Language problems in TimeTravel

[Lex E. Darion]

My WIP is about an archaeologist who gets transported back and forth to AD60. It almost didn't get off the starting blocks as I thought the differences in language between late Iron Age native Britons and a contemporary Brit would be too large to overcome. I spoke to a few people who said it wouldn't be a problem and therefore went ahead and wrote 70K.

Having got this far, I sent it out to some crit sites and my writing class and, Hey Presto! Language came up as a problem!!

I cobbled some rubbish together about it 'just happening' (especially as there's a chance she's hallucinating and it's not real) but I'm not happy with it.

I have to re-write the MS anyway and thought I'd put this out here to see what others have done.

I looked in my copy of Outlander and she doesn't even mention a language barrier even though I'm sure 18th century Scotland wouldn't speak 1940s English (although I realise it'll be a lot closer than IA Britain ....I suppose if we can *just about* understand Shakespeare then it would probably work. . . )

 

[Dave]

Actual Time Travel would have so many problems if it were actually possible, and language is only one. I respect that you want to make your novel accurate but it is always going to be Fantasy rather than Hard Science Fiction. Larry Niven talks about problems in the introduction to one of his books and decides that his Time Travel books can never be Science Fiction. I really wouldn't worry if that is the only thing wrong with the story because it is a problem with every Time Travel story ever written. Michael Crichton has academic historians going back to medieval France and Michael Moorcock has a modern man becoming Jesus. In these, it isn't just a case of speaking the language, and some languages no longer exist, but it is also getting the accent correct. Even today, if you speak English with a foreign accent you will be spotted immediately. I speak as a Geordie and tell you that no one who is not a Geordie from birth can get the accent right (but there are some Football players who learnt English in the North East who have weird accents.) So, how can you possibly speak the right accent in AD60? There isn't even someone to copy from, or who could teach you. The only possible way would be if they were taken as a child. Maybe their mother was also a Time Travelling Archaeologist, though that then causes a similar problem with her. Unless you devise a very complicated Timeline in which she somehow becomes her own mother. However, then you have a paradox, which is impossible.

 

[The Judge]

I have to confess I was a bit um-ah-ish over the way you'd handled the language issue in the excerpt you've put up in Critiques, and certainly I would have raised it as a point if there hadn't been some kind of indication there was a difficulty/oddness.

Since there is evidently magic involved, I'm happy to accept magic also allows her to understand whatever this language is, and all I would need is something as you've got ie amazement she can understand it. I have a bigger problem with her speaking it, though, especially if she's meaning to speak in English, if that makes sense. It's something that always annoyed me in things like ST:TNG or Voyager, when they're relying on the translation devices but the foreigners' mouths are clearly speaking the words we're hearing in English, and the aliens don't think it odd that the crews' lips are out of synch with alien-speak!

Last year I read a YA book Warriors of Alavna by NM Browne which had two teenagers time-travelling to c 75 AD and fighting with the natives (Celts, I think) against the Romans. From memory the girl undergoes some kind of shamanistic treatment within minutes and thereafter has the ability to speak and understand the native tongue, but the boy had to learn it. I can't now recall whether any explanation was given as to how she felt being able to speak a foreign tongue, though.

I'm planning time-travelling in my current WIP, but I intend it to be an ancient language the hero has learned as a child, eg as we might learn Latin, so it's a matter of recalling childhood lessons, which makes life easier for me. Could Charlie perhaps have studied what is known of this language, so it's a question of attuning her ears to the pronunciation which sounds odd? (Am trying to recall if the language was ever written down for her to learn it!)

Anyway, as I say, her understanding the language by magic doesn't worry me, but perhaps she can't speak it at first, so they hear only gibberish and think she's a bit simple?

 

[Lex E. Darion]

Interesting. Thanks for both your input.

So you would mention it as an issue and not just ignore it - given that it can never be Sci-Fi and is only fantasy?

I had never even thought of ST franchise (or any other 'alien meeting' show) having English 'mouthing' aliens! It's not something I'd thought of until writing my WIP.

The problem with having her learn the language is that no-one really knows what it was!! It's highly likely that each tribe had their own variations (much like dialects) and there may have been great differences between the North and South, but there was trade so they had some way of communicating - other than bashing each other on the head.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Modern English is too hugely different from the early Germanic that Iron Age Britons would have spoken to have believable communication - if you want to be realistic about it.

However, I mentioned L Sprague De Camp in commenting on your crit piece, and IIRC correcting in his Lest Darkness Fall - which has a 20th century archaeologist sent back to the Roman Empire - he gets around the language problem by having his main character speak Latin.

In which case, your character could always end up somewhere on the estate of a Roman Villa - where the servants might be expected to speak at least a little latin to understand orders. Perhaps.

 

[J Riff]

Take a page or two for him to leARn their language, which should be fairly simple, and deal with fewer concepts?

 

[Lex E. Darion]

Modern English is too hugely different from the early Germanic that Iron Age Britons would have spoken to have believable communication - if you want to be realistic about it.

However, I mentioned L Sprague De Camp in commenting on your crit piece, and IIRC correcting in his Lest Darkness Fall - which has a 20th century archaeologist sent back to the Roman Empire - he gets around the language problem by having his main character speak Latin.

In which case, your character could always end up somewhere on the estate of a Roman Villa - where the servants might be expected to speak at least a little latin to understand orders. Perhaps.

Thanks Brian - I will have to check out his book They do come into contact with Romans but it's mainly the native Brits that she interacts with and it's only about 17 years since the Romans invaded so the natives won't have learnt it - especially not my natives as they hate the Romans. And (IMO) the natives didn't really interact with the Romans other than to trade . . . although thinking about it, it may be the way to go. . . more conflict . . . hmmm

Take a page or two for him to learn their language, which should be fairly simple, and deal with fewer concepts?

Thanks This is definitely an option and one that could work well.

 

[James118]

Depending on how far you're taking it, it could be an incredibly dense and distracting obstacle for the audience. Maybe a peasant-like dialect with a few colloquialisms (if you can learn any) or contemporary words thrown it could do the trick.

 

[The Judge]

So you would mention it as an issue and not just ignore it - given that it can never be Sci-Fi and is only fantasy?

Me, yes. I'm happy to accept "magic" as the answer in a fantasy, but I still want the question to be asked -- it needs to be recognised as a potential problem, even if it's one that's overcome quickly. To me, this ties up with the issue of YA/MG -v- adult writing -- pretending there's no problem is too simple and therefore something for children, and as adults we should be prepared to have a messy world. We can use handwavium to get around difficulties because a novel isn't real life, but the characters still need to react as if it were real to them, so to my mind the issues must be addressed. To me, that's doubly so where the fantasy involves a modern person or its setting is a real historical one. So I've got a fantasy world and I can get away with my female characters not having to worry about periods (I've arbitrarily given them covert menstrual cycles as most animals have) but how is Charlie going to cope if she's stuck in 60 AD for a few weeks?

I had never even thought of ST franchise (or any other 'alien meeting' show) having English 'mouthing' aliens!

Unfortunately I have that type of brain that picks holes in things and I can't turn it off. The Hulk always annoyed me because his trousers ripped exposing his lower legs when he changed, but the waist band was miraculously intact as was the... um... hip and thigh area of the trousers, even though that should also have burst asunder leaving him wholly exposed.

The problem with having her learn the language is that no-one really knows what it was!! It's highly likely that each tribe had their own variations (much like dialects) and there may have been great differences between the North and South, but there was trade so they had some way of communicating - other than bashing each other on the head.

If this were me writing, I think I'd give her magical understanding of what is said, but have her struggle to speak the language to begin with -- which will create tensions of its own -- but magic also allows her to pick it up more quickly than is natural so she can make herself understood in a page or two and she's fairly fluent after a few days. That then allows you to use her "gift" of languages in later scenes, perhaps if they need to trade with the Romans or another tribe, or she can at least understand those other languages and dialects and act as a spy. It's often the case that something which appears to be a problem can lead to unexpected plot developments.

 

[Hex]

(just in passing -- wouldn't highlanders have been speaking Gaelic in the 18th C, not any form of English? So Outlander clearly got away with it)

I like TJ's solution -- or you could go with a babel fish type thing -- or something about the time travel could deal with the language issue?

Essentially, if you recognise and deal with it, I think that's enough. There's no need to spend ages on it!

 

[Brian G Turner]

Reminds me - in the Doomsday Book by Connie Willis, the protagonist time jumps back to the 14th century - but has already studied earlier European languages, which allows for some degree of communication.

 

[mosaix]

I would imagine that anyone going back to AD60 is going to attract some unwelcome attention if they can't understand or speak the language. One option is for your archaeologist to pretend to be a deaf mute for his first few visits until he has managed to pick up enough to get by. But it's not going to be easy.

 

[Loren]

The Hulk always annoyed me because his trousers ripped exposing his lower legs when he changed, but the waist band was miraculously intact as was the... um... hip and thigh area of the trousers, even though that should also have burst asunder leaving him wholly exposed.

Actually, as long as he was wearing Hanes briefs he would okay. They stretch very nicely, but going back the other way might be a problem.

 

[Ursa major]

The problem with having her learn the language is that no-one really knows what it was!! It's highly likely that each tribe had their own variations (much like dialects) and there may have been great differences between the North and South, but there was trade so they had some way of communicating - other than bashing each other on the head.

If you're looking for a half-plausible explanation of how it might work in practice**, your answer -- although perhaps you won't like it -- is in your text: the time travellers speak a foreign language because they're foreigners (albeit not in the way the AD60 people would realise or understand). Of course, that means they'd have to learn the language of the tribe. But isn't that true of ethnographers (or anyone else, for that matter) meeting some previously uncontacted tribe in the Amazon Basin (whose language is unrelated to other tribes living there)?

I suppose they could, as someone else suggested, have some Latin, and their poor pronunciation of it might be explained away because they say (truthfully) that they're not native speakers (which might, one hopes, help protect them from any ill-feeling the locals have towards Romans).

Of course, the book would have to be significantly different to one where they can speak the language from the start, but if you're really looking for plausibility, this might be the way to go.


** - Setting aside all the issues there are with time travel.

 

[Lex E. Darion]

Thanks very much for all your input - most helpful. I will have to have a think about what would be the best option. I'm going to do a re-write anyway, so adding other bits in won't be too much hassle.

TJ -I'm with you on the Hulk thing - that one even I picked up on

 

[VKALFIERI]

Perhaps you could have a sort of magical babel fish explanation as to why the character understands the language and as for her speaking the same; well perhaps she doesn't and that's a barrier she has to overcome; I would think though, being an archaeologist, that the character would have to have some sort of reasonable understanding of how folks talked in the period to which she has travelled.

 

[WaylanderToo]

I remember reading many years ago "The Crosstime Engineer" series (The Cross-Time Engineer (Conrad Stargard, #1) by Leo Frankowski wherein someone's timepod is sabotaged so the hero is stuck in the 13th Centuary, I can't remember how he sorted out the whole language thing - but I do seem to recall it wasn't just glossed over.

If your hero/ine is shuttling backwards and forwards one might be forgiven for thinking that tech has evolved to such a degree that a 'universal translator' would actually be a piece of cake to implant....