The Dragon Prince is a Netflix-original animated fantasy series first released in 2018, with three extent seasons of 9 episodes each. It is notable for containing two magical languages, and sign language representation! Well, sort of...
The magical languages turn out to be kind of disappointing. Draconic, used for casting Primal Magic spells, is just Latin, and only occurs as sequences of single nouns or noun phrases with no real syntax. Meanwhile, the Dark Magic language is just English which has been recorded and then played back in reverse! While the language choices themselves are not particularly sophisticated, though, they are an intentional-seeming way. Both types of spells end up being used as linguistic Easter Eggs. The semantic content of spells is never explained in the show, and it does not need to be, because all that matters is their magical effects, which are obviously shown; however, if you can decode the gimmick, you discover that the spells actually do have a logical semantic relation to magic effects they cause. And using real natural languages as the basis for these magic systems allows those Easter Eggs to be accessible to, and payoff for, a much larger portion of the audience than using a conlang and having to put in the effort to Teach The Reader (or Viewer, in this case).
This highlights what I have come to realize is a significant subdivision in the Easter Egg strategy. Easter Eggs can be used in two ways:
- As a way to make the author happy, to allow a special connection with some subset of readers without ever intending to impact the "mainstream" experience of the story, and/or to provide proof of the consistency of the world for that set of fans who will inevitably dissect the heck out of anything (i.e., the linguistic equivalent of the MIT students who proved that the Ringworld was unstable).
- As a puzzle which is not necessary to the plot (in case it is not solved), but which readers are intended to solve, on the basis that you get more enjoyment from active involvement and solving such puzzles than you do from simply being told the answer.
A more explicit instance of the second type of Easter Egg is demonstrated by this clue I found hidden around the Evermore Fantasy Live-Action Role Playing Park during their last summer season:
It's not a conlang, and it's not gibberish--it's a rotation cipher of English! As such, if you find these kinds of clues in the park, it is not immediately obvious what they say, or what relevance they have to the ongoing storyline--but it's also not that hard to figure it out, and get that extra dopamine boost from having done so. Do I wish they had a proper conlang? Yes, of course! I obviously would! But simultaneously, I must admit that that would have kind of defeated the purpose of the game, as far fewer players would have had the opportunity to solve it.
Returning to The Dragon Prince, I also have to admit that playing speech backwards does lend the Dark Magic spells a uniquely weird aesthetic quality, which does not hurt the sense of immersion in the world.
Looking at a slightly higher level, there is clearly a standard translation convention in effect, with whatever the common (oral) language of the fantasy world is being represented for the audience as English. And it is not too difficult to see this translation convention extending beyond just the one language--perhaps, for example, Draconic is not actually Latin, but is an ancient ceremonial language that occupies a similar place in the world's cultural consciousness as Latin does in ours, and which is thus non-diagetically translated into Latin. And perhaps Katolis Sign Language is not actually a mix of ASL and Signed English (which, yes, are different things!), but is the major sign language that is familiar to and used by our main characters from the Kingdom of Katolis, just as ASL is the sign language that will be most familiar to the primarily-English speaking audience.
Generally, establishing these kinds of extended translations equivalencies is a... fraught decision. It is usually a bad idea to just pick some arbitrary natural language to stick in as the language of your fictional ethnic group in your fictional world, because languages are fundamental components of human cultures and personal identities, and it's just kind of a crappy thing to appropriate that someone else's culture and implicitly impose your own invented culture onto it. This is why people like George Corley of Conlangery fame argue that, if you are writing a fictional culture, you need a conlang. And indeed, many conlangs have been created specifically for that reason--to avoid possibly offending any real-world culture. Notably, Kilikki, from the Baahubali films, came about because they needed a language that sounded harsh and scary for an enemy tribe--and do you really want to put yourself out there claiming that a real person's language is inherently scary and evil?
Nevertheless, it can be done. In hidden world fantasies or alternate, for example, it is often the case that certain fictional cultures would speak certain real languages, if they actually existed. And for secondary-world fantasy, establishing a basic translation convention with the audience's primary language (in this case, English) is obviously necessary in most cases. Beyond that, there are some languages which are sufficiently widely spoken across different cultures (e.g., Spanish, French, English), or which occupy specific identifiable cultural roles that can be analogized to the culture of the fictional world (e.g., Latin), such that using that as secondary conventional equivalents is more safe.
In this case, between the use of Latin and ASL, the only one I would be potentially concerned about is ASL. But since the show is targeted at an American audience, I assume that this ends up occupying the same kind of "necessary narrative translation" space for the Deaf audience as English does for the hearing audience; and as I have not come across any kind of backlash from the Deaf community, it seems to have been the right decision for this show.
Now, with all that high level stuff out of the way, let's dive deep into the usage of ASL, which is much more than just Easter Egging! (Warning: A Few Spoilers Ahead)
Some lovely people on Reddit and Tumblr (2, 3) have provided English translations of all of the in-show-untranslated ASL dialog, which makes this a bit easier than it was with Mr. Holland's Opus. And fortunately (? or not, I guess, depending on how much you love seeing the ASL representation), ASL is primarily used by a side character who, despite having a significant plot function, only actually appears in a few episodes for a few scenes each, so we can run through all 3 seasons pretty quickly.
The first exposure we have to ASL is in season 1, episode 4, when we are introduced to General Amaya and her translator Gren. Most of the ASL in the show comes from Amaya, and is diagetically translated into English by this guy who is always following her around. Notably, just as in Mr. Holland's Opus, there are no subtitles, so other techniques have to be used! And to avoid incessant repetition of "oh look, more diagetic translation!", we'll focus on those.
In that first ASL episode, there are a couple of instance of Making It Obvious--once, when Amaya looks concerned and Gren signs to her "What's wrong?"--a perfectly natural and expected thing to ask of someone who suddenly looks worried! And again when Prince Callum is trying to get get Amaya's attention in a kind-of-annoying manner, and she turns around and signs "What?" Aside from the ease specifically of representing ASL in video rather than text, it is just so much easier to quickly and efficiently Make It Obvious with all of the additional tools available in a visual medium! (See also, e.g., the beating-you-over-the-head visual highlighting of the Martian moons in John Carter.)
Later on in that episode, we get an instance of delayed translation for establishing narrative tension (also establishing that Prince Callum, at least, also knows sign language, and so theoretically does not need the diagetic translations) when the Prince signs to Amaya to keep Rayla out of the loop--but also to indicate by the choice of language that he is trying to keep Rayla out of the loop (not actually true, insofar as that is an effect, but not a primary intent; that is, the intent is to use sign language, which Rayla does not know, to make Amaya think that Callum is not acting with Rayla--the fact that Rayla actually unaware of what Callum is doing at that point is kind of irrelevant, and ends up backfiring on him!) When Gren eventually announces to everyone, including Rayla, what Callum had said, the audience is then brought in on what a terrible idea that actually was!
In episode 5, we get an extended, untranslated ASL monologue when Amaya visits the (tomb?) memorial of her dead sister. The context makes the kind of thing that a person might be saying in that situation pretty clear (unless, I guess, you have never visited someone's grave or watched other media featuring similar scenes), but it does give you a little potential foreshadowing of what will come later if you understand it (in sort, she is apologizing for losing custody of her sister's sons, the princes), so pretty solidly in the Easter Egg category for me. In particular, if you did not understand ASL, but were told the content of that monolog anyway, it would help with figuring out the next untranslated bit: after an extended discussion about how to recover the missing princes, assigning Gren to lead the search, and warning the guards about possible betrayal, Amaya signs in private to Gren. What would you expect in that situation? A final goodbye to the trusted translator that she has just sent off on another mission? Well, yeah. That's exactly what it is: "I have trusted you as my voice, now I trust you as my will. Save the boys."
In season 2, episode 4, we finally see Amaya again, without a translator, and we hear this half of a conversion:
[Amaya signs to another office]
General Amaya, we've searched everywhere and there's been no sign of the elves.I think it's safe to conclude that the outpost on the Xadian side remains secret.There, look! The signal! The outpost is secure.
[Amaya signs some more]
Yes, General. I'll ready a party.
The gist of what she's saying, I think, has been Made Pretty Darn Obvious by the context of how this other character is reacting to it. (If you thought it might be something like "I see elves down there." and "No. Something's wrong. Set up a search party.", congratulations! You would be right!)
When that party arrives at their destination, they encounter a Katolis soldier who is orally communicating that, yeah, everything is fine, sorry I was late with the signal, nice of you to check in but there are not problems here! Yet he is signing at the same time. At this point, it's been well established that General Amaya does not need other people's speech to be translated into sign for her benefit, so what is this soldier doing? His choice to use a sign language--and more specifically, to use the visual medium rather than the aural medium to communicate something--is all we need to know! In this case, the medium literally is the message! What he is saying out loud is for the benefit of someone else, and is a lie.
In episode 6, we have a flashback in which Amaya in comforted by her not-dead-yet sister Sarai after a fight with a monster, with both of them signing. This is straight-up Easter Egg. The exchange is completely plot-irrelevant, but if you understand it, it's funny:
Amaya: "How do I look?"
Sarai: "Not great, but you should see the other guy!"
This is closely followed by a statement which Sarai translates:
"You don't need to whisper Viren. I'm deaf."
Which I mention for only one reason: up until this point, in the series, I would've sworn that Amaya was a hearing mute! As previously mentioned, she does not require translation of other people's speech, even at pretty significant range--and knowing that is important to understanding what the guard-who-was-late-with-his-signal was trying to communicate. So either she's lying, or Amaya is a truly superhuman lipreader! And that bugs the heck out of me! Compare Cole's representation in Mr. Holland's Opus--whenever Glenn is talking to him they make sure that Glenn is at close range and facing Cole, and Cole at one point even grabs Glenn's head to force him to keep his face in view for lipreading.
In season 3, episode 1, Amaya and Gren are briefly re-united, and we get something between Easter Egg and Obvious when Amaya points at Gren's beard and he signs back "We have a lot to talk about.", and an Obvious interjection when Gren informs Amaya that "Lord Viren has been arrested for treason."; given that the audience (or at least I) totally saw that coming, I think we could all figure out the meaning when Amaya rolls her eyes and signs "Wow." This is a particularly noteworthy use of secondary language because, although in he TV show format we get a great deal of additional information from body language and facial expression, one can imagine this being translated into print without much difficulty, as it is not an instance of Making It Obvious that relies solely on the immediate discourse context; rather, a proper audience understanding of that particular bit of not-English is established by, essentially, the entire preceding plot and characterization of Lord Viren, such that you have the exact same response to this news as the character does, and its precise linguistic realization is irrelevant.
That episode also features another instance of delayed translation for dramatic effect; when Amaya embarks on what is, essentially, a suicide mission, we get this exchange:
Soldier 1: "But Amaya, you won't survive!"
[Amaya signs]
Soldier 2: "What did she say?"
Soldier 1: "She said the rest of us will."
This leads to (Spoiler alert!) Amaya not actually dying, but being captured by elves, which triggers an interesting conversation amongst her captors, not in sign, but about sign:
"The human prisoner communicates in some kind of... hand language."
"Sign language, actually. And she probably uses Katolis sign language specifically. You see, many of the regions use different--"
"Can you translate or not?"
"Oh,um, yes, I was top of my class in linguistics. Although I don't suppose a hand language would technically be linguistics. What would you call it? Finguistics?"
While the "finguistics" thing is a joke (note that sign languages are languages, and are in fact studied under linguistics), this is actually parallel to a real debate in the history of sign linguistics. In the early days of sign language research, William Stokoe coined the terms chereme and cherology (from Greek χείρ / kheír, “hand”) for the sub-morphemic structures of sign languages, by analogy with phoneme & phonology for oral languages and "grapheme" for written language. Modern technical usage, however, has settled on simply using the single set of terms "phonology" and "phoneme" for both oral and sign languages, as the medium in which they are encoded is not as important as the level of abstraction being described.
But jokes aside, there's some neat linguistics communication packed into this exchange. For one thing, this is the first acknowledgement we get of an explicit non-diagetic translation convention, in that we have it confirmed that what we see on screen as ASL is actually a representation of in-world Katolis Sign Language. Furthermore, we have an acknowledgement that "sign language" is not universal--we are told that there are in fact different regional sign languages. Of course, the fact that there are multiple sign languages in-world just serves to lampshade the ridiculousness of the entire world speaking a common oral language with no barriers to communication between characters of any species or nation... but on the other hand, it is not unrealistic for sign languages to be more diverse than the oral languages of the corresponding cultures, given that Deaf communities (especially prior to modern telecommunications technologies) tend to be much small and more isolated from each other than oral speech communities. See, for example, the variety between ASL, BSL, Auslan, and NZSL (one of which is not even related to the other three) among countries in the real world, all of whose primary spoken language is English.
Later on, in the course of interrogation, we get another gem of... not so much delayed translation, but delayed description:
"Um, oh my."
"Well, what did she say?"
"If my interpretation is correct, and it is... she suggested an unusual way in which your body might accomodate your sword."
Eventually (Spoilers!), Amaya is released, and we are introduced to that scene with the interrogator being interrupted after saying:
"You know, I think this interrogation is going very well; you're not dead!"
which is said orally while simultaneously signing. I'm not really sure what the point of that was; did the writers just like that joke too much to make it an Easter Egg, so they vocalized it to avoid subtitles? Or are supposed to infer that the interrogator isn't really comfortable with pure signing? Because SimCom, as I mentioned last time, is really not ideal, and the interrogator is not translating for anyone else at that time.
There are only two more instance of untranslated ASL, which occur in episodes 8 and 9 of season 3. First, when Amaya and Callum are reunited, with one of Amaya's former captors in tow, we get this exchange:
Callum: "Uh, looks like you have an elf friend now, too?"
Elf: "We are not... friends. She is my prisoner."
[Amaya smirks and signs]
This is somewhere between Obvious and Easter Egg. Some of the intended meaning is communicated paralinguistically through the smirking facial expression, but it's funnier if you get the ASL: "She thinks I'm cute; she just isn't admitting it."
And finally, so fast you could easily miss it, a quick signed "I'm OK" after Amaya is injured in battle and then picked up to be evacuated. I'm gonna call that a solid Easter Egg, 'cause you definitely can't call it "Obvious" if you don't notice there's something there to interpret in the first place, and I did not my first time through! But it's Easter Egging of a sort that can really only be accomplished in the visual medium, as text does not permit you to so easily sweep something by the audience at an author-controlled high speed!
So, there you go! Everything about language in the first three seasons of The Dragon Prince. And hey, it actually turns out to do a couple of unique and interesting things!
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