A standalone novel by Ann Leckie set in the Imperial Radch universe.
Enae is a newly-minted diplomat with what's supposed to be a sinecure—find a Presger Translator who went missing over 200 years ago. Enae's supposed to put in a token effort to make hir government look good, but sie has always believed that if you're going to do a job, you should do it right.
Reet doesn't know where he belongs. He loves his parents, but he's always longed to know about his biological family, especially given how different he feels from everyone around him. When a political group approaches him claiming that he is secretly a long-lost member of a supposedly extinct royal family, is it too good to be true?
Qven is a Translator. They are among the brightest of their Clade, and they have a purpose to fulfill—but what if they don't want what they're supposed to want?
These three are about to have more in common than they ever could have imagined. And over them all hangs the shadow of a possible renegotiation of the Treaty, as every species scrambles to make sure their own interests are represented, and the mysterious Presger mull over who will be granted Significance.
Translation State provides examples of the following tropes:
- Bizarre Alien Biology: It's clearer than ever that Translators really do not work like humans, no matter how human they look. All of them can do the "eat something and vomit it out whole" trick, they have some kind of extra sense that allows them to do extremely strange tricks with space in some way connected with the Presger, and they aren't born as complete beings, they must Match with another Translator when they reach adulthood or die. It's possible for this to go wrong and turn both Translators into a pile of pulsating goo. It's also possible to do this on a human and accidentally create a baby Translator. After the Match, the two (or more) Translators become a sort of Hive Mind, which persists across any and all distance and/or dimensional barriers.
- Black-and-Gray Morality: The Phen are a violently oppressive occupying regime who have gone so far as to ban the Hikipi language and religion, driving most Hikipi from their homes and treating the ones who couldn't get away as subhuman. Many of the Hikipi resistance groups, however, are conspiracy theorists who repeatedly attack innocents totally unrelated to the conflict (in particular, their belief that the Presger are made up by the Phen causes no end of trouble).
- Blunt "No": When Reet demands to know if Ambassador Seimet cares about the Phen occupation's behaviour in his home system, Seimet can only respond, "No, I don't."
- Dissonant Serenity: No matter how badly things go, Sphene is never that worried and maintains the same chipper demeanor—justified, because as she's only present in a single ancillary, it's not actually possible for her to be injured. Losing one ancillary is like a bad hangnail.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: "Matching", something all Translators are expected to undergo, is very similar to sex (although they also can and do have sex in the sense humans understand it). It's a big, important, very intimate thing that Translator children are nevertheless seriously under-educated about (largely to prevent them making their own decisions about it, as it transpires). When another juvenile attempts to force a Match on Qven, it comes across exactly like a sexual assault—Qven is traumatized and avoids physical contact afterwards, authority figures blame them for "allowing" themself to get into that situation and treat them like they're Defiled Forever, etc.
- Gory Discretion Shot:
- Qven gets really, really angry when Reet is threatened, and after disabling the terrorist who held him hostage...vents some spleen. The only description of what Qven does is Qven mention getting all the way to peeling the skin off the guy's ribcage before being interrupted by backup finally showing up, and the fact that once word of this gets around, the entire station is terrified of Qven.
- There's just enough description of Tvam's gory death from their biology turning on them to be disturbing.
- Gruesome Grandparent: Enae's grandmother reveled in the power her title and (alleged) money gave her over her family and spent decades methodically abusing, isolating, and exploiting Enae, the only person who could bear to live with her. After her death, Enae struggles to reconcile the meagre bits of happiness they had with the terrible pain she inflicted.
- Hidden Backup Prince: The Siblings of Hikipu would like Reet to believe he's the last descendant of the Schan, the extinct ruling family of the Hikipi (largely because it would really, really help the Hikipi resistance movement if they had a Schan for everyone to rally around). He's not.
- Impoverished Patrician: Enae's grandmother was one, although nobody knew until she died. The old woman lost all her money, but maintained herself in the style of a rich woman by selling absolutely everything—including adoption as her heirs—to a Nouveau Riche family, with the proviso they wouldn't tell anyone and wouldn't take possession of any of it until her death.
- Literal-Minded: Translator Dlar attempts to discredit Qven by claiming Qven has killed "countless" other juveniles. As the other characters continue to argue over this assertion, Qven is quietly counting in the background, until...Qven: Thirty-four. Though I might have missed a few from when I was a Tiny. I don't remember that time very well. But I didn't have many teeth then.
Sphene: That's not even close to countless. I've killed more humans than that in a single day. - Nature vs. Nurture: Translator Dlar claims that all juvenile Translators are naturally violent. However, Reet proves this is untrue. While an instinctive interest in biting and vivisection seems to be purely genetic, Reet immediately stopped biting other children once it was explained to him that he was seriously hurting them, and has never raised a hand to anyone since.
- Nondescript, Nasty, Nutritious: The only foodstuff available on Central is skel, a thick, fleshy leaf that's nutritionally complete but has an indescribably odd flavour. Condiments are inadequate to the task of disguising it.
- Obstructive Bureaucrat: The Radchaai ambassador gets in everybody else's way because she's only concerned about entrenching a) the empire's position, and b) her position. She takes this to such an extreme she nearly gets them all killed.
- Only Cares About Inheritance: At Enae's grandmother's funeral, her family are eager to put her in the dirt and claim their inheritance... only to learn she had secretly gone broke and left them nothing but a mocking note.
- Permafusion: To reach adulthood, Presger Translators need to "match" with another Translator or compatible being. They separate into the same number of bodies they started with, but are implied to be a single entity existing in More than Three Dimensions. The equitability of the match varies from equal partnerships to one personality subsuming the other.
- Pronoun Trouble:
- Multiple cultures with extremely different ideas about how gender works are involved, so of course this comes up. Enae refers to Sphene as "it", while Reet has to fight to be called "he" after his Translator heritage is revealed, and Qven settles on "e" as pronouns after realizing e can have a gender other than "they". And then after Reet and Qven Match they have to figure out their own pronouns all over again.
- Radchaai of course refers to everyone only with "she", but the version spoken within Zeoseni space added gendered third-person pronouns due to the preferences of the people there. As a result, during one conversation, Reet is referred to by all of "he", "she", and "they" note depending on who was speaking.
- Poor Communication Kills: Averted. Not telling juveniles about how Matching works does literally kill a few of them every year (as they fail to recognize the signs they're ready to Match, or hide it because they don't understand how serious it really is, etc), but achieves its actual goal—keeping most juveniles pliant and willing to accept whatever Match their clade makes for them. The Translator brass get exactly what they want out of withholding the information, and are fully aware of the consequences, they just consider it acceptable. Qven's Teacher was busted down to the less prestigious position of working with "failed" juveniles for expressing the straightforward interpretation of this trope too often and forcefully.
- Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: Due to some revelations about the way Translators work, in particular the process of Matching, it turns out that Translator Dlique didn't actually die when she was shot—she and Zeiat are the same person (well, mostly, anyway). Zeiat/Dlique apparently just didn't feel up to explaining, although in between her last appearance and now she gave Sphene an explanation, as Sphene now calls her Dlique most of the time.
- Spanner in the Works: Enae's job is supposed to be a nice comfortable sinecure, and nobody expects them to do more than make a couple form inquiries for the look of the thing and then use it as an excuse to travel around on a plush starship (sie was given it essentially as an apology by hir new cousins, and also as a way to get the most obvious biological heir far away from them). The fact Enae actually does look—and more than that, actually finds something—throws every political faction involved for an extremely messy loop.
- Xenofiction: A third of the book is narrated by Qven, who as a Translator is superficially human but is very different from humans both biologically and psychologically. (Of particular note is the fact Qven doesn't consider eating other children to be strange, and likewise considers it so normal for someone to have multiple bodies that the fact Teacher has more than one body is mentioned in passing and only when the bodies are in different enough places that Qven needs to clarify.)
