"Man is my race."
-Poul Anderson, The People Of The Wind IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2011), pp. 437-662 AT p. 487.
In the volume of space covered by the Polesotechnic League, many transactions must be between parties that are all of non-human species. The planet called Vanessa by its human discoverer, Thurman, was colonized by the Kraokans, who resemble small furry tyrannosaurs. Thus, there are beings that are Kraokan by species but Vanessan by planet of birth just as David Falkayn is human by species by Hermetian by planet of birth. The League factor on Vanessa is Beljagor of Jaleel, a small, ugly (by human standards) kind of guy. The Kraokans, rebuilding their interstellar empire from a base called Antoran, occupy Vanessa and say that they will expel the League from a specified spatial volume. The Antoranites include human beings in high positions. Thus, a Kraok who does not know League Latin speaks German to Falkayn who tries to remember some Yiddish. A human commander wants to speak to a League representative of her own race so Beljagor has summoned Falkayn from a nearby system.
Complicated. And it might all have happened without any human involvement - except that we learn that it is the Germanians that have armed the Kraokans.
7 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Not just England, Spain should not be forgotten. That nation too began exploring and conquering an empire, and one which lasted for centuries.
I think "imperial exploitation" is too simplistic. The Terran Empire would not have lasted for centuries after centuries if all it offered or inflicted was exploitation. Its subjects, human and non-human, also GAINED from the Empire.
And of course we know of how a certain Nova Germanian was to become VERY prominent in Dominic Flandry's life time.
Sean
Sean,
Of course. I was thinking of the worst of the Empire under Josip and trying to contrast exploration with exploitation.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Understood! That clarifies what you meant.
Hmmm, how might "meant" be spelled in Flandry's time? As "ment"? That could be an example of English becoming Anglic.
Sean
Or possibly as "mint" or "min'".
Dear Mr. Stirling,
"Mint" is probably more likely than "ment" for how "meant" might change in centuries to come. We know English had changed enough by Nicholas van Rijn's time (c. AD 2475)
for it to become Anglic. To say nothing of how Dominic Flandry mentioned in A KNIGHT OF GHOSTS AND SHADOWS how he had read a TRANSLATION of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poem "A Musical Instrument."
And it was because of how EBB was quoted by Anderson in that book that I first became interested in her works.
Sean
Both the Brownings are worth reading, but I prefer her.
Poetry is more likely to become in need of translation than prose, or at least in need of scholarship, because its more dependent on the -sound- of words for its effect.
(Not that prose doesn't use that, but it's less so.)
Eg., a lot of Chaucer's rhymes don't work any more because English was on the verge of a linguistic upheaval when he wrote that would change the sound-system very thoroughly.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
And I should get back to reading the collection of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poems which I have. And Kipling's verses as well.
I have seen some bits of the Middle English Chaucer was writing in the 1380's and 1390's. It does look very strange compared to what English had become even as early as 1500 (which is comprehensible, with some effort). But Chaucer's poetry and the unknown author who wrote "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" has to be translated.
Sean
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