Goodreads Sci-Fi/Fantasy Authors discussion

The characters in my SF book Vengeance is a Wheel are mostly speaking something I call t-common, which I don't really identify, but I personally think of as 24th Century English. As the author, I also think of myself as writing a translation -- not a direct translation, but a translation into modern idiomatic American English. I remember when the Hercules & Xena TV shows were out thinking these people would be speaking some form of ancient Greek, but the writers are "translating" that to modern idiomatic English.

What do you think? How do you handle language as a part of your work?

Also, I have some parts of the book where the dialogue is in an alien tongue. How do you handle something like this? I'm using footnotes, but that still doesn't feel quite right to me.

I agree, the author is the translator. I made that explicit in the prologue to my next book ...

"I am the voice inside your head, one of the friendly gods, assigned as your interpreter to translate the thoughts and utterances of the beings who are woven into this tapestry of mind and matter. The artifact, or device, on which these events are presented to you is but a doorway standing between you and the full reality of their actions, hopes, prayers and dreams."

Also, in my space opera, I need to have my various races speaking to each other so I use computer translation devices. That's not too much of a stretch, since they exist now in basic form. I don't use any text formatting to indicate that, but telepathic communications is in italics.

Accents and dialects are beyond my powers.

I've discovered conlanging and I've been building a lexicon for my aliens. It helps a lot to create a consistent voice for characters that are speaking in something other than their native tongue. For example, the structure of Irish often affects the structure of sentences spoken in English by the Irish. Orion's native tongue lacks some articles, so when he's speaking to humans he often omits those. Also like traditional Irish, his language doesn't have Yes and No. So he answers questions with a verb form.

For example, "Did you shoot this man?"
Answer, "Shot him."

Read here

It gives him a unique voice.

My Grandaddy was Irish, so it's quirks are something I have some small (very small) familiarity with. Mostly I can swear a bit in Irish.

A.R. wrote: "I agree, the author is the translator. I made that explicit in the prologue to my next book ...
"

As long as you avoid naming any language and try to limit modern expressions, it shouldn't be that big a deal.