Ask Lost In Translation

[Lymsleia Tane]

"If you've already submitted a complaint Miss Tame, you must wait the requisite number of days for an official response..."

Lym tried her hardest to stop her eyes rolling at the person on the desk. All she wanted to do was pass on the evidence she'd found to the right detective. Yeah, okay, she was sure they got a lot of cranks and freaks trying to pass off their rants as key evidence, but couldn't they see that she was different!? She had charts, books and actual qualifications to help her! Well, okay, theoretical qualifications, due to be awarded in a few months time when her thesis went through... but that had to count for something, right?

"It's Tane. Lymsleia Tane. Like in the complaint I sent, which told me I needed to come here in person," she tried to explain, as calmly as she could. "I won't take up much time, please. I just need to pass on what I found to the right person and then I'll get out of everyone's hair. I took time out of my research to come do this in person." The exasperated tone in her voice didn't seem to be helping things, judging by the look on the desk sergeant's face.

"Well, if you have something to share you can leave it with us. We'll evaluate your evidence and pass it along to the right desk."

"I can't do that. It's all from my thesis and I can't hand it over, you need someone to help translate it anyway." The last time someone from the Rangers had looked at this stuff, they'd mangled the translation so badly that it'd derailed the whole case. She couldn't let that happen again, it wouldn't be right. She had to do her duty.

That, and aiding an active investigation would surely play well with the course leads when it came to awarding her Masters.

"Just a quick meeting with whoever has a couple of minutes. That's all I need, just to explain the translation errors." She felt like holding her hands together in prayer, but the awkward stubbornness inside refused to let her debase herself.

@Wit

 

[Kalen Ultor]

It had been a long day, made all the longer by the mountains of paperwork he had to get through. Normally he'd be able to get a droid to help out with filling out all the forms and making sure he was dotting all the i's and crossing all the t's. But somehow there weren't any droids left for him to sign out, which he was sure was part of his punishment. They couldn't fire him, they barely had enough Rangers to properly cover the ever-growing ISC territories, but they could make his life hell.

Having finally finished completing the last report, he sent off a mail to the appropriate department and switched off his terminal. He was done staring at documents for the day, what he needed was a steaming hot cup of caff. Or rather a chilled pitcher of beer. Sure, it was the middle of the day, but he had been working since the middle of the night. So technically it was late night for him. Convinced that that was justification enough to get a drink, he got up from his desk and made to leave. He made it all the way to the foyer, he could actually see the street outside the main door, when a voice called out to him.

"Ranger Ultor!" He stared longingly at the entrance, thinking if he could just ignore whatever they needed him for and walk out. Act like he never heard the call, but that would only land him in more trouble. And he did not want more paperwork. So he stopped and turned around, making his way towards the front desk, noticing a white haired young woman standing next to the officer behind the desk who had called out to him. Colms, he was called Colms if he was remembering it right. And he normally was.

"I'm five minutes from my break," he said as he walked up to them, "so better talk fast."

"This is Miss Tame." Colms began, before pausing and glancing back at the woman before continuing. "Err, sorry, Tane. Miss Tane claims to have discovered some new evidence on a case. One of the Dressel file cases." Kal had been hoping that Colms had simply wanted him to come over and assure this Tane that the Ranger office would look into the matter. But the moment he mentioned the Dressel files his heart sank. Colms wasn't asking him to help git rid of her, he was washing his hands off her and passing the burden onto him. This is your problem, deal with it. And that it was, the chief had been pretty clear on the matter when he had given him the Dressel Files. It looked like he wasn't going to be getting that drink any time soon. Caff it was.

"Right." He said, giving Colms a nod and turning his attention to the woman. "Miss Tane, I am Kalen Ultor. I am the Ranger in charge of the.." He stopped as he realized he still didn't know which case it was. Well, it was probably just the first in a list of things he would have to figure out. "Tell you what, why don't we head over to my desk and you can tell me what's on your mind."

Five minutes later they would be at his desk, another officer having showed up with two mugs full of steaming caff that now sat in front of them. "So, why don't we take this from the beginning. How can I help you?"
@Charndley

 

[Lymsleia Tane]

When they sat down, she took the caff from the other officer with a smile. "Thanks," she muttered, wrapping both hands around the warm cup as she savoured the caff. An instant hint of grey, stale warmth and alertness. Just a second to calm down before she could launch into the long explanation.

"Okay, so, I'm really sorry to bother you and everything," Lym lied, "but I came across something related to one of your investigations. So... I'm a linguistics major. Final year, I'm not an amateur," she added, feeling her cheeks heat up. "We've got access to lots of diplomatic records, translation logs, lots of official documents for our studies. With a lot of details removed, of course." The arrangement had been fairly long-standing, particularly with her university. After all, what better way to train your new wave of diplomats than on actual diplomatic texts?

Lym paused to reach into her bag, pulling out her datapad and a couple of neat-looking binders. She cracked one open, showing a copy of the document she'd been looking at. One particular section was ringed in red marker several times. Lots of frantic writing and exclamation points around it.

"So... I came across this file here when I was getting material for my thesis," Lym explained, tapping the top of the document. "All I knew was that it was a witness statement that'd been translated. The part I've circled," she said, leaning closer to tap it in particular, "isn't translated correctly. It's a common error when trying to cross-translate Ithorese to Basic."

How much can I say without getting wrapped up in this?

"So, Ithorians are quad-larynxed, they have four throats," Lym said, speeding up as she tried to get to the important parts, "so they speak in stereo which is super hard to do if you're not Ithorian and it can lead to easy errors if droids aren't calibrated right or your translator misses a bit of important syntax or content." Her finger tapped the circled part of the translation. "I listened to the original recording and found the error. The translation says the man I saw was a small Twi'lek. They missed a couple of verb forms."

Her properly translated sentence was written underneath:

The man I saw was working at the Tiny Twi'lek.

@Wit

 

[Kalen Ultor]

Kalen sipped on his caff and listened patiently as she started speaking. A hint of a smile threatened to peek at the edges of his lips as she shared her credentials, but his eyes showed no malice behind it. He was simply reminded of a time when he himself had been like that, young, eager to prove himself, and not expecting to be taken seriously. Simpler times, happier times.

He put his cup of caff down and leaned forward in his seat to get a better look at the documents she pulled out. He could tell from the copious amounts of notes and highlights that she had spent a great deal of time working on it. His eyes wondered across the document, trying to do his best to read the scribbled words, made harder by the fact that he was reading them upside down. But he stopped when she mentioned the mistranslation. Even then he expected it to be something insignificant, but when she showed him what the actual translation was supposed to be he had to reassess. It had been some time since he had gone over that particular case, but if he remembered correctly that particular testimony had hit a brick wall because a small twi'lek wasn't much to go by. But this might change things.

"Do you mind?" He asked as he reached forward and picked up the document without really waiting for an answer. He fired off a few quick commands on his terminal as he started at it, cross-referencing a few other entries from the case and adding a pretty wide list of search parameters to try and see if anything came up about a Tiny Twi'lek. Even with the rather wide net that he was casting, the results popped up within a few seconds. Over a dozen establishments showed up, hotels, cantinas, even a day care. All named Tiny Twi'lek. They needed more to identify which was the right one.

The easiest solution was of course to just ask the Ithorian which was the rigth one, but the problem was he didn't really understand Ithorese. So he leaned out to the side so that he could look a few desks down behind "Brax," he called out, drawing the attention of a woman seated there, "who've we got that can speak Ithorese?"

"Ithorese? Who the frak speaks Ithorese, two sentences and your throat's raw as frak. Get one of the translator droids, I'm sure they have it in their database."

If a droid could get it right then it would have caught the mistake in the first place, so he didn't feel comfortable trusting one again. And tracking down a translator was going to take time, and who was to say this one wouldn't make the same mistake the last one had made? It was a simple matter of asking which was the right location, nothing more. It didn't take him long to make the decision, and he returned his attention to Lymsleia.

"How sure are you about this?" He asked, holding out the document for her. "If I was able to get the Ithorian here, would you be able to translate what he says? Looks like we might have more questions for him. I'm sure helping the Rangers out on an investigation would look real good on your resume."

@Charndley