The Ladder in Other Tongues

A Ranger's rank is filed under one style, the one Rank and the Chain of Command gives, and it is spoken in every language the Corps serves among. The Archive does with ranks what it does with clocks and with names: the filed style is the document, and each people's rendering is kept beside it, attributed and revisable (Timekeeping and the Common Record). A rendering is a courtesy. It never settles who holds what — the filed rank does that — and in any disagreement between a rendering and a tab, the tab is right.

The renderings are worth keeping for a different reason. Every one of them had to decide what a rank is in order to name it, and no two peoples decided the same way. Laid side by side, they read the ladder more sharply than the ladder reads itself.

The Irish of the Celtic Union

The Celtic Union drafted its charter in Irish, and Irish remains the working language of administration on Tír na nÓg. When Ranger officers began to appear in Union records after reconnection — survey crews first, then the officers the gate agreement escorts — the Union's own translators rendered the ladder into Irish for those records. The rendering is the Union's, not the Corps'. The Corps never asked for it and does not issue it; a Ranger posted to a Union world learns it the way a visitor learns a host's courtesies.

The Irish is the Union's own, three centuries on from the arks. It is written as the Union writes it, and a reader who knows the Irish of the arks' century will find it familiar but not identical, the difference being the reconstruction's: the spoken language was partly lost on the crossing and rebuilt from the texts and from linguistic principles, so it is regular where the old was not. The rendering turns on one word the translators could not avoid. Irish names a warden of a bounded ground and a ranger by the same word, maor, and has never needed two. So the corps is na Maoir Réalta, and the Union's reader hears on every tab what the founding entry takes a section to argue: that command in this corps begins as wardenship, and a ranger is what a warden is called when the ground is too large to stand on. The English has to explain that. The Irish cannot help saying it.

Filed style	Irish	Literally
Star Ranger (the corps; any Ranger at Field Officer or above)	Maor Réalta, plural Maoir Réalta	warden of the stars
Novice	Nóibhíseach	novice
Cadet	Dalta	pupil, cadet
Deputy Officer	Leas-Oifigeach	deputy officer
Field Officer	Oifigeach Allamuigh	the officer out there
Senior Officer	Oifigeach Sinsearach	senior officer
Principal Officer	Príomhoifigeach	principal officer
Section Lead	Ceann Rannóige	head of a section
Chief	Ardoifigeach	high officer
Starwarden	Maor Stáisiúin	warden of a station
Archwarden	Maor Loinge	warden of a ship
Line Captain	Captaen Líne	captain of a line
Star Captain	Captaen Réalta	captain of stars
High Captain	Ardchaptaen	high captain
Council of High Captains	Comhairle na nArdchaptaen	council of the high captains
Triumvirate	An Triúracht	the three
Field Triumvirate	Triúracht Allamuigh	the three out there

Four things in it are deliberate, and the Union's translators recorded their reasons.

• Field Officer is the officer out there. Allamuigh is the ordinary word for outside, out of doors, away from the house, and it names exactly what the rank is: the first rung at which a Ranger is posted and acts alone, beyond anyone's supervision. The same word carries into Triúracht Allamuigh, the Field Triumvirate, so an Irish reader hears that the emergency body and the rank that sets its floor are both the ones that act where nobody else is. And like the English Field Officer, it cannot be mistaken for the collective Maor Réalta — the formal style stays the unambiguous one in both languages.
• The two warden ranks are named for what they answer for. A Starwarden answers for a fixed post and an Archwarden for a vessel under its captain, and the Irish says station and ship and nothing about seniority. That is why the rendering needed no change in 2833, when the Corps restyled its ship's second from Starwarden First Officer: the Irish had never carried the misreading the English was restyled to escape.
• The duty titles of Chief keep the ard-. A Chief on a general section is Ardmhaor, on the piloting track Ardphíolóta, on the security track Ardphropast, on the research track Ardoifigeach Eolaíochta, and in the Liaison Corps Ardoifigeach Idirchaidrimh; the boundary-safety track's senior chief warden officer, which the English writes in lower case, the Irish writes the same way, as ardoifigeach maoirseachta sinsearach. Propast is the word the Union uses for the head of a college, and the translators chose it over any word from the Union's own ceremonial military, because the Provost track is not military police by status and the rendering was not to suggest it.
• The captaincies stay captaincies. The upper ladder took its vocabulary from vessel and station command, and the Irish keeps that inheritance rather than disguising it. A captain, in Irish as in English, is first the person a ship answers to.

The rendering has one weak joint, and it is the English one moved across. Príomhoifigeach and Ardoifigeach are as close in Irish as Principal and Chief are in English, and nobody meeting either pair cold can tell from the words which is senior. The tab tells them: six bars against a bar and a ring.

The Union keeps five other languages, and its Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, Breton, Cornish and Manx records carry their own renderings, made by their own translators. The Archive has not filed them and has not been asked to.

Six Peoples, in Translation

What follows is filed the way the record files every non-human language: rendered in translation, never in the people's own sounds. A rendering is one language's reading of the ladder, taken from the usage of that people's Rangers or translators; none of these peoples has only one language, and none of the renderings is offered as the only one. Where a people's own channel cannot be written at all, the page says what the written rendering loses.

Krenyi — what the officer does now

The Krenyi attend to what is here and what is coming, and go to the past only when it still does work. Their rendering of the ladder is a set of present-tense clauses about what the officer does, with no honorific anywhere in it and no trace of how the rank was reached. Nai, the Krenyi state-marker for still relevant here, is not a title and is never attached to one.

Filed style	Krenyi rendering
Star Ranger	goes where it thins
Novice	is being tried for the work
Cadet	learns the work beside someone
Deputy Officer	does the work where it is watched
Field Officer	does the work alone
Senior Officer	does the work and is asked about it
Principal Officer	does the work and teaches it
Section Lead	keeps a shift
Chief	is the last word on one kind of work
Starwarden	answers for a place
Archwarden	answers for a ship, under its captain
Line Captain	answers for a line
Star Captain	answers for lines
High Captain	answers for a region
Council of High Captains	those who answer for regions, sitting
Triumvirate	the three the Oversight Council asks
Field Triumvirate	three who answer for this, now

The rendering has no form for a former rank. A retired Ranger's rank leaves Krenyi speech on the day the work stops. It is not a slight, and Krenyi Rangers explain it to human colleagues the same way each time: a rank that no longer does any work is not a rank, it is a history, and a history offered as a description is the one use of the past the Krenyi decline.

Ilveth — who spends heat on whom

On Sardain heat is the only wealth, and an Ilveth who warms a sentence for you has spent on you. Their rendering of the ladder follows the money. The lower ranks are those whom others spend heat on; the higher ranks are those who spend it on others. Ilveth Rangers use these forms in click-speech for the day's work. The warm-written form of a rank is reserved, as everything warm-written is, for the moment it is worth paying to say it. The record does not say which moments those are.

Filed style	Ilveth rendering
Star Ranger	one who goes into the dark for others
Novice	one warmed while it is decided
Cadet	one warmed while learning
Deputy Officer	one who works in another's warmth
Field Officer	one who carries their own heat
Senior Officer	one whose heat is asked for
Principal Officer	one who spends heat on teaching
Section Lead	one who warms a watch
Chief	one who keeps a craft warm
Starwarden	one who keeps a post warm
Archwarden	one who keeps a hull warm, second to its captain
Line Captain	one who spends for a line
Star Captain	one who spends for many lines
High Captain	one who spends for a region
Council of High Captains	the spenders for regions, gathered
Triumvirate	the three whose heat is spent for all
Field Triumvirate	three who spend at once

The Ilveth rendering is the only one that reads command entirely as a cost to the commander. Ilveth Rangers do not find that remarkable. Warm-blooded colleagues sometimes do.

Ovruhn — checked against, and answered through

Among the Ovruhn, anything worth keeping is chorus-kept, and its authority is how many living memories hold it and how well they agree. Their space is a form of their word for quiet. Ovruhn Rangers render the ladder in the chorus's terms, and the rendering does something no other one does: it changes verb at the hinge.

Filed style	Ovruhn rendering
Star Ranger	one who goes into the quiet
Novice	one the chorus is listening to
Cadet	one learning a part
Deputy Officer	one who sings beside a keeper
Field Officer	one who holds a part alone
Senior Officer	one others check their part against
Principal Officer	one who teaches a part
Section Lead	one who keeps a watch's chorus
Chief	one a whole part is checked against
Starwarden	one a place answers through
Archwarden	one a hull answers through, beside its captain
Line Captain	one a line answers through
Star Captain	one many lines answer through
High Captain	one a region answers through
Council of High Captains	those regions answer through, sung together
Triumvirate	the three the whole answers through
Field Triumvirate	three voices, now

Up to Chief, an officer is someone a part is checked against: a keeper of what is right in a craft. From Starwarden up, an officer is someone a place or a line answers through: a keeper of what is done. The Ovruhn did not know the charter's guild boundary when they made the rendering. They made it by listening to how the ranks behaved, and heard two ladders where the tabs show one.

Chthonari — where the load comes down

The Chthonari read structures by listening to them, and many of those who serve do so in the Engineering Corps. Their written rendering of the ladder is a structural one: every rank is a member of a structure, named for the load it carries and what it rests on. Chthonari engineers file it in Corps records with a warning attached, that the written form is to the Undersong form what a drawing is to a load test. The Undersong form also marks whether the officer named is felt through shared structure — the same Starwarden is named one way aboard her own station and the other way over a relay — and the written rendering, like every page, has to drop the distinction.

Filed style	Chthonari rendering
Star Ranger	one who reads the thin places
Novice	a member not yet loaded
Cadet	a member braced by another
Deputy Officer	a member carrying load inside another's bracing
Field Officer	a member that carries its own load
Senior Officer	a member others brace against
Principal Officer	a member that tunes others
Section Lead	a member a span rests on
Chief	the member a craft's load comes down to
Starwarden	the footing of a post
Archwarden	the spine of a hull, under its captain
Line Captain	the footing a line stands on
Star Captain	the footing lines stand on
High Captain	the footing of a region
Council of High Captains	the footings, tuned together
Triumvirate	the three-point bearing the whole rests on
Field Triumvirate	a three-point bearing, set in the moment

The Triumvirate's rendering is an engineer's and not a courtier's: three supports are the fewest that fix a plane, and a body on three feet does not rock. Chthonari Rangers consider it the only rank in the ladder whose number needed no explaining.

Cerebraun — the voice for what and the voice for how

A Cerebraun presents one executive voice to the world, and the limb-ganglia beneath it are expected to carry out that voice's decisions rather than argue over them as equals. The Hegemony's diplomatic register renders the Corps' ranks in the formal display-language, and it had to invent something to do it: a distinction between a voice for what and a voice for how, which Cerebraun governance does not otherwise draw.

Filed style	Cerebraun rendering
Star Ranger	one sent to where things thin
Novice	a limb being tried
Cadet	a limb learning
Deputy Officer	a limb acting on another's voice
Field Officer	a limb acting on its own voice
Senior Officer	a limb others consult
Principal Officer	a limb that teaches
Section Lead	a voice for a watch
Chief	the voice for how
Starwarden	the voice for what, at a post
Archwarden	the second voice of a hull
Line Captain	the voice for what, along a line
Star Captain	the voice for what, across lines
High Captain	the voice for what, across a region
Council of High Captains	the voices for what, in session
Triumvirate	the three voices the whole is answerable through
Field Triumvirate	three voices, convened

Hegemony diplomats describe the Corps' doctrine that an order has to stop short of the method as the least natural thing in the ladder: a voice for what that may not reach the how, and a Chief whose voice on method an Archwarden may not overrule. The rendering does not argue with the doctrine. It had to name it, and in naming it made plain how far it is from the Hegemony's own arrangement. Whether any Cerebraun has served in the Corps the record does not say. The rendering is the Hegemony's, for dealing with Rangers, not for being one.

Ollune — what an officer holds up

The Ollune render their own name roughly as the held. A person's standing among them is a claim on the lift of others, and their word for a rich individual translates as heavy, which is not a compliment. The rendering Ollune translators use in Federation dealings with the Corps therefore measures seniority by what an officer holds up, and never by weight; no Ollune translator would call a High Captain heavy. And because the Ollune have no expression for a place that does not include when you will be at it, a fixed post comes out as something else entirely.

Filed style	Ollune rendering
Star Ranger	one who goes where the air ends
Novice	newly held
Cadet	held while learning the air
Deputy Officer	held within call
Field Officer	one who keeps their own lift
Senior Officer	one who has lifted another
Principal Officer	one who teaches lift
Section Lead	one who holds a watch aloft
Chief	one a craft is held up by
Starwarden	keeper of a standing appointment
Archwarden	second holder of a drift
Line Captain	holder of a band of appointments
Star Captain	holder of bands
High Captain	holder of a whole depth
Council of High Captains	the depth-holders, gathered
Triumvirate	the three who hold the holders
Field Triumvirate	three who catch a fall

Keeper of a standing appointment is the rendering's best-known line, and Starwardens who hear it tend to keep it. A Threshold-class station does not move, but the watch kept on it is exactly an appointment kept again every day at the same place, and nobody in the Corps had put it that way before the Ollune did. The Field Triumvirate's rendering is the other one people remember: in the Ollune language falling asleep and going under are the same word, and the body convened when someone is going under is the one that catches.

Where There Is No Rendering

The Archive marks the absences rather than filling them.

• The Veyr and the Serephine serve in the Corps, and nothing in the record describes how either people speaks, so the Archive holds no rendering of the ladder from either. Veyr and Serephine Rangers use the filed styles, or their own forms among themselves; which, the record does not say.
• The Prismeri work with the Corps under a standing material compact, and the Mnemari sit at compact tables as memory; nothing on file from either renders the ranks.
• The Told have no rendering and could not yet have one. After two years at Fliade nothing of their language has been translated, and a rendering of anyone's ranks is one of the last things a translation reaches.

Why the Tab Does Not Translate

The rank tab is read the same way on every body the Corps fields — seated on a collar, on a shell, on a hull — and this page is the reason that matters. The framers could not give every people the same word for a rank, and did not try. They gave every people the same mark: a bar count, a ring, a seal, legible at arm's length to an eye, a sensor or a limb-tip that has never heard the rank spoken in any language. The words are free to disagree, and they do, and each disagreement says something true about the ladder. The tab is there so that nobody standing in a doorway ever has to settle which rendering was right.

See Also

• Rank and the Chain of Command
• Rank, Insignia, and the Ranger Uniform
• The Founding of the Star Rangers
• The Celtic Union of Planets
• Timekeeping and the Common Record