough to construe. Perhaps the closest I can get behind is that fantasy portals often lead to magical and supernatural lands from an ordinary, magical one, and thus their inhabitants are seen more as powerful mythical beings than just regular folk who just happen to be living in some other world. This links to various legends and fairy tales where gods and spirits address the hero to confer advice or a warning, naturally, in the hero’s own language – for surely speaking any language is within their power. Many cross-world fantasy settings could fall into this category – but then again, many don’t, and the explanation wouldn’t work there. Maybe it’s just as simple as the “universal translator” having become a trope in science fiction, while translation magic still hasn’t in fantasy? But then again – why?

If anyone has any insight on the issue, I will be most thankful, and happy to discuss it further!

Happy birthday, Mr Baggins!

 

If you are a Tolkien fan, you know what day it is today! September 22^nd, the birthday of both Bilbo and Frodo Baggins – the very long-expected party with which The Lord of the Rings began. And while, of course, we all know what trick Bilbo pulled off at the end of the party which set the plot of the book in motion, we’re not going to talk about that today. What interests me now is the way hobbits celebrate their birthdays.

We all know life in the Shire was inspired by Tolkien’s positive sentimental view of the English countryside – and, indeed, we could imagine it in practically any European countryside. Idyllic green hills and fields, pretty houses (or in this case, hobbit holes), people going about their daily business without any major problems in their life, children playing.

In those surroundings, Mr Bilbo Baggins is the old eccentric rich gentleman, with his adventurous past and dwarven gold that people whisper of. And Bilbo’s party for his eleventy-first and Frodo’s thirty-third birthday is a miracle of extravagance by Hobbiton standards: lavish decorated pavilions, lots of delicious food made by cooks coming from afar for this occasion, and, of course, Gandalf’s legendary fireworks. But one thing that he does just like all hobbits do is give gifts to others:

Bilbo met the guests (and additions) at the new white gate in person. He gave away presents to all and sundry – the latter were those who went out again by a back way and came in again by the gate. Hobbits give presents to other people on their own birthdays. Not very expensive ones, as a rule, and not so lavishly as on this occasion; but it was not a bad system. Actually in Hobbiton and Bywater every day in the year was somebody’s birthday, so that every hobbit in those parts had a fair chance of at least one present at least once a week. But they never got tired of them.

A Long-expected Party, by Inger Edelfelt (source: Tolkien Gateway)

Of course, Bilbo’s presents at this party were particularly luxurious, but that was because of his wealth and the very special occasion. And some of them were jokes and jabs directed at people for some minor wrongdoings – such as an empty bookcase for a hobbit who “was a great borrower of books, and worse than usual at returning them”, or silver spoons for Bilbo’s infamous cousin Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, who had already stolen a number of his spoons while he was away on his travels. But, again, Bilbo was going away forever and intending to let everyone know what he thought of them – both the good and the bad.

But let us look at the regular hobbit birthdays. Usually, then, they would throw a small birthday-party for their friends and family, and give gifts to their guests. As Tolkien writes in one of his letters (Letter 214), that doesn’t mean that they didn’t receive birthday presents: the head of family (interestingly, nor parents) was expected to give a gift to the birthday-hobbit (called a ribadyan or byrding), as were cousins who lived nearby – within a 12-mile-radius, according to Shire customs. Interestingly, they were expected to give presents in private, individually, so everyone would give a gift according to their abilities, and nobody would be embarrassed because they brough a modest gift while a richer friend or relative brought something extravagant. Bringing gifts to the party itself was considered to be in very bad taste, and a form of insulting “payment” for the food and party gift.

The party gifts handed out were often just of symbolic value, tokens of attention: in the case of younger hobbits, it would often be something self-made, from flowers picked by smaller children to give their family members, to produce of gardens or workshops of older hobbits. Adults gave purchased gifts, too. Some obtained or made new gifts for every birthday, while some regifted things they obtained and didn’t need: it is stated in The Lord of the Rings that “there were one or two old mathoms of forgotten uses that had circulated all around the district”. (Mathom was the hobbit word for something one had no use for, but didn’t want to throw away. Thus, a likeable but essentially useless thing – from cute mementoes received as gifts to museum exhibits.) Bilbo was among those who usually gave new gifts and kept those he received, except in the case of his eleventy-first birthday, when he shared a number of his earlier belongings among the closer guests.

Birthday Party of Baggins, by Breath-Art (Source: DeviantArt)

Doesn’t it sound wonderful? Whether Tolkien had some inspiration in an old custom, or invented this tradition of gift-giving, I do not know. (If someone does, I’ll be happy to find out!) However, it does wonderfully tie in to the traditions of hospitality and celebration. Just like you would make a birthday cake (and other food) to serve to your guests, you prepare gifts of more personal than monetary value, for them to remember the birthday by. When I was very little, we used to make small “lotteries” on a child’s birthday party, where all guests would draw cards with numbers, and little gifts were handed out, usually small, inexpensive toys or sweets. Sometimes it was really random, and sometimes the parent running the lottery would rig it so that children got appropriate gifts – calling out the number and waiting to see who had it before showing (i.e. quickly picking) the prize. It was a fun time, and the hobbit gift-giving tradition seems like a more mature, but equally magical version of the same idea.

While I never started giving guests gifts for my birthday, my family used to celebrate the Hobbit Birthday, as we called it for short, for a number of years until we stopped during the Covid-19 pandemic. We’d make a lot of tasty food (never forgetting mushrooms – hobbits’ favourite treat), invite our Tolkien-loving friends and prepared gifts for them all. Just like hobbits – and it’s common sense, really – we never aimed for grand and expensive, just something the person would like, something that would suit them in particular, whether we bought it or made it. There would be a lot of talking and laughing (and eating), as at any good party, and those who wanted to might recite some of Tolkien’s poems, usually from The Lord of the Rings. It was a very good time!

We intended to continue the tradition this year, but, alas, a combination of work and some of us catching a cold (it’s not too bad, thag you very buch for asking) thwarted those plans. Still, we’ll have a small party within the family circle. A few gifts, a few snacks, and maybe a joint reading of The Hobbit – for the first time, for our daughter. What else would one need? Happy birthday, Bilbo and Frodo!

My Little Pony: G4 Applejack’s G3 Inspiration?

It is well-known among My Little Pony fans that the creator of Friendship is Magic, Lauren Faust, based the fourth generation Mane 6 on her favourite G1 ponies. While she initially intended to reuse not just the personalities, but also the looks and names of those ponies, the fact that Hasbro had in the meantime lost the copyright to most of those characters led to their names and colour schemes being more inspired by G3 ponies, even if they were not so similar as characters. (Well, and Fluttershy ended up being a pegasus instead of Pinkie Pie. I’m sure you all know that one.) A well-known table from the internet illustrates all this marvellously:

Initially posted by Somebody on mlpforums.com

As you may notice (or already know), Applejack is the only one who kept her G1 name and looks. While an Applejack also existed in the third generation, she was obviously quite different, and may have aided in preserving the copyright, but she was visually quite different. (Incidentally, the same goes for the only other character who preserved his G1 name and colours – Spike.) So, it is generally considered that G3 didn’t have much of an influence on who G4 Applejack turned out to be.

However, it must be said that the G1 and G4 Applejacks are quite different in terms of personality. G1 Applejack was often shy and clumsy, and while it would be unfair to call her cowardly, she was at least somewhat fearful and cautious. That doesn’t quite correspond to the mostly confident, relaxed and brave G4 Applejack. Also, G1 Applejack liked eating apples very much – sometimes to the point of overeating (though she was nowhere as notorious as Cotton Candy, the bane of all flowers in Ponyland) – but the dimension of her growing apples, or harvesting them to make something out of them wasn’t overly pronounced. Neither was her Western/country style – although she may have spoken with a touch of a similar accent in the show, the books and comics, where she appeared a lot more, don’t show her as a farmgirl.

As an aside, let’s also mention that G1 Applejack had a daughter – named just Baby Applejack, as that was the convention for early G1 babies – but that doesn’t necessarily mean that this influenced the G4 Applejack being more mature than the rest of Mane 6 and a motherly figure to her little sister. After all, many G1 ponies had children – so did Firefly and Surprise, and that didn’t make them less adventurous or light-hearted! (On this subject, I recommend Bixel’s short but excellent post on how well-developed G4 Applejack’s character is. It contains slightly more mature subjects, but is well worth the read!) G4 moved away from the idea of main characters having children of their own, presumably in order to make them more young-looking and relatable to child viewers. The theme of family life in My Little Pony is also a very interesting one, and I might write something about it in the future.

 

So, since G1 Applejack didn’t overly transmit her personality to G4, and there was no G2 Applejack (there was an Apple Pie, but she was a very minor character and isn’t too similar), did G3 Applejack have any influence there? Again, unlikely. While she has a beautiful and striking red-and-green colour scheme, she wasn’t a particularly prominent character: she only appears in the show as a background pony, and, to my knowledge, isn’t under the spotlight in any of the printed media, either. (I may be wrong – I haven’t read all G3 books and comics! If you know of any where she plays an important role, please let me know!) There is always the text that came on the toy packaging, but it doesn’t give us much: “If you’re looking for APPLEJACK, you can almost always find her in Pony Park, having a picnic next to Rainbowberry’s fountain! She loves to pack a basket full of yummy treats and share them with her friends. Sometimes she takes her basket to Pony Beach, and goes for a swim after lunch!”

 Image from mylittlewiki.org

            While this picnic basket does evoke a relaxed country feeling, it still isn’t too similar to G4 Applejack, whom we regularly see harvesting apples, pressing cider and overall working on a farm. So, for a while, I thought G3 really didn’t have much to do with it, beyond luckily preserving the copyright on the name “Applejack”. But then I bought a lovely G3 picture book:

            I had known of it from the Internet before, but only reading it in person brought some details to my attention. I do recommend the book if you’re into a light-hearted tale of the meaning of friendship (yes, a very common theme in MLP media, but how could that be bad) and homey pictures of ponies doing autumn things. Do be warned, Applejack doesn’t appear in it at all. But another pony who was only in the background in the show does feature in this book – Butterscotch. Here she is harvesting some apples…

            Here she is making cider out of them later…

            And then serving it to her pony friends:

Scans better than my own photo taken from heckyeahponyscans.tumblr.com

           There are more pictures of her in the book, but I presume this illustrates the point sufficiently. While, of course, she isn’t fully G4 Applejack, the country girl charm is much more present than with either G1 or G3 Applejack, and her colours are very similar to the classical Applejack look. Of course, G4 Applejack is bucking apples, not climbing trees to pick them, and the Apple family cider production is bigger and more professional than Butterscotch’s lone cauldron over the fire, obviously meant as a single treat to her friends. But still – make her a tad more mature and less girly (replace the ribbon with the cowboy hat :)), and tell me you wouldn’t see G4 Applejack in those pictures!

So maybe our favourite pony cowgirl took some bits and pieces from G3 after all – if not from her namesake, then from her cider-making lookalike. In fact, come to think of it… Butterscotch’s somewhat gentler colours and curls might be even more similar to those of Applejack’s mother – Pear Butter, nicknamed Buttercup. Is the “butter” in their names just a coincidence?

Screenshot from the episode “The Perfect Pear”

Or might Butterscotch be Applejack’s predecessor in more ways than one? What do you think?