The aliens have a word for it. Like this: *3ju!Kr#. Sounds a bit like crunchy static, as though a detuned radio has just swallowed an especially tasty solar flare.
It means the ‘uncertainty inherent in speaking with aliens,’ but of course it doesn’t mean that. Not really.
All translation is an illusion, an approximation. Meanings flicker like lightning even just within one language, charged with youth or culture, or even contact with a new and alien language. Words hurl themselves from their old meanings like rebellious children, as though to test how far they can leap. It's a minor miracle we can even talk to ourselves.
And so we went out to Lagrange 1, a million miles from Earth, to meet the aliens hidden in their opaque environmental suits. Each side waiting for the other to make the first move.
The aliens spoke first. An embarrassed admission, almost apologetic: “*3ju!Kr#.”
It means the ‘uncertainty inherent in speaking with aliens,’ but of course it doesn’t mean that. Not really.
All translation is an illusion, an approximation. Meanings flicker like lightning even just within one language, charged with youth or culture, or even contact with a new and alien language. Words hurl themselves from their old meanings like rebellious children, as though to test how far they can leap. It's a minor miracle we can even talk to ourselves.
And so we went out to Lagrange 1, a million miles from Earth, to meet the aliens hidden in their opaque environmental suits. Each side waiting for the other to make the first move.
The aliens spoke first. An embarrassed admission, almost apologetic: “*3ju!Kr#.”
I remember that moment as I sit here, looking across the kitchen table at my kids, wondering what to say.
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