Famously, Tolkien was a linguist who invented several complete languages for Middle-Earth, complete with syntax, grammar, vocabulary, multiple dialects, their own styles of poetry, and plausible evolutions through time. Considering the influence The Lord of the Rings has on the fantasy genre, it might seem surprising that speculative fiction often suffers from a languages problem. Then again, not all of us teach ourselves ancient Norse by live-translating its poetry in front of our writing groups. Speculative fiction has a languages problem, in that it doesn’t make it enough of a problem.
In some books, there are legitimate reasons for characters not encountering language barriers, whether as a result of not travelling very far afield, having a worldbuilding reason why everyone would speak the same language, or access to readily available translation capabilities. Star Trek’s universal translator comes to mind, which, while it may not be entirely realistic, offers at least some explanation for the ease with which the crew usually communicates with the aliens they encounter, and its validity as a tool is boosted by episodes in which it malfunctions or doesn’t work on a particularly exotic language. Science fiction is more apt than fantasy to invoke these kinds of “solutions” to the language problem; fantasy has a tendency to duck the problem altogether.
Sometimes, this is because the story involved takes place over a sufficiently small region for one language to predominate. In other stories, though, the matter is simply ignored or glossed over – Wheel of Time, for instance, with its many nations and peoples, seems to have only one language with a few regional accents and ways of speaking. Of course, this is a choice you as an author can make, especially when writing secondary world fantasy, but it means sacrificing a degree of realism and introducing something of an anachronism, or just an oversight, into your worldbuilding. Recall that even an area as small as modern England spoke at least three distinct languages during the centuries most comparable to the period when most fantasy is set.
Not surprisingly, my ruminations on this topic come about by way of Impressions, which, with its focus on historically adjacent worldbuilding, required me to deal significantly with languages. With Raven travelling so much over the course of the book, it is inevitable he would encounter numerous languages along the way – without going back and counting them, I think he encounters at least six significant languages (not including his own), plus several dialects, in the course of the book. Now, does this mean that I had to go an invent all of those languages in order to write the book? Certainly not – I want to write books, not a single magnum opus ala Tolkien. Instead, I used a few techniques to convey the sense of other languages.
Well, one technique is not so much a technique as a conceit – I made Raven a polyglot. This isn’t too great a stretch, given that he does go to a university where he learns other languages, and I have him take a significant amount of time learning his first few languages. After that, I let him learn languages faster. In the third part, he has to learn a completely new language, and then understand an ancient dialect of that language, which may occur too quickly, but it’s fairly well documented that once you’ve learned two or three foreign languages, it becomes much faster and easier to pick up additional tongues. To help convey this, I have his companion on the journey never learn more than a few words.
Another technique is to use slight changes to grammatical patterns, or translated idioms and expressions, to serve as little reminders (and potent worldbuilding elements) that another language is involved or that the language is foreign. For instance, Raven becomes very familiar with Noshierakan, so he communicates fluidly in the language, but every now and then I’ll have someone say an idiom that he doesn’t quite understand, or that he has to think about for an extra minute. All of the words on the page are in the same language, but a strange turn of phrase like “are we icy?” can do a lot of lifting for worldbuilding and language realism.
Of course, there’s the easy, low-hanging fruit used in almost all fantasy, which is for a few foreign words to not translate properly, so they are sprinkled into conversation. This shows up more towards the end of Impressions, when, for instance, the local people are all named in a way that would translate literally as a phrase of ordinary words, like “Under-Ironwood-Evening,” but instead I continue to present the name as what it would sound like in the local language; hence, Nal-Deirog-Ulnu remains Nal-Deirog-Ulnu, even after Raven could translate the name. Other words, like d’Sharivl, Sil’Dru, Al’Ethaju, and Ch’Oprogen, I also leave as-is, the idea being that, even though Raven might know roughly how to translate them, they represent more complex ideas than would be captured in the direct translation. Al’Ethaju, for instance, would literally translate to “of the jungle” (more or less), but the word captures far more significance, meaning, and nuance to the local people than the common phrase suggests. Too much of this can make a story difficult to read, unapproachable, or just confusing, so I try to use this technique sparingly and with intent.
At other times, I resort to telling. If Raven is hearing foreign languages he doesn’t understand, I won’t have characters speaking those languages in the text; I’ll have the narrator mention that there are people babbling in other tongues. It adds a bit of distance to the story, but it also keeps the story moving, instead of bogging down the text with lines and lines of gibberish that will have no further significance to the plot or the story. Sure, it might be more immersive, truer to the effect of being in a crowded market full of people from all over the world, but it would probably be even more difficult to read than it would be to write. Unless I actually invented all of those languages, just so they could appear for a few sentences and then never reappear again.
Language is a funny thing, and for all authors should be preoccupied with it, we sometimes seem to forget to reflect linguistic variety in our fiction. For me, for the stories I like to tell, it’s worth the extra effort of thinking about how to present foreign languages in a story, and the time it takes to employ the techniques I’ve outlines in this post, to add that extra realism and complexity. Whether it’s appropriate for your stories, only you can tell. Then again, you could always write a story that doesn’t travel so far abroad. If your whole story takes place in a single city, you can more easily get away without worrying about languages. As usual, the key is for it to be a conscious consideration.
IGC Publishing 