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25th translation contest: "Alien first impressions" » English to Swahili » Entry by Anne Khasandi


Source text in English

Translation by Anne Khasandi (#31780)

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.
Fikiria kula katika mji mkuu wa Uropa ambapo haujui lugha ya wemyeji. Mhudumu anazungumza Kiingereza kidogo, lakini kwa ndoano au kwa ujanja unafanikiwa kuagiza kitu kwenye menyu ambayo unatambua, kula na kulipia. Sasa fikiria badala yake kwamba, baada ya kupotea ukitembea, unaibuka, ukiwa na njaa, katika kijiji cha Amazonia. Watu huko hawana wazo la kukufanya. Unaiga sauti za kutafuna, ambazo wanakosea kwa lugha yako ya zamani. Unapoinua mikono kuashiria kujisalimisha, wanafikiria unazindua shambulio.

Kuwasiliana bila muktadha wa pamoja ni ngumu. Kwa mfano, tovuti zenye mionzi lazima ziachwe bila kusumbuliwa kwa makumi ya maelfu ya miaka; Walakini, ikizingatiwa kuwa Kiingereza cha miaka 1,000 tu iliyopita sasa hakieleweki kwa wasemaji wake wengi wa kisasa, mashirika yamejitahidi kutoa maonyo ya kuandamana na taka za nyuklia. Kamati zinazohusika na kufanya hivyo zimekuja na kila kitu kutoka kwa minara mirefu ya zege yenye ncha kali, hadi mchoro wa Edvard Munch "The Scream", kwa mimea iliyobadilishwa chembe za urithi kugeuka kuwa bluu ya kutisha. Hakuna inayoonyesha idhibati kwa siku zijazo.

Baadhi ya watu wale wale ambao walifanya kazi kwenye jumbe hizi za tovuti ya taka pia wamekuwa sehemu ya changamoto kubwa zaidi: kuwasiliana na maisha ya nje ya ulimwengu. Hii ndio mada ya "Extraterrestrial Languages", kitabu kipya cha Daniel Oberhaus, mwandishi wa habari huko Wired.

Hakuna kinachojulikana juu ya jinsi wageni wa anga la nje wanavyoweza kuchukua habari. Bamba mbili zilizotumwa mwanzoni mwa miaka ya 1970 na Pioneer 10 na 11, chombo cha angani mbili, zinaonyesha wanadamu uchi na ramani isiyo sanifu ya kupata Dunia - vitu vya kawaida, lakini hata hiyo inadhani wageni wanaweza kuona. Kwa kuwa ufundi kama huo hauna nafasi ndogo zaidi ya kupatikana, matangazo ya redio kutoka Duniani, yanayosafiri kwa kasi ya mwangaza, yana uwezekano wa kuwasiliana. Lakini kama vile redio ya ulimwenguni lazima iangaliwe kwa masafa sahihi, vivyo hivyo na aina ya nyota. Je! Wageni wangewezaje kumtokea yule aliye sahihi? Jalada la Pioneer hutoa dokezo kwa njia ya mchoro wa kimsingi wa chembe ya haidrojeni, polarity ya sumaku ambayo hupinduka mara kwa mara, na masafa ya 1,420MHz. Kwa kuwa haidrojeni ni kitu kilicho nyingi zaidi ulimwenguni, matumaini ni kwamba mchoro huu unaweza kuwa kama nambari ya simu.


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