A review by omnibozo22
The Guild of Xenolinguists by Sheila Finch

5.0

The stories in this collection center around a guild of linguists that continue to develop methods for accurately communicating with sentient beings from other planets in the MilkyWay. Strict Guild rules train students to eliminate emotion from their work, so that the translations are not tainted by "irrelevant" data. That, of course, frequently leads to unintended misunderstanding and disaster. While Chomsky's Universal Language idea is a basis for the book, the stories illuminate translation challenges located firmly here on Earth.