Words for Time Units

[Vaporwolf]

I know time was discussed somewhere as far as handing measuring time... but I couldn't find that thread again... where o where did it go?

Anyway...

What about names for time? I know some science fiction stories have replaced the words for second, minute, hour, week and such...

What does everyone here think about it?

In one of my stories, the units of time are quite different from Earth's, but I didn't feel right about swapping out the names. It just felt too confusing. Especially since if I did change the names, I wouldn't be able to use "englishlike equivalents (chron, nano, etc.) and remain consistent since everything is technically spoken in an alien language (The consistent use would have had day as mek).

So does the swapped out names for units of time help you in a story? Or do they tend to distract?

[torainfor]

Anne McCaffrey uses "turn" for year. Which makes sense, since it's a turn of the planet around the sun. I don't know about fake words when the original is translated from another language, though. If you translate 99% of it, why revert to the original for that last percent (unless it's a proper name)? I'd say use the English, but as a translation. An "hour" doesn't have to be a strict Earth hour, just their rough equivalent of time.

[Divides the Waters]

I'm with Orson Scott Card on this one: Don't make up words for things we're all familiar with.

[Jeff Gerke]

I see Card's logic, but I'm not entirely sure I agree. If there's a reason for something to be different--like in the thread on measuring time when the planet's day length is the same as its year--the word "day" has no meaning. Sometimes a little vocabulary change like this can give that flavor of strangeness and alienness that we crave in speculative fiction.

Jeff

[Vaporwolf]

Good insight. I think my number one reason for not going with weird words was that there is already so much alien language sprinkled throughout the story that making the time units authentic would overload a reader.

But I agree with the fact, that if a story is using a unique time measurement for a period of time, even if it isn't different in actual time passed, it can ad a great deal of flavor to a culture.

[Divides the Waters]

You could always use a combination of familiar terms used in an unfamliar way. Moonspan, Starsroad, Worldspath, etc. That might be a little dumb. But it's logical that an alien culture would have its own words, as well.

[myrthman]

Recently read Oxygen (from the WTME Booklist). I loved the book! For those that don't know, it's about the first manned mission to Mars. In it, the authors have a technical note about measuring time. I'd love to quote it for you exactly but I just loaned it and its sequel to someone. Something about a single martian rotation is more than 24 hours. They called it a "sol" (given the authors, could be NASA's term for it) and explained that once on Mars, the astronauts would have to recalculate their calendars every so often in order to stay in sync with Earth's. It didn't really make that big of a deal in the story itself. Characters referred to "day" and "sol" almost interchangeably and it didn't take anything away from the story or the characters' personal journeys. I'm not sure an entirely new set of terms would have the same, unnoticeable-to-the-reader effect though.

I wonder if you might consider having a "dumb puppet" from Earth who asks, "What the heck is a mek?" The reader would then get the explanation through dialog and not an appendix or glossary. If you don't want to or can't logically have an Earthling present in the story then the dumb puppet thing won't work. It seems to me that using the words people are familiar with would help keep them in the story and not flipping to the back of the book to figure out if Alien X will arrive in 43 minutes or 43 days because they've forgotten the difference between a mek, a turn, and a wilex.

[myrthman]

Had another thought: does your world have tides? Then it might make sense to measure time in units related to the movement of water: tides (day), waves (second), floods (year--especially if there's a seasonal monsoon-type flood).

[torainfor]

The story's set on Venus, so no tides, but it does have seasons and regular storms. Because of the cloud cover and the unusually circular orbit, you can't tell a year on Venus, just a day--and a day lasts about 250 of our days.

The year can be divided into the Serene (when wherever you are is away from the sun), the Tempest (when you're toward the sun), the two transition periods in between, the Serene-storm and the Tempest-storm (the big storms in the middle of the Serene and Tempest, respectively). One of the societies, though, travel to a different city three times a year, so their year is trinary, not binary.

So, I can divide the "day" into unequal units based on weather, but measuring anything less than that is problematic. I think I'll have to go with Mongoose's advice and just make that level of schedule a lot more relaxed. They live a lot longer than us, too, so they'd be more patient. They're certainly technologically advanced enough to be able to measure smaller periods of time, but I'm not sure they'd care.

I think you're right about using a "Sol" on Mars. Ben Bova uses it, too, in Mars and Return to Mars.

Oh, and the original post (which I found after much digging!) is here:
wherethemapends.proboards58.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=genresf&thread=343&page=1

[Spokane Flyboy]

My feeling is that ultimately, the terms are often translated in real-life anyway, so using familiar English terms is often the better route. Perhaps have it explained in the story either through dialogue or just narration - I know, a cardinal sin for most but it's never been a pet peeve of mine in reading books so long as it flows with the story.

[seraphim]

Have you considered time as a function of distance? How long does it take a normal person to walk from village A to village B. Time could be keyed to traverse. In the Aramaic Christian communities in some places even to the present day distance is measured in psalms...the time it takes to recite a set unit of psalms. This is because in ancient times the Church when persecuted in one place would move following their bishop recited the psalms on the way. So if a town was two psalters away, that means you would be able to recite the psalms twice before you got there. You could use such a device to rough measure both time or distance.

[myrthman]

Some of my friends use something similar to this. It drives me nuts when they do it! Someone will ask them, "How far to such and such?" "Oh about 15 minutes." But I like the idea seraphim just presented. Has historical value, makes sense, and could be applied to any location regardless of the existence of chronometers.

[torainfor]

That's a total Montana thing. Although, distances were more often measured in hours.

[seraphim]

So if you ask how long is it to such and such a place do they say, "Oh about 10 or 12 miles."