Interpretive Dance at the Translation Division

How do we interact with other beings when we can't speak the same language?

E. J. Nash is an Ottawa-based writer. Previous work has been published in The Globe and Mail, Nature Futures, PACE Magazine, The First Line, Idle Ink, and elsewhere. She can be found on Twitter @Nash_EJ.

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I hit the replay button on my screen, and the recording begins again. According to the logs, this is the twenty-first time I've watched the five-minute video. I must be missing something.

At first, when Greg gave me this assignment, he made it seem like he was doing me a favor. He leaned against my cubicle wall, threw the tablet onto my desk, and ate three of the mints I kept in a small jar next to my computer. "If you can crack this one, kiddo, they'll write sonnets about you," he told me. Only later did I learn that none of the regular analysts wanted this one. Yet it was perfect for the student: it would keep me occupied and out of the way while the managers worked on requests from the high-priority sectors.

At the end of the day, Thales-b is an out-of-the-way planet with few resources and an atmosphere that will turn human lungs into diamonds. Our ships won't make it out that way for a century, at least.

Nevertheless, whoever lives there managed to beam a video to our satellites in a format that we can read. They want something from us. I just have no idea what it is.

The image fades and crackles at points, but it's easy enough to see the figures on the screen. Two of them face each other. 

They are dancing.

At least, I think they are. As a student of languages, I’m drawn towards metaphors and similes: it is like they are dancing, it is as if they are partners. I could be completely misinterpreting the movements; that's the issue with outer-planet translation. There is no familiar context for interpretations. 

The two figures match each other flawlessly. They appear to be twins, if such things exist on Thales-b. In the first few seconds of the video, they appear as shapeless, iridescent spheres. After a few moments their skin elongates into interconnected oblongs and cylinders and prisms. These radiant masses could be limbs, organs, brains, eyeballs - anything. I’m reminded of balloon animals from when I was younger. 

When one of the creatures moves forward, the other moves back; when one twists, the other is a mirror. 

No perspective is provided by the video. These amorphous shapes could be the size of my fist or as wide as the Atlantic. They dance in front of a blinding white background.

The forms continue their fluid movements, and I continue to watch.

• • •

“Want to grab a coffee after work with the rest of us?”

The voice is light and friendly, but I can’t help but jump. My chair faces away from the opening of the cubicle; I’m perpetually being surprised. I try to hide my anger as I swivel to face Anita.

The rest of us implies the other students at the office. Today, like every other day, I’ll turn them down. This video won’t be decoded if I spend my time drinking coffee and ignoring the problem. 

“How are the blobs today?” Anita continues, gesturing at my screen.

“They’re great,” I lie.

I’m on my fifty-sixth viewing. I have broken down each movement into tiny, coded pieces of information and cross-checked them against movements of celestial bodies, algebraic formulations, and iterations of languages from other solar systems. There’s no logic or any pattern. My reckless coding has crashed my computer twice. 

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Anita says, “but maybe this isn’t a language. Maybe it’s art. There doesn’t have to be a meaning for everything.”

I want to like Anita. She brings in cookies that have off-world ingredients and cleans out the fridge in the staff area and speaks seven languages. Her ears are so heavily pierced that there’s more metal than skin, and her hair is dyed a different neon shade every other week. In another context, I would want to grab that coffee with her and the other students. But I don’t have time for friendship: I need to unearth the secrets of this video. 

“There’s always a meaning,” I say to Anita, and I begin my fifty-seventh viewing.

That week I dream of dancing. I see images of opalescent bubbles. I hear non-existent music as nebulous bodies come closer, move apart. When I blink, I see the metallic imprint of motion on the inside of my eyelids. The afterimage of the dancers is burned to my vision. 

“You’ve been spending too much time on the Thales-b thing,” Greg tells me one afternoon. “Don’t worry about it. I’m giving you something else.” 

He gives me a radio transcript from Ross 154 that he wants translated. I finish the assignment in three hours before moving back to the video. When he catches me watching for my seventy-eighth time on my tablet, Greg officially bars me from working on it any longer.

But not before I can send the transmission to my personal computer.

These figures wanted to say something. It took decades for this message to arrive, and I won’t have it wasted.

“Are you sure you won’t come out with us tonight?” Anita asks before leaving on a Friday. Her luggage hovers at her side; I vaguely recall her saying she was going somewhere for the weekend. Visiting friends. 

“I’m good.” I’m packing up my bag for the commute home. The earlier I can get back to my computer, the more time I can spend with the dancers. 

It’s a relief when Anita leaves so that I can rush out of the office.

• • •

I’m used to fricatives and sibilants, diphthongs and monophthongs. English sounds aren’t easily replicated across solar languages, but they provide me with a comfortable knowledge base. When I encounter a language that communicates through light patterns or with shades of blue, I can rely on the fact that my own alphabet will welcome me home with open, steady arms. 

Planetary linguistic analysts usually have some sort of key or guide to help them with the translation process. Sometimes a nearby planet has similar graphemes, or occasionally a written text can be dissected with the help of a guidebook. If we’re lucky we work directly with clients who speak the language.

But without any type of reference point, I can’t even begin to guess at what the shapes are saying in the video. 

For the first time, I realize what everyone else in the office knows: I am wasting my time. I’ve failed. 

When Greg gives me a new assignment, I pick at it over the course of a week. I take comfort in the rote work of translating words and manipulating them into a new sentence, as if I was molding the words from clay. The work feels partly like a benediction, partly like a punishment.

When Anita invites me to the bar that night, I have nothing else to do. I say yes.

• • •

The bar is riotous and packed; I can barely hear any of the people at the table. I have already forgotten most of their names. Yet even though I had ignored their overtures for so long, the students have proven to be nothing but kind: they compliment my shirt, they offer me free drinks, they ask me to dance. 

“A dance?” I shout over the music.

Anita takes my question as permission and twirls me onto the dancefloor. Unfamiliar electronic beats crash over me, pulling me into the tide. 

I’ve never danced before. The first moments are jerky and awkward before Anita grabs my hands and moves them for me. “Just do what I do!” she yells. 

She thrusts an arm; so do I. Her legs kick and flail and shimmy - so do mine. When she laughs, I laugh just as loudly. 

Sometime after our fourth dance, I can’t help but think that it’s nice to have a friend. 

As we continue, as I melt into the crowd, I’m reminded of the figures from the transmission. I am as shapeless and formless as them. My limbs are loose and light. All I need to do is copy Anita’s movements and it looks like I know what I’m doing. 

A thought, somewhere in the back of my mind.

I think of the millions of light years between us and Thales-b. How things become distorted, lost, pixelated. What do they know of our solar system? Our own bodies? They might have picked up on our radio signals, or it’s possible they heard a rumor of us from another nearby planet. But “nearby” is subjective. Maybe they did the best they could. Perhaps we’re meant to copy them.

I hold out my arm. Flex my fingers. 

It looks, vaguely, like an oblong. 

Like a balloon animal.

• • •

I don’t work that night. I’ve had a handful of drinks, and I need to be sober for the thought that simmers on the top of my skin. The night is dreamless. 

The next morning, I watch the recording for the eighty-ninth time. Once again, the figures begin as spheres before transforming into a rough collection of shapes. For months I’ve been thinking of them as their own beings, their own bodies. 

I have missed that the form is part of the message. 

This time I know what I’m looking for. The satellites that pinged the incoming transmission were Canadian, so I assume that I’ll be able to use the Latin alphabet to decode the message. Perhaps they know more about us than I suspected. 

My previous work had already identified over thirty distinct movements from the shapes. If I was broadcasting a message to another planet, I would want to ensure that anyone receiving it knew what I was saying. I would start with the basics. 

I don’t use any particular software or coding language. For the first motion, when the shapes wave one of their cones - roughly analogous to an arm - I write down A. 

When the sphere rotates, I write down B. I think of Anita throwing her head back in time to the music. 

C is an outstretched leg, like a jig.

By the time I get to the end of the alphabet, the first twenty-six distinct movements are catalogued. There are extra motions at the end that I have yet to figure out - I imagine they are punctuation or tense indicators.

Once the alphabet is complete, the message begins. 

• • •

My work on the video was flawed from the beginning. I assumed the shapes were trying to teach us their language. I had it backwards: they were showing us our language in their dialect. 

A flurry of activity will begin once I give the message to my managers. I won’t be alive to see the outcome. Communications from Thales-b will no longer be relegated to a student. 

Decoded, the transmission reads: Hello. We are coming.

I will be dead and buried by the time they arrive. I would have liked to have met them. Others will learn the movements and how to communicate with them. But I think of what Anita said - perhaps not everything has meaning. Maybe I just would have enjoyed the dance. 

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