This might be such a dumb question- I have bad reading comprehension. In the book it says “I don’t even have to look at the screen anymore to understand” and it mentions that Ryland can understand Rocky. But Rocky’s messages come back in English. So is he relying on the translator or not? Is the translator software in Rocky and converts his sounds to English in real time?
by Confident_Yam6447
14 Comments
Never read the book but my interpretation of the film was it’s doing the same for Rocky but for the sake of ease to the viewer of having to listen to 40 minutes of wind chimes over dialogue, it’s just left to the imagination.
No, he is saying he learned to translate without the need of the computer. Because he is a literal savant…at all things.
He learned to translate Rocky’s audio
It’s been a while since I read the book, but I believe the translator was just providing text translations, not audio translations.
So Ryland could undersand Rocky’s language by that stage without having to look at the ‘subtitles’
Read it as he’s already translated it in his head.
Rocky and Grace are in a bromance, Rocky doesn’t need to ‘speak’ for Grace to understand what he’s feeling or thinking about. They are, as they say, simpatico.
It’s been a while since I’ve read it, but I think the English translation is just the author cutting out the middleman and automatically going straight for the English translation. It does get tiring as a reader if you have to go back and forth.
I think it’s that after a while, you understand certain noises keep being translated to a certain word, so when you hear that noise you remember the word. It’s how we all learn any language. I don’t know what everyone else here is talking about. It’s not something that needs to be interpreted. This is how language recognition works.
It’s when you learn a language well enough that you don’t need the Translation from your phone to understand it. Basically, if you start out learning Spanish, you would need assistance, but then as you practice, overtime you gain a better understanding of it so you don’t need to constantly check the translation app on your phone.
He is understanding the noises that Rocky is making. While he can’t recreate them, his brain is learning to speak Eridian.
After someone makes the sound “adios” enough times, and you read that it means “goodbye” enough times, you eventually start to understand that “adios” means “goodbye”. 🤷♂️
It means Ryland can recognize that the Boo-Bee-Boo-Baa sound Rocky makes means he’s tired and wants to sleep and so on. He starts to recognize common sounds by ear and doesn’t need the translation software as much.
Just read it yesterday. Grace relies less and less on the translator as time goes on, and only relies on the software for new words.
The reason Rocky’s lines are in english is simply to make it easier on us readers, a purely technical convenience. That’s why all of them are italicized: they indicate that what we are reading is the translation Grace makes in his head (or translator, can be both), rather than Rocky’s actual sounds, which would be musical chords.
You’re getting confused with the movie trailers and what the book is telling you. The translator is just a screen with text in the book that grace uses when he doesn’t understand eridian yet. The movie uses a voice because the medium the story is being told through would lose a lot of the connection with rocky if it was just whistles and subtitles.
The translation is for the reader, Grace eventually starts understanding him and we see the english.