“Peterson, who has a masters in linguistics from UC San Diego….is also the alien language and culture consultant at SyFy’s Defiance and the president of the Language Creation Society (LCS), which is made up of conlangers – creators of conlangs, or constructed languages.”

There’s a job title for ya: alien language and culture consultant.

“It [creating a native word for “book”] seems like a simple task, but this actually assumes quite a lot about the speakers: that they have a written form of their language; that they have something to write down; that they have some value for literature or scholarship; that literature or scholarship exists; that they’ve invented paper; that they’ve invented styluses, ink and book binding. One word, a world of assumptions.”

Fascinating. Now I wish I had taken a linguistics course.

Article: http://blog.ted.com/2013/03/29/meet-david-peterson-who-developed-dothraki-for-hbos-game-of-thrones/