Telepathy and language in YTU

[cajon5]

I'm curious to know how refs have handled telepathy and different languages in their campaigns. For example, if an Imperial telepathic character who only speaks Galangic reads the mind of, say, a Vargr who is thinking in his native Gvegh (sp?), what does he "hear"? Barks and yelps? Or does his telepathy translate, so to speak? Do the concepts get transmitted independent of the language they are concieved in?

If so, I would guess that wouldn't be too big a challenge for the main character races, but what about quite alien aliens, like Hivers, Jgd-il-Jagd, etc? Any thoughts?

Is there anything in the OTU or rules that addresses this?

 

[aramis]

Emotions translate. probe gets meanings. Surface scan gets images and words; some words may be nuanced enough to be understood; routine Edu & Telepathy; special DM of target's edu, ± as desired by target, +0 if unaware.

 

[Icosahedron]

I'd say that concepts are translated independently of language.

When we speak, we first of all have to decide what we are going to say and how we are going to say it (well, some people take less care than others). We don't notice the process because it happens so quickly and automatically, but it must happen.
I think the underlying concepts that we translate into words are what a 'receiver' will pick up, and these will be the same in any language.

eg The concept 'I'll have two sausages, please, how much is that?' is common to all languages. The sender and receiver might use different words to express the concept, but the concept exchanged will be the same.

For aliens, it depends on how alien their thought processes are. I don't think any of the Traveller Major Races would have translation problems. You can pick up that your dog is saying 'I'm hungry, feed me' even without telepathy!

The only time aliens would have trouble is if their concepts are so different that we couldn't figure how they think, and even then, we might pick up some surface thoughts such as 'that sunshine feels nice' or 'gerroff my land, you disgusting alien puke!'

In the above sausages example, difficulty would only arise if an alien had no concept of food intake (lived by photosynthesis, maybe) or had no concept of barter and exchange.

Rule of thumb: If a translation book can be written between the languages, telepathy will work clearly.

 

[Spinward Scout]

TNE covered this a little bit (page 249 of the TNE core rulebook if you have it). They separated it into:

Non-intelligent animal
Separate evolutionary path
Very alien evolution

The book says that Hivers and Droyne have an alien evolutionary path from a human
Aslan and K'kree are a separate evolutionary path from a human
And the Vargr, Zhodani, Vilani, Solomani, and all minor human races are from the same evolutionary path with no modifier

The TNE gaming system is different than other versions of Traveller if you haven't played it. For other versions of Traveller, I'd put Non-intelligent animal at a +1 to difficulty; a Separate evolutionary path at +1; and the Very alien evolution at +2. It says that the separate path and the alien path are an either/or modifier - you have to pick one or the other and not combine them.

Talking about recieving mental concepts as opposed to words - I think I understand this as: even if in the Vilani language the name for dog is woof, your telepath's mind would interpret the concept of dog in a Vilani or other target's mind and automatically translate it into your telepath's native language.

Hope that helps

 

[cajon5]

Thanks, Spinward Scout!