"...So, you're using translation magic. 'Congregation' in English, which we're speaking, means the members of a particular church. Relying on the literal meaning of your words being clear and trusted is going to be an issue with the translation magic and with your novelty in the public imagination," says Skip.

"I suspect the problem isn't exactly the translation magic, it seems to be more that the things we want to say sometimes aren't possible to make clear succinctly in your languages. She said 'congregation' and earlier I said 'their particular communities' and in both cases we meant the people served by a particular church, which seems not to be the relationship you assume will exist between people and the churches around them. Which means that while I can obviously explain what I mean I can't easily talk about it in general."

"By default a church here has no relationship to its nonmember neighbors. Presuming one is... tone-deaf at best. Jenny -"

The presumable Jenny speaks. "It's relating to what we said before about exit. Presuming you have a relationship with nonmember neighbors suggests thinking so highly of your own relevance that you'd make it impossible for someone to go 'you have nothing to do with me, I have nothing to do with you, I am not yours, any interactions we have will be self-limited and only as extended as mutual interest dictates'. This isn't the case for government institutions as much because they're supported by public money, some of them do have the power to compel interaction, and, well, they're longer-standing. But claiming people who want nothing to do with you as congregation even if you don't mean membership is intrusive. I think there's a pattern of that, here, presumed relevance to the point of intrusiveness."

"-in general we're not going to intrude on people. If someone comes to us for healing that's a case of them being served by the church. If they want nothing further to do with us afterward then that's fine, though at home it would be unusual. If we're asked for healing by more people than we can immediately serve, then we'll try to make the decision about who to serve first in a way that does the most good for everyone affected, including indirectly, but it seems very strange to me to say that choosing to heal a farmer over a performer to make sure that there isn't a food shortage is intrusive."

"No, no," says Jenny, "not your allocation method, that's for you to decide and us to spin. The language around it. If someone comes to you for healing say 'patient', if someone lives near a church say 'neighbor', and save 'congregation' for people who attend services or whatever it is you do."

"Sir, you need a bard."

    "I do, don't I," he sighs.

"In our world clerics are known for being practical, in a very hands-on, in-the-dirt sort of way. We care more about what's happening than how it's described. If you need things worded very specifically - there are times a cleric will do that but only in certain contexts, usually privately; in general we're expected to speak plainly. The type of care you're asking them to take is a different role entirely and not one that clerics of Pelor take often at all." (The other clerics nod.)

"Plain speaking that makes people misunderstand you isn't plain," says Skip. "That's what we're here for. If I were you I'd play up the translation magic issue good and hard, I'd remind everyone of it every time I said anything, and then I'd clarify every word people raised an eyebrow at with at least a couple full sentences. We've got machine translation, it can be bad in similar ways, yours acts more seamless but perfect translation is impossible. It gets much worse than 'congregation'. There are numbers you can't use in any remotely optional context without sounding like you want to commit genocide."

"All right. What would we say, exactly?"

"About the translation effect? You - Doug?"

"You want to maybe say something slightly different every time so people don't tune it out," says Doug.

"Good point, you don't want it to go the way of 'known to the state of California to cause cancer'," says Skip. "We can get you a list and you can go down the list. Every time you give a speech out loud, and if you have to publish writing in a hurry, but writing you should run by us."

Pelor nods. "If you can give me a few examples now that would be useful, it will inform which clerics I assign here."

"Oh, something like 'this speech is being delivered with translation magic, with some of the same drawbacks as machine translation, and we would very much appreciate a chance to clarify any choice of words that might be off or sound like a contradiction of our stated organizational values'."

Doug says, "Or, 'Please keep in mind that I'm not a speaker of insert-language-here, and nuance I'm trying to use may not come through well. I'm happy to rephrase anything that seems unclear or surprising.'"

"And some of you could study English, even maintain a Shortform about fun vocabulary mismatches, that would build a trail of evidence that you aren't just saying this to cover your ass," says Skip.

    "I can arrange that, yes."

"One of us might be better suited to it, sir, especially if it's the sort of thing we can use to rehabilitate Fharlanghn's image."

"...I don't recommend claiming that Ganymede was a translation problem," says Skip. "To be clear."

"No, it wasn't, and I'll make sure that that's clear to anyone who replaces me here. But Fharlanghn's clerics are the ones that usually handle cultural differences, unfortunately, so it will probably work best to have us involved in some way. Possibly just in an advisory role if it's not wise to have us in the public eye yet, but somewhere."

"You don't have... lay diplomats or anything?"

"We do, and I have diplomats of my own," he indicates the half-elf, "but Fharlanghn's clerics will be more suited to this - they have more breadth of experience, and especially more experience at interacting with common people from very unfamiliar cultures; my non-diplomat clerics do the former and diplomats do some of the latter but neither does the combination. If the Ganymede situation disqualifies them then we'll do without them but it will hamper us."

"Something that worries me is that a cleric of Fharlanghn might have a lot of experience that, by comparison to our array of cultures, is actually narrowly specialized," says Jenny. "The magic's different, the role of religion is different, the tech's different, the nonhuman species are different, the world history's different - your cultures probably vary enormously but an experienced diplomat could still wind up consistently relying on those regularities and find themselves at a loss here."

"I think this is an exchange student program waiting to happen. Not now, in at least a few months," says another person.

"In the long run we'll want to train people specifically, of course. For now, yes, that might be a problem, but it'll be a problem twice over for anyone else from our world, and I expect anyone from yours to have the same one the other way. I do think that we should use them thoughtfully, and look to other perspectives as well, but there is value there; the question is how we can safely use it."

"You have to remember, I didn't know anything when I got here. I wasn't even sure it was a different world right away, and I wasn't trying to be a diplomat - I'm not a diplomat - I was just trying to survive. It will be different with whoever comes next."

"Ramona, what's the damage on public opinion pertaining to clerics of Fharlanghn as a class?" says Skip.

"Lots of ambiguity about the extent to which the cleric of someone is making a deal for spells but outside of the terms of their contract a free agent, or effectively a citizen of a borderless nation with their own opinions but some limits on their behavior, or an adherent of a religion more like we understand them with unusually antisocial tenets where of course it would be rude to discriminate but," says Ramona. "There's space in between these for people to get to like individual clerics who operate in limited scope, I think. Healers, consultants, even ambassadors. But I think generalists are going to be a tough sell - too much perception that they'll take marching orders from you know who, even if they'd be sorry about it."

"He isn't Voldemort," says Doug.

"Yeah, Voldemort is imaginary, so I'll say his name as much as I please," says Ramona.

"None of those is close to accurate in general - the second one is closest, for Fharlanghn's in particular, I believe, but misses most of the things that are common to all clerics. It sounds like we'll want to clear that up with the public before we try to explain that we're working with them."

"Yes, a clear understanding of what to expect from clerics would be great," says Skip.

Raafi looks to the other clerics; the half-elf gestures for him to go ahead.

"All right. I think - one thing you need to know is that not everyone can become a cleric of a particular god. It's rare, and it has to do with their personality to start with - Fharlanghn is the god of travel and freedom and if those weren't the absolute most important things in life to me I couldn't be his cleric, no matter how much I prayed. And if they stop being the most important things, I stop being a cleric - we have to reaffirm them, every day, to get our spells. That's not something Fharlanghn requires, it's how all clerics work - it's actually possible to be a cleric of no god at all, if you feel strongly enough about the right sort of thing, and they also need to reaffirm their calling every day. So leaving gods entirely aside, when you're dealing with a cleric you're dealing with someone who feels very strongly about some particular thing, not to the exclusion of all else - I would have taken more time to try diplomatic solutions to the Ganymede situation if I'd been allowed - but above it, by definition - if diplomacy had failed, I would have had a very hard choice to make about whether to do the same as Fharlanghn or lose my vocation. But that's also the same natural law that makes it possible to implicitly trust Pelor's clerics to make important decisions for their communities without risk of corruption; the ongoing ability to use magic is proof of their devotion to those principles."

(The halfling looks suspiciously at Raafi when he mentions the results of diplomacy failing, and begins watching him closely; Pelor notices this happening and watches the halfling in turn. After a few seconds the halfling looks away, notices Pelor watching him, and shakes his head minutely, at which point both of them return their attention to the conversation.)

"Allowed?" wonders Doug.

Ramona looks questioningly at the halfling.

    "Impolitic," he offers quietly, shaking his head.

"Some gods do set rules for their clerics above and beyond that, but those are more flexible - I had a chance to speak to him about Ganymede and he changed the rule about taking action as soon as diplomacy fails; we're now allowed to spend a year trying things as long as we believe there's still a chance of success."