Survival on a spaceship

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Dangerious P. Cats

You could also have languages built around symbols relevant to the culture. Threat levels could be communicated well with a bear for danger, a Sperm Whale for safty and mereKat for moderate distress unless the audience doesn't know what those animals are.

That doesn't really make it more opaque to the illiterate terrans trapped aboard, though. Sure, they've got no idea why you're using those particular symbols, but they don't need to know that. They're not going to be trying to disassemble alien word structures for a good while.

A nastier trick might be if the aliens don't see any need for a general danger symbol at all. The airlock is marked with 'vacuum outside', the garbage disposal says 'nanodisassemblers', and the power bar says 'high voltage current'...but you're going to have to figure out each of those warnings separately because to the owners a warning didn't need to be marked as such.

[cosmicfish]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

That doesn't really make it more opaque to the illiterate terrans trapped aboard, though. Sure, they've got no idea why you're using those particular symbols, but they don't need to know that. They're not going to be trying to disassemble alien word structures for a good while.

Agreed 100%

A nastier trick might be if the aliens don't see any need for a general danger symbol at all. The airlock is marked with 'vacuum outside', the garbage disposal says 'nanodisassemblers', and the power bar says 'high voltage current'...but you're going to have to figure out each of those warnings separately because to the owners a warning didn't need to be marked as such.

Another note is that "danger" means different things to different races. Perhaps they are innately (perhaps through genetic engineering) vacuum-proof, perhaps the garbage disposal nanobots avoid their (not our) genetic structure, perhaps 100kV is a refreshing cleaning method for them. Conversely, they may have quarantined the sample of apple pie they collected (highly toxic!!) and set an alarm in case anyone accidentally produces a tone at middle-C (causes nausea and disorientation!).