Lost in Translation

"Lost in Translation" by Laurence M. Janifer is a science fiction story set in the early 1960's. It's about the difficult problem of talking to beings from other planets when their way of thinking is very different. In the story, Korvin’s spaceship goes down on the planet Tr'en, and the super logical aliens who live there capture him. The Tr'en try to get Korvin to tell them about Earth, because they want the secrets about how its government works and what makes its people unique. But the Tr'en only understand things in a very strict, logical way. Korvin finds a way to use this against them to escape, showing how important it is to understand different cultures and how being too focused on one way of thinking can cause problems.