“Okay, okay! Wait a minute!” Emilia didn’t quite yell—it was a little late for yelling, and even she had enough self-control to not yell when snuggled up so nicely next to a beautiful man who only vaguely tolerated her. Still! She had complaints about this story, and those complaints needed to be heard!
“Yes?” Olivier asked, the soft, horror-tinged tone he had been using to tell his story lingering within the amusent now twining through it.
“So, like, this story is great. Loving the we’re telling horror stories in the woods and none of us will be able to sleep after this vibes, but I have complaints!” Emilia told him, banging her fist gently against his chest; that was the best she could do to contain her outrage at his aunt for her terrible translation! “I know your aunt probably didn’t go to one of the, like, two programs in Baalphoria that teach anything about translation—”
“She did not,” Olivier agreed.
“—nor did she attend any of the programs in the Free Colonies that are available to Baalphorians—” There was one in Seer'ik'tine and another in Zironia that accepted international applicants, and while the ones in Norvel and Dion technically accepted Baalphorians, they also required a letter of introduction from soone of note—sothing few people the continent over could get.
“No, she attended no such programs,” Olivier agreed yet again.
“—and she probably only knew so Grey Sander from relatives—”
“She is relatively fluent, from what I know. Unless she has learned more since I was a teenager, I believe she would struggle to communicate with soone our age—too much unknown slang, and such things—nor was she familiar enough with older Grey Sander for this translation to be completely reliable,” Olivier explained, perfect happy to interrupt her rambling complaints and allow her to continue on as though he had never interrupted. It was the sort of skill so of her friends had, but it generally took so work for them to figure out a rhythm; yet, she and Olivier had flawlessly fallen into a gentle push and tug of words and Emilia… Emilia loved it, this easy friendship developing between them—maybe friendship. She could hope.
“—so I suppose the mistakes can be forgiven, but so of this is just so…” Emilia bit her lip, trying to think of the word for what this story—what the translation choices—were doing, the Baalphorian word escaping her.
In Dionese, the word was tatarona, aning corrupted through foreign eyes, while the creations of such an erroneous and purposefully misconstrued Dion were known as gintarsha, which literally translated to stupid foreign writings. Gintarsha was an actual genre, though—a foreign one, and all gintarsha dia was heavily mocked in Dion, for good reason! They were terrible, all set in Dion or prominently featuring Dionese characters in a way that was wrong. Gintarsha were a recreating of a Dion that only existed within the minds of foreigners, so of whom who never even stepped foot in Dion, many of whom were relying on ancient rumours of the Corrupters and Brutes of the West, concocting this version of Dion that had no grounding in reality—or was at the very least a serious bending of the truth for the creator and audience’s amusent.
Sotis, gintarsha portrayed Dion as a terrible, brutal place; other tis, it was an idealized world of court intrigue and arranged marriages turned epic love stories. Neither existed in reality; both were true and false in their owns ways. While the horrific version was a purist’s wet dream, at least the latter, idealized version wasn’t quite as noxious as the highly questionable works about The Core. At least in the case gintarsha, there were aspects of Dionese culture lded into them, inaccurate as the end result and the feelings the works evoked in those who consud them were. More was known about Dion, so authors at least bent reality to their needs.
In the case of The Core, it had been isolated from everyone for so long that, as far as Emilia knew, the idealized stories of it and the scant historical docunts about it that had managed to survive and were generally kept in private Free Colony libraries—and, therefore, not available for even Emilia to peruse, annoyingly—were the only things anyone knew about the secretive Free Colony. No one went in; no one went out. As a result, The Core that existed within the public mory was this highly technological developed utopia, all thanks to that idealized dia and the knowledge that, when it had cut itself off from the outside world, it had been even more technologically advanced than Baalphoria. This had been a few thousand years ago, so who knew what the place was like anymore—AI apocalypse, anyone?
While the idealized stories of The Core were actually one of the few things that transcended borders, both it and gintarsha were far more common in Baalphoria and a few far western Free Colonies than other nations. As with many things involving the Free Colonies, Baalphoria had a bad reputation for either idealizing or degrading or—
“Exoticizing?” Olivier suggested with the confidence of soone who had also realized that his aunt’s translation of the story—and probably anything else she’d touched—was rather suspect.
“Yes! That’s the word! Like, I’d have to look at the original docunt—which I doubt your Censor let you copy—”
“It did not.”
“—but I get the feeling she probably didn’t ss up the substance of the translation too much, but so of this is just way too… fluffy? Or poetic, I guess? Like—and here’s your first official Grey Sander lesson—moshuka does literally an turns of the moon. It’s still used today, but no one says ita moshuka’lana and is trying to literally say two turns of the moon into the future. They’re just trying to say in two months.”
Against her head, Olivier’s chin brushed her forehead as he nodded. “I had assud as much,” he told her. “I have spent enough ti in Dion for these trips, listening and recording as my Censor translates, to know their language is similarly poetic, as you said, but much of that extra aning falls away once the word has been used enough.”
Agreeing, Emilia gave him a few more examples of that exact thing in the story he had been telling. Any reference to sumrs was just years. The tidal cities was probably a very literal translation of its actual na. “It’s like if soone took the Baalphorian na of Piketown and translated it as town at the base of Mount Pike. Sure, that’s technically the feeling the na evokes, and go back far enough and the na will be Mount Pike Base Camp, but to translate it as anything other than Piketown—for maybe, Pike plus the local word for town or city—is weird.”
“It is a forcing of so otherness into the wording that doesn’t exist outside the translation,” Olivier agreed, and where did he learn so much about this? Such things definitely weren’t taught outside those few specialized programs—not as far as Emilia knew.
“One of my law school classmates was from a small, southwestern Free Colony. She was one of the few classmates who was nice to ,” Olivier told her when she asked, still happy to go along with her tangents.
“Oh?”
“Yes. Mirin would invite to sit by her, and would often share food with —usually things her family had made based on food from their holand, although I believe sourcing many of the ingredients was difficult. They moved here due to internal issues in her ho nation, although Mirin would never say more than that, never even telling exactly where she was from.”
“There are quite a few Free Colonies in the far west that have internal issues going on— I an, pretty much all nations do, even Baalphoria, but the western Free Colonies have had more civil wars and police actions in the last century or two than anywhere else. Sothing to do with how Dion released—or lost, depending on who you ask—their influence in a bunch of them during the last Colonial War. Too much focus on fighting Baalphoria, and they loosened their grip too much, I guess? Most descended into war soon after that, then settled for a bit under new governance. Eventually, conflict bubbled back up—it’s part of why so many of those Free Colonies aren’t considered safe for travel by most nations. Too volatile, and a lot of people fled—especially those belonging to powerful families in those governnts that first popped up, or even whatever governnts existed under Dion’s influence. Ooh~ maybe that’s why she wouldn’t tell you where she was from! She could be so lost princess, just waiting to be swept off to reclaim her lost crown!”
“Perhaps,” Olivier said, contemplative and completely ignoring her princess speculation. “It was clear she was still attached to her ho nation, and she wanted to beco a lawyer specializing in aiding Free Coloniers living and working within Baalphoria, so many of her presentations and choices of cases for mock trials and such were related to such issues.”
“So you learned about translation issues from those presentations?”
“Yes. She once gave a presentation on the negative effect of a law requiring human translators within many court cases, rather than utilizing OIC-assisted Censor translations. While not always required, it causes backlogs, as not many Baalphorians can speak any foreign languages without their Censor. There are also constant issues with their translations. Not only are many of the translators less than capable, they often translate in ways that are so literal it makes the person they are translating for seem, well, crazy.”
“So Dionese does translate really badly, when taken literally,” Emilia mused, telling Olivier that a particularly bad culprit was jinri which ant murder but literally translated closer to speaking bisection, a reference to an ancient myth in which a corrupt ruler would kill anyone he disliked by slicing them in two with a core ability. One mont, soone would be speaking to the ruler, the next, he would be slicing them in two. “I could definitely see how a literal translation of that could make the person seem not quite right in the head. ‘I did not give that person a speaking bisection!’ or sothing, although, it would probably be sothing more like ‘I give speaking bisection to not that person,’ and that is weird and almost implies they murdered soone, just not this person? ssy.”
“Indeed. Mirin supplied many examples of such issues. It was a sumr project, and she even travelled to Seer’ik’tine and visited many of the embassies, asking to speak with people who spoke Baalphorian and the language in the examples to understand how they would have translated it. The number of cases where a Free Colonier’s testimony was disregarded as irrelevant or unreliable due to a faulty translation is not sothing I am likely to ever forget—Mirin, either. I believe she intends to challenge the law, eventually.”
“Eventually? Why not now?”
“Funding, partially. It would also require the right case in appeals, so she not only has to wait for such a case, but also then convince nurous people to allow her to use the case for this, and that could be… complicated. In addition, many of the judges who currently preside over appeals are known to have purist leanings.”
“So, she might have to wait for a few to die or retire?”
Dark humour lathered through Olivier’s voice as he agreed.
Emilia wanted to ask what sort of people would need to be convinced to allow Mirin to use the case for her cause, but that seed like the sort of question liable to end in a lecture about all the people involved in various types of cases. This wasn’t sothing Emilia minded! Despite being an interloper in Olivier’s class, she really did like learning about the law! Not enough to beco a lawyer, but there were a few universities that offered classes through the Virtuosi System, and maybe—only maybe!—she had been considering taking a few, once she convinced the man to take her case… or once the case was over. Emilia was currently undecided.
Still, long as their entire conversation was going—not that Emilia felt sleep tugging at her anymore, what with the mystery and horror of Olivier’s story still rattling through her—it was probably best that she not ask for such specifics. Later, maybe. Annotations might be best? Or perhaps the man already had notes for a class where he covered such details of convincing people to let you use their case for sothing completely unrelated? Unknown, but sothing to find out later.
“I’m glad you had at least one friend-type person in law school,” she said instead. “I had gotten the impression that you were alone the whole ti.”
“Not quite,” Olivier admitted, a small smile in his voice as he added that they weren’t quite friends—and he certainly wouldn’t randomly ssage her to catch up—but he had appreciated her kindness, viewing it as a hand extended to a kindred spirit. “We were two strange creatures in a class of students who often faded into the group.”
Emilia had to laugh at that, asking what in the stars that even ant. More laughter followed as Olivier admitted, his voice full of embarrassnt because he knew what he was saying was a little an—if still correct—that many of his classmates had simply been generic, and fuck, Olivier being an? Olivier actually saying bad things about his forr classmates—and now technically colleagues, she supposed?
That was the sort of distraction Emilia was 100% on board for. Chances like this didn’t co around often—not in her short acquaintance with the man, anyways—and there was a chance she would burn the entire ship down just to make sure she heard the details of his generic classmates.
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