Lewis' Professor Weston delivers a speech on human superiority in English to a Martian audience. Professor Ransom translates into Old Solar which must then be translated back into English for the reader's benefit. This double translation provides a sufficient commentary on Weston's supremicism. Let me demonstrate with just a few extracts.
Weston, having listed many achievements of human civilization, concludes:
"'...our commerce, and our transport system which is rapidly annihilating space and time. Our right to supersede you is the right of the higher over the lower.'"
-CS Lewis, Out Of The Silent Planet IN Lewis, The Cosmic Trilogy (London, 1990), pp. 1-144 AT p. 121.
Ransom translates:
"'...he says we exchange many things among ourselves and can carry heavy weights very quickly a long way. Because of all this, he says it would not be the act of a bent hnau if our people killed all your people.'" (ibid.)
"Hnau" is Solar for "rational animal."
Weston: "'Life is greater than any system of morality; her claims are absolute.'"
Ransom (making two attempts, then giving up): "'He says...that living creatures are stronger than the question whether an act is bent or good...it is better to be alive and bent than dead...I cannot say what, he says, Oyarsa, in your language.'" (ibid.)
In Anderson's The Winter Of The World, XXII, Josserek, writing to Donya in her Rogaviki language, uses Arvannethan words when there is no Rogaviki equivalent. Of course we read the entire letter in English but the words for which Josserek has to use Arvannethan are enclosed in square brackets. They are:
Admiral
vested interests
diplomatic mission
treaty
free state
independence
powers
armed forces
conquests
colonies
dominators
government
peace
monkeys
right (noun)
kings
chief
laws
trials
judgments
self-discipline
pheronomes
compulsion
arrogance
callousness
wantonness
innocent
love (in Josserek's own Killimaraichan instead of Arvannethan)
Can you conceive of the mentality of beings who have none of these concepts?
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I've read Lewis' SPACE TRILOGY at least twice and I agree this was a clever and sardonically amusing use of the English language by him.
Alas, I never thought of comparing how Lewis used English to Josserek's letter to Donya. But I do remember how he had to use Arvannethan (and perhaps some Rahidian?) words for concepts not in the Rogaviki mental universe. Yes, these hominids (whom I continue to dislike) are simply no longer human.
Sean
Sean,
Donya pauses and rereads. The letter is not clear to her. Josserek frequently miss-spells Rogavikian but that is not the communication problem.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
However much I dislike Donya, I don't doubt her intelligence, per se. I do have some doubts on how much she truly UNDERSTANDS, however. Esp. long term, when years of peace will make it easy to forget two very different intelligent races now inhabits Earth.
Sean
English often uses two registers, one Latinate and one Germanic, with words having either slightly different meanings or differences of emphasis and emotional overtone.
Eg., "intestines" and "guts". Basically they mean the same thing -- intestine is more specific to the digestive tract, but that's minor -- but you use them quite differently.
For a body metaphor, for instance, you could write "he knew it in his gut" but not "he knew it in his intestines". The latter wouldn't carry the message of the former, and would be mildly comic. Conversely, if you were describing a disease, you'd probably use "intestine"... unless you were describing physical sensation, in which case you'd go with your gut again...
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