Kathryn Andersen wrote: <<The difficulty with this, and indeed with trying to create any futuristic language use (such as Kai was complaining of the lack of in B7) is that most native English-speakers are completely unaware of (a) the non-translatability of puns and (b) the high level of idioms we use in our everyday speech. Idioms don't translate either.>>
Idioms can travel from language to another through normal influence. For example, translations of English idioms are popping up in many languages right now. Some will take root and become normalised. Eventually they become part of that language. Still to expect exact words to sustain over millennia is a long shot.
English-speaking peoples are now in a rather privileged position of living in a linguistically dominant cultures that are giving out the influences rather than digesting them. Almost self-contained, you could say. Still even in cultures which are more dependant on translations, too much domestication can create the blindness to cultural differences. The kind of translation that seeks to make the text as idiomatic in the target language as possible, may snuff out the flavour and unique subjectivity of the source language and culture. Pretty soon you may be thinking that your idioms and metaphors (and hence your way of thinking) are universal, because, heck, everyone else is using them, or else they wouldn't translate it like this, would they...
I like books that collect proverbs from around the world, even in translated forms. It makes you realise that people don't refer to bygones with images of water under bridges or last years snows in places where there is no snow and few enough bridges.
<<But I think expecting B7 to be linguistically aware is asking a bit much. If they can't get the science right, how on earth could one expect them to get the linguistics right? A lot more people in the SF world know science than know linguistics...>>
Yes, it's a bit too much to ask. Mind you, I agree with you that Blake's 7 is no way the worst example of linguistic homogenisation. It is mainly following the established mores and mostly handles it pretty well. The establishment of a well-thought out and consistent universe was obviously not a priority, as it rarely is with television science fiction, rather just a suggestion of one sufficed. Then there is also the fact that television writing especially favours the kind of simple formulas that can be adapted from genre to another with relatively few modifications (the original Star Trek had a lot of this kind of episodes). Science fiction is often just in the setting, costumes and props.
The one thing about the relationship of science and linguistics in science fiction is that too often when brilliant scientific speculation is thrown around it seems to happen in a vacuum. Somehow the idea that the everyday is also fundamentally altered by these things never seems to enter into it. It's almost a kind of Flintstones effect in reverse: everything is like the 1950s, only now it's wrapped in tinfoil rather than made out of stone. People are surrounded by technical marvels and yet they talk and act like they had just crawled out of a grass hut. You don't have to be a linguist to figure this things out, just have to stop and think about what you are doing every day. But again it's hard to go beyond the patterns and models you have in your head, that you have grown into. That's why I think there are few really successful depictions of alien civilisations that are truly non-human in thought and behaviour, rather than just appearance.
Perhaps it's just that I tend to have more difficulty swallowing the idea of universal translator that can in five seconds turn any insectoid hissing into perfect Texan drawl than the idea of FTL drive.
<<That jarred, because "parking meters" is such a late-20th-century concept that I find it hard to believe that a culture such as 28th-century Federated Earth is going to *have* such things as parking metres; we don't even know if private individuals are allowed to own their own vehicles, necessarily, and if they didn't then the concept of parking metres would be nonsensical. Of if everyone used air-cars, then maybe the concept of "parking" isn't the same. Do you see what I mean? That kind of thing bugged me much more than whether calling someone a "gook" sounds silly or not.>>
I do. That's one of the things that break the illusion of realistic fictional universe. Most evidence would suggest against private ownership of motor vehicles, on Earth at least: free travel is clearly not on the Federation wish list and the whole reason for the domes seems to be to restrict and contain such a thing. Most Outer Worlds settlements seem to follow the pattern of concentration, minimising the need for individual persons to travel long distances. It may be different on non-Federation worlds and I believe the military has its share of ground vehicles, but somehow the idea of Vila observing how a Federation MP writes an assault tank driver a ticket for forgetting to put a coin in the metre after parking his vehicle by the headquarters doesn't really wash. Again a question of the writer being too caught up in contemporary ideas to think whether it went together with what we know about this fictional universe.
Kai