How "alien" must an alien language be?

Question

I have some characters in my story that are aliens. They are reasonably similar to humans in that they have a shared culture, talk to one another, have distinct personalities with likes/dislikes. They are also significantly more technologically advanced than humans. Think something along the lines of your standard Star Trek alien race.

Now these characters have to talk to one another as they travel around the galaxy in their spaceship having adventures - and potentially interacting with Earth and Humans. For the sake of my readers I'll let them use English. But how should they refer to things?

Obviously, they wouldn't naturally refer to Earth as "Earth". So maybe they call it "Sol-3". But then again, they wouldn't call our star "Sol." Okay, so maybe they call it "MilkyWay-Star12345-Planet3." But then again, they wouldn't call our Galaxy "Milky Way." What about units of time or distance - they would use something unique to themselves, surely. At some point, this becomes ridiculous and, frankly, annoying and/or incomprehensible.

So do I just give up and let them use Human colloquialisms (with a distinct "alien" voice)? Do I write a bit imprecisely and say things like "It will take 10 revolutions around our star to reach that planet over there". Or do I persist in writing dialogue that is accurate but distracting (and hard)?

What would you do?

Answer 1

It's fiction...

These are aliens, in outer space. Readers are already suspending disbelief.

They will allow you the room to tell your story..., until they get bored, or you annoy them.

The reader must 'play' your story in their head, and through magical brain self-illusion they believe they know more than they do. The more engaged with story and character, the more the reader will fill-in what they don't read – probably very similar to Dunning-Kruger effect: a false sense of high confidence.

As long as you don't remind them about the stuff they don't know, you can often get by without mentioning it – assuming you have them engaged by the characters and the conflict.

Only explain as much as they need to understand the plot

Sanderson’s First Law of Magics: An author’s ability to solve conflict with magic is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to how well the reader understands said magic.

Replace 'magic' with alien krucbin'hlarghs.

The corollary would be something like:
Only explain alien krucbin'hlarghs as much as the reader needs to understand the plot.

As the reader, I might swallow 1 or 2 words from some deliberately unpronounceable alien language, but it's costing you 'suspension credits'. You are reminding me about things I don't know, reminding me these people are alien creatures, actually speaking in some unpronounceable prawn squeaks and noodling their face tentacles at each other....

It is a slippery slope that can lose my false confidence in your story world. I CAN'T use my own imagination to fill in the blanks. You are telling me it is something specific that is foreign to me.

Add the word 'space' to the beginning of everything

There are space years and space kilometers. A space navy and (for short trips) personal space Winnebagos. Space dogs and space cats stay at the space kennel. Space hotels that will book a reservation for the 3rd space-week in space-June..., and can I call you back in a space-minute?

Obviously not a real suggestion, but did you notice that you understood every reference in that silly paragraph? Sometimes a 'dumb' thing communicates better than a 'smart' thing.

It goes back to my Dunning-Kruger false confidence. I am highly confident about what a 'dog kennel' is, therefore a 'space dog kennel' is... something I know... plus a jetpack? It doesn't make logical sense, but my brain thinks it knows what that is... so I don't stop to question it.

A more subtle version of this is to use near-words with generic meanings: "In another 20 cycles we're out of water.", "The enemy is 50 clicks and closing fast!"

The downside is I (reader) do not have a reference for this unit of measurement. This works for smoothing over awkward dialog, I understand the emotional tone. But it's not giving me crucial information about time and distance. I need to understand that ahead of the dialog if this is new information important to the plot.

Let the reader do their part

• Prioritize story and character over worldbuilding details.
• Make choices that don't require explanation or a glossary.
• Conlang and unpronounceable words can break immersion.
• Readers don't mind obvious signals (even big signposts if the tone is appropriate)
• Trust the reader to 'play' a better story in their head, than we can communicate through words alone.
• Inspire imagination, rather than dictate accuracy

Answer 2

+1 wetcircuit, excellent answer. Here is what I would add:

Think of it this way: You are writing in English, even though the aliens are not speaking in English, to each other.

Which means, implicitly, you are translating their words, in their language, to be understandable to English speakers.

An expert translator is fluent in both languages, and will pick the best English words and phrases to convey the concept the alien is communicating in their language.

If you want to include some untranslatable words, you can adopt some mechanism to approximate the concept. Make something up, or put the concept in brackets.

Ducat said, "Wait, you knew your egg mother?"

Angela said, "Egg mother? Is there another kind of mother?"

"In the swarm, laying eggs kills the mother. When we hatch, we eat her. If we do not, we will catch disease and die. Survivors must find a nursing mother before we starve. But we must find many different nursing mothers, each can ingest only a few of us."

Angela said, "And your father? What role does he play?"

Ducat said, "A very confusing concept, these genders. We are all, what you say, female. When older we become nursing mothers, we will no longer wish to be anything else. Then when dying, we become egg mothers. I am a mix of my egg mother and nursing mother. I suspect you are a mix of your mother and father? Did he nurse you?"

Angela grimaced. "Not exactly, but yes a mix, of their DNA."

Ducat consulted a handheld device, and read. "Ah, DNA. Yes, very similar, I have a DNA mixture from both of my mothers."

Now obviously, we assume Ducat has individual alien words for "egg mother" and "nursing mother". You are always writing a translation; if there is no single word in English, then you use a phrase.

Sometimes you don't need to translate, just use the word in a way that context reveals its meaning. In Star Trek, what is a dilithium crystal? There is no such thing in real life chemistry; but ultimately (like all words) in the series we come to understand this as an expendable energy source, that cannot be synthesized or transported, and is necessary to power warp engines.

Remember you are a translator, do not use all the alien jargon. Use it very sparingly. The point is to write a story that English speakers can understand.

Answer 3

If you want your aliens to be believable, you cannot just have them be humans that look different. You'll have to invent their culture, including their history, their language(s), their political system(s), and so on, at least to the point where it is relevant to your story.

When humans travel to another planet and meet aliens there, they will at first call that planet and it's sun by a human name (e.g. Aldebaran). When they have met the aliens and learned how they call their planet, they will probably begin to use that name or, if it is unpronouncabe to them, a translation – or continue to call it by the human name.

The aliens will do the same. So your culture etc. must be developed to the point where you know what they will call the things that appear in your story. You need not invent an alien language, but you need to figure out enough of it to come up with plausible names.

That said, there are enough stories in which the aliens are just humans with a different look (e.g. Star Trek), and most of those stories work well. But we all know that they don't actually portray aliens. If that's what you write, then your "aliens", who speak English, may just as well call Earth Earth.

Answer 4

If you want to guess about units of measurement, you might try some universal values. The SI is based upon stuff on earth. Cycles of cesium are not convenient as individual units, but they are universal (as far as we know). Our second was based upon the earth's rotation. A year (and hence a light-year) is based upon earth's revolution about the sun. We redefined our second in cesium cycles to match the second based upon our rotation. So, speeds in fractions of the speed of light would make sense perfect sense. Nanowarps, for instance, are pretty close to 1 km/h. An attocycle is about 3.5 years.