I’m reading my way through the “Foreigner” sequence of books by CJ Cherryh. This is the main character, who functions as an intermediary between a human settlement on an alien planet and the aliens whose planet it is, thinking about the challenges of translation:

The paidhi had to have mathematical ability: it went with the job, and one learned it right along with a language that continually made changes in words according to number and relationship – sometimes you needed algebra just to figure the grammatically correct form of a set-adjective, when the wrong form could be infelicitous and offend the person you were trying to win. You formed sets on the fly in your conversation just to avoid divisible plural forms, like the dual or quad not offset by the triad or monad, and in learning rapid conversation, even with the shortcut concepts the language held, your head hurt – until you got to a degree of familiarity where you could chain-calculate while holding a conversation, and no restaurant ever got away with padding your bill. – CJ Cherryh, Invader

They’re fun books, with an extremely introverted presentation: they are entirely from the point of view of the lone human among aliens, who is obliged constantly to double-check and second-guess himself because not only is assassination common custom and betrayal an art-form, but the powerful bonds between atevi do not arise from liking or love, or anything humans have gut feeling for. Bren is forced into a constant intellectual analysis of everything internal and external, in the manner described by high-functioning autistics, who have to do consciously what the rest of us supposedly do by instinct (um. Maybe that’s why Bren’s ruminations are so entertaining: there but for the grace etc go I, thinks I, in certain highly social situations. Minus assassins. And alkaloid-laden teas). The alkaloid laden teas in question are ones he shares – in the first instance, nearly fatally – with one of the rare marvellous old ladies of SF, his main atevi ally’s grandmother and political rival, a hard-riding, wicked, shrewd old traditionalist who delights in making mischief. She is at various points in the books adversary, ally, and unknown quantity – usually the latter. He is at once very fond of her, and aware that she may well be the death of him, if he crosses her – or simply from a heart attack when she drops into a fraught situation and expects to carry all with sheer force of personality. There was an interesting review of one of the later books on SFSite where the reviewer remarks upon the introverted nature of the book and says that it makes sense if you interpret it (and the whole series) as an example of an atevi classical drama, a manchini play, in which the protagonists’ manchini (loyalty, allegence) is examined. Neat approach to taking the artist’s work entirely on its own terms.