Well, but the thing with both of those is that... they don't really need a translator, then. If you teach your mammoths writing or sign language, then you don't need any kind of higher tech for that. So the translators would really just be for distance and for people who haven't learned the sign language or morse code.
A plot point is going to be that the herder and the mammoth work out a low-tech workaround, building on some basic signs the herders traditionally used during solar flare outages before, so that it is possible for them to communicate although it's frustratingly limited at times. They come up with a system of scratched signs and gestures, and make a rudimentary kind of communication board with flash cards, and such. Because for the vast majority of the book, the translator's not gonna be working.
But that means that when it is working, it needs to be something for which technology is actually necessary. Something like thoughts-to-speech or vocalizations-to-text.
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Date: 2018-02-19 12:31 pm (UTC)A plot point is going to be that the herder and the mammoth work out a low-tech workaround, building on some basic signs the herders traditionally used during solar flare outages before, so that it is possible for them to communicate although it's frustratingly limited at times. They come up with a system of scratched signs and gestures, and make a rudimentary kind of communication board with flash cards, and such. Because for the vast majority of the book, the translator's not gonna be working.
But that means that when it is working, it needs to be something for which technology is actually necessary. Something like thoughts-to-speech or vocalizations-to-text.