Kirth, Issue 1, Page 6

RobertRVeith on Jan. 20, 2022

Okay, one of my personal pet peeves in sci-fi stories is how everyone speaks the same language. That doesn't even happen on our planet, where some 7000+ languages are spoken and most people are at least bi-lingual. Some sci fi stories get by this by having everyone use “universal translators.” Of course, this wouldn't really work, because 1) you'd lose tons of nuance and subtext, and 2) everything would be rendered word-for-word, meaning most communication would be in a kind of goggle-speak which would be nearly impossible to understand. I'm thus far sticking to the convention of everyone hearing the dialog in their own language—like, there's some kind of translation going on—and highlighting that by having certain words “garbled” as not translatable. will also work for any “adult” language.