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25th translation contest: "Alien first impressions" » English to Vietnamese

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Source text in English

Imagine dining in a European capital where you do not know the local language. The waiter speaks little English, but by hook or by crook you manage to order something on the menu that you recognise, eat and pay for. Now picture instead that, after a hike goes wrong, you emerge, starving, in an Amazonian village. The people there have no idea what to make of you. You mime chewing sounds, which they mistake for your primitive tongue. When you raise your hands to signify surrender, they think you are launching an attack.

Communicating without a shared context is hard. For example, radioactive sites must be left undisturbed for tens of thousands of years; yet, given that the English of just 1,000 years ago is now unintelligible to most of its modern speakers, agencies have struggled to create warnings to accompany nuclear waste. Committees responsible for doing so have come up with everything from towering concrete spikes, to Edvard Munch’s “The Scream”, to plants genetically modified to turn an alarming blue. None is guaranteed to be future-proof.

Some of the same people who worked on these waste-site messages have also been part of an even bigger challenge: communicating with extraterrestrial life. This is the subject of “Extraterrestrial Languages”, a new book by Daniel Oberhaus, a journalist at Wired.

Nothing is known about how extraterrestrials might take in information. A pair of plaques sent in the early 1970s with Pioneer 10 and 11, two spacecraft, show nude human beings and a rough map to find Earth—rudimentary stuff, but even that assumes aliens can see. Since such craft have no more than an infinitesimal chance of being found, radio broadcasts from Earth, travelling at the speed of light, are more likely to make contact. But just as a terrestrial radio must be tuned to the right frequency, so must the interstellar kind. How would aliens happen upon the correct one? The Pioneer plaque gives a hint in the form of a basic diagram of a hydrogen atom, the magnetic polarity of which flips at regular intervals, with a frequency of 1,420MHz. Since hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, the hope is that this sketch might act as a sort of telephone number.

Winning entries could not be determined in this language pair.

There were 4 entries submitted in this pair during the submission phase. Not enough votes were submitted by peers for a winning entry to be determined.

Competition in this pair is now closed.


Entries (4 total) Expand all entries

Entry #31246 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Not specified
vapt
vapt
Vietnam
Voting points1st2nd3rd
164 x400
Entry tagging:
  • 1 user entered 1 "like" tag
Người phục vụ chỉ nói được vài từ tiếng Anh, nhưng bằng này hay cách khác, bạn có thể gọi món nào đó trên thực đơn mà bạn nhận biết, ăn xong rồi thanh toán.
Flows well
Cuong Hoang
Entry #31147 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Not specified
Voting points1st2nd3rd
61 x41 x20
Entry tagging:
  • 1 user entered 6 "like" tags
  • 1 user disagreed with "likes" (1 total disagree)
Bạn làm điệu bộ nhai chóp chép,
Flows well
Cuong Hoang
Khi bạn giơ tay ra hiệu đầu hàng, họ lại nghĩ rằng bạn sắp ra đòn tấn công
Flows well
Cuong Hoang
Không ai biết người ngoài Trái đất tiếp nhận thông tin như thế nào
Flows well
Cuong Hoang
hai tàu vũ trụ Pioneer 10 và 11 được phóng vào không gian, mang theo hai tấm kim loại, trên đó vẽ hình ảnh con người trong trạng thái khỏa thân và một tấm bản đồ thô để tìm thấy Trái đất
Flows well
Cuong Hoang
Nhưng cũng giống như một đài phát thanh trên mặt đất, đài phát thanh liên sao cũng phải được điều chỉnh đến đúng tần số mới có hi vọng bắt được liên lạc.
Flows well
Cuong Hoang
-1
1
Tấm kim loại trên tàu Pioneer đưa ra gợi ý dưới dạng một sơ đồ cơ bản của nguyên tử hydro, cực từ của nguyên tử này sẽ đảo chiều đều đặn với tần số 1.420MHz.
Flows well
Cuong Hoang
Entry #31282 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Not specified
Voting points1st2nd3rd
502 x21 x1
Entry tagging:
  • No "like" tags
Entry #31411 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Not specified
Voting points1st2nd3rd
2002 x1
Entry tagging:
  • No "like" tags