Explore "Lost in Translation" by Laurence M. Janifer on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
_In language translation, you may get a literally accurate word-for-word translation... but miss the meaning entirely. And in space-type translation... the effect may be the same! _
The cell had been put together more efficiently than any Korvin had ever been in. But that was only natural, he told himself sadly; the Tr'en were an efficient people. All the preliminary reports had agreed on that; their efficiency, as a matter of fact, was what had made Korvin's arrival a necessity. They were well into the atomic era, and were on the verge of developing space travel. Before long they'd be settling the other planets of their system, and then the nearer stars. Faster-than-light travel couldn't be far away, for the magnificently efficient physical scientists of the Tr'en -- and that would mean, in the ordinary course of events, an invitation to join the Comity of Planets.