Despite the fact that both the Terrans (Earth-based humans) and Athsheans are people, they speak different languages and have different customs. This means that most of the time, they can’t or won’t communicate. But two characters—the formerly enslaved Athshean Selver Thele and the Terran anthropologist Raj Lyubov—are able to share their cultures with each other and translate their respective languages. Later in the novella, Selver’s people declare that he’s a god, which in Athshean culture means that Selver has introduced new ideas into his otherwise-stable society, a process the Athsheans view as a form of translation. In this case, Selver has “translated” the humans’ violence in order to teach the Athsheans how to kill humans. This process has consequences, as Selver grows isolated from his society. And while Lyubov’s ties to the Athsheans are crucial for the Athsheans’ survival, they also lead other humans to ostracize him and eventually cause the humans’ downfall. With these outcomes, the novella suggests that genuine communication between people is necessary but demands sacrifice, as the process of “translating” another culture can isolate someone from their own.
From the start of the novella, Lyubov and Selver’s communication is shown to be necessary in order to alter their stagnant societies. While Selver is enslaved by humans, he works as Lyubov’s anthropological informant, teaching Lyubov about Athshean sleeping patterns and culture. Lyubov’s unique understanding of Athshean society leads him to become an advocate for the Athsheans. While Lyubov’s defense of the Athsheans doesn’t have any short-term effects, the novella suggests that it may be part of what leads the interstellar government, or “League of Worlds,” to remove the human colony from the Athsheans’ planet, Athshe. Meanwhile, Selver’s communication with Lyubov helps him understand both who the humans are and why they’re on Athshe, which none of the Athsheans previously understood. Selver knows that the humans want Athshe’s wood, which leads Selver and his normally nonviolent people to retaliate violently against the humans, fearful that the planet’s forest life will otherwise disappear. If Selver didn’t understand the humans’ goals because of Lyubov, he might not have introduced violence to his nonviolent society, which was necessary for the Athsheans to defend themselves.
However, Selver and Lyubov’s communication also has demonstrable consequences for Selver and the Athsheans, no matter how necessary that communication is. For instance, Selver’s sense of self is fundamentally altered by his knowledge of human society and humans’ violence, and he’s no longer able to dream in the same way other Athsheans do. Eventually, Selver tells Lyubov that he wishes they’d never known each other, demonstrating the impact Selver’s friendship with Lyubov had on Selver’s selfhood. More broadly, Athshean society is also impacted by Selver’s connection with Lyubov. Selver’s decision to retaliate against the humans (which Lyubov’s information partly prompted) transforms the Athsheans into a violent people. Lyubov later worries that Selver has translated the worst parts of human society for his people and has learned to speak the humans’ figurative “language” of violence rather than his own.
Lyubov is also irrevocably altered by his ability to communicate with Selver, which directly affects human society. Lyubov is isolated from his own people due to his connection with Selver, as his research previously showed that the Athsheans were nonviolent. When Selver convinces his people to attack the humans, the human soldiers come to distrust Lyubov, as this attack disproves his research. Ironically, Lyubov’s research is incorrect partly because of his communication with Selver, which prompted Selver to continue his attacks against the humans. Lyubov’s unique knowledge of the Athsheans also gives him key insight into their plans and isolates him further from human society. For instance, after the Athsheans attack humans for the first time, Lyubov visits an Athshean village and immediately sees that the Athsheans haven’t forgiven the humans and are likely planning another attack. However, Lyubov’s friendship with Selver prevents him from sharing that information with his superiors, which leads most of the human women to die in a surprise attack. Lyubov’s friendship with Selver indirectly harms his people, as he chooses not to warn them about the Athsheans. During this attack, Lyubov himself dies—but before he does, he warns Selver that the Athsheans have to stop killing. And given that Selver only decided that killing was necessary after communicating with Lyubov, Lyubov essentially confirms that their communication negatively impacted both the humans and the Athsheans, even though it was necessary for both of their societies.
Ultimately, Lyubov and Selver’s sacrifices lead to the Athsheans’ safety but also to their own isolation. They remain the only members of their societies who were willing to communicate with each other, and this solitary communication has lasting effects, as Lyubov’s spirit remains in Selver’s dreams at the end of the novella, demonstrating the permanent impact Lyubov had on Selver. The novella implies that while Selver and Lyubov’s communication was necessary, it also demanded steep sacrifices.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Communication and Translation ThemeTracker
Communication and Translation Quotes in The Word for World is Forest
“[…] Much of what he told me, I couldn’t understand. It wasn’t the language that kept me from understanding; I know his tongue, and he learned ours; we made a writing of the two languages together. Yet there were things he said I could never understand. He said the yumens are from outside the forest. That’s quite clear. He said they want the forest: the trees for wood, the land to plant grass on.” Selver’s voice, though still soft, had taken on resonance; the people among the silver trees listened. “That too is clear, to those of us who’ve seen them cutting down the world. He said the yumens are men like us, that we’re indeed related, as close kin maybe as the Red Deer to the Greybuck. He said that they come from another place which is not the forest; the trees there are all cut down; it has a sun, not our sun, which is a star. All this, as you see, wasn’t clear to me. I say his words but don’t know what they mean. It does not matter much. It is clear that they want our forest for themselves […] ”
Lyubov sat and took it. Let the men from the ship see them all passing the blame around like a hot brick: all the better. The more dissension they showed, the likelier were these Emissaries to have them checked and watched over. And he was to blame; he had been wrong. To hell with my self-respect so long as the forest people get a chance, Lyubov thought, and so strong a sense of his own humiliation and self-sacrifice came over him that tears rose to his eyes.
And the translator is the god. Selver had brought a new word into the language of his people. He had done a new deed. The word, the deed, murder. Only a god could lead so great a newcomer as Death across the bridge between the worlds.
But had he learned to kill his fellowmen among his own dreams of outrage and bereavement, or from the undreamed-of-actions of the strangers? Was he speaking his own language, or was he speaking Captain Davidson’s? That which seemed to rise from the root of his own suffering and express his own changed being, might in fact be an infection, a foreign plague, which would not make a new people of his race, but would destroy them.
“Should we have let them live?” said Selver with vehemence equal to Gosse’s, but softly, his voice singing a little. “To breed like insects in the carcass of the World? To overrun us? We killed them to sterilize you. I know what a realist is, Mr. Gosse. Lyubov and I have talked about these words. A realist is a man who knows both the world and his own dreams. You’re not sane: there’s not one man in a thousand of you who knows how to dream. Not even Lyubov and he was the best among you. You sleep, you wake and forget your dreams, you sleep again and wake again, and so you spend your whole lives, and you think that is being, life, reality! You are not children, you are grown men, but insane. And that’s why we had to kill you, before you drove us mad.”
“Sometimes a god comes,” Selver said. “He brings a new way to do a thing, or a new thing to be done. A new kind of singing, or a new kind of death. He brings this across the bridge between the dream-time and the world-time. When he has done this, it is done. You cannot take things that exist in the world and try to drive them back into the dream, to hold them inside the dream with walls and pretenses. That is insanity. What is, is. There is no use pretending, now, that we do not know how to kill one another.”
