Easily communicating difficulty communicating

[jack]

I was reading Algebraist, and there was a couple of pages of two people conversing by a private sign language. This was conveyed with mild txtspk -- "R U FCKNG KIDDING" etc.

It occurs to me to wonder what the best way to do this is.

You could just write out what they said in normal english. For instance, Piers Anthony has 3/4 of a book with such conversations after a couple of paragraphs explaining how you establish the squeeze code. It's easy to read, but it often seems off that people can laboriously communicate whole paragraphs when they're in a hurry.

You could work out a code and write down what it would say. Or pretend to. But this is often extremely laborious to read, to the point where it gets skimmed over. Also, if you're writing about an alien culture (or foreign country), everything is translated from an unknown language anyway, so it makes little more sense to complain that this passage arbitrary than to complain that the book is in english.

This suggests just using something that conveys the general idea, such as Banks's txtspk. I think this is inevitable. Though, while it's not entirely logical, I'd be happier if what was written didn't feel too arbitrary to me. Contradictorily, I feel uncomfortable with 'r' and 'u' because they're too rooted in english, yet also with 'fkcng' because it's not a normal letter by letter abbreviation -- wouldn't you say "fuck"? -- nor spelled out, nor afaict a reasonable transliteration of an abbreviation in a conceivable other language. Almost, just using caps would be difficult enough to read.

PTerry's Golems did this quite well. What they wrote down on their tablets was just written out in a gothic font, but it was always short and terse, and conveyed it fine.

Speaking of which, I loved his Klatchian. Like in-book subtitles, the foreign speech was just written in a curly font -- and accepts conveyed by occasional creeping in of the other letters.

In my Maurice Saldini story, the viewpoint character was telepathic, understanding that he had a sense of english *words* because of who he was talking to, but not *spellings*, so I tried to be very careful to keep his language appropriate. Amusingly using an obscure word is understood, but not puns -- which was very difficult if you know me :) I see why people don't bother, but I enjoyed doing it.

Comments

[miss-next.livejournal.com]

That reminds me of Teeline shorthand, which I learned about fifteen years ago but have never actually had to use, so I'm very rusty on it. Obviously in shorthand you don't write down all the letters; vowels almost invariably disappear unless leaving them out will cause real confusion, but beyond that the abbreviation is a mixture of the systematic and the particular (the phrase "yours faithfully" being rendered down to "yrfy", for instance). It strikes me that if you knew you had an audience familiar with Teeline, it would be ideal for conveying that kind of sign language. :-)

[naath.livejournal.com]

Did you ever read Asterix, because they had cool font things for different languages.