Magda’s smile only stretched her mouth. “It’s not nearly winter yet. The time when travel becomes impossible and all business shuts down for the spring-thaw is almost four months away. The passes aren’t even closed into the Hellers.”
“You’re joking!” Bethany looked into the raging storm and shivered. “But you should know, you’ve-been out in it. Summers, I think you have a peach of a job-nothing to do but mix with the crowds in the city and listen to gossip. But in weather like this I’m surprised they didn’t name this planet Winter.”
“They couldn’t; there’s already one called that. Read the records someday. Speaking of records, I’d better get mine set up.”
“Is that really all you do-listen to gossip?”
“That, and a lot more. I take note of the fashions being worn by women, make linguistic notes on new expressions and changes in the local argot… languages change all the time, you know that.”
“Do they really?”
“Do you use the slang expressions now that you did when you were seven years old? It doesn’t matter if an agent uses some outdated expressions; people do pick up little tags of speech from their parents, and everybody tends to use expressions that were common in their own teens, when peer relationships were being established. The one thing no undercover agent on the Darkovan side can do is speak as if he’d learned the language from a book; so I work all the time keeping us all up to date. Montray gets away with it because he’s meeting people as a Terran, and it’s a compliment for him to go halfway by speaking their language at all; speaking it too well would be a subtle form of one-upmanship that would rouse all kinds of psychological resistances in the Darkovans he meets. They’re supposed to be able to speak better than he does. But the agents who work on the Darkovan side can’t make mistakes even in slang. And everybody has to keep up with common usage.”
Bethany looked puzzled. Magda elucidated: “Well, look. For instance; there’s a word which means, literally, ‘entertainer,’ or ‘singing woman.’ It’s in the standard texts. But if you called a ballad-singer, or one of the soprano soloists with one of the orchestras in Thendara, by that word, her father or brother would call you out in a duel-call a man out; a woman using such a term would simply be regarded as very vulgar and ill bred.”
“An entertainer?” Bethany repeated the word in amazement. “Why? It sounds inoffensive enough.”
“Because for decades that particular word has been a polite euphemism-the kind of word you can use in front of a lady-for ‘prostitute.’ No respectable woman on Darkover would soil her mouth with the word grezalis-that’s vernacular for ‘whore’-and no man but a boor would use it in front of her. The respectable concert soprano is a ‘lyric performer,’ and don’t forget it if you go to a concert in Thendara!”
Bethany shivered. “I had no idea a translator’s work was so complicated.”
“It’s true; you have to take extra pains to avoid giving offense. One of my main jobs is to check through official speeches to make sure our translators and speechwriters avoid words with accidentally offensive connotations. For instance: you know how our standard official speeches-not just on Darkover-are full of expressions of friendship and brotherhood? Well, the commonest expression for ‘friend and brother’ in the casta language-that’s the official language in Thendara-is red-flagged as an absolutely taboo term for official speeches here.”
“Why, for heaven’s sake?”
“Because the commonest expression meaning ‘friend and brother,’ if you don’t get the inflection just right, can get you in an incredible amount of trouble. In the impersonal inflection it expresses the purest sentiments of fraternal charity and humanitarian concern, and is perfectly suitable for official and diplomatic use. Just the same it’s red-flagged, because a lot of our officials simply cannot pronounce the language well enough, and even if they mean to use the impersonal inflection, they’re likely to sound like the wrong one. And if you use that word -the same word-in the personal inflection, it means ‘brother’ in the sense of family intimacy and closeness, and is too familiar; while if you happen to use it in the intimate inflection, you’re defining the person addressed as a homosexual-and your lover. Do you see now why it’s an absolutely forbidden term in official language?”