Omnicompetence

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mwhittington
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Post by mwhittington »

Rochey wrote:Which, naturaly, makes virtualy no sense. You can take languages from two different regions on our one, little, tiny planet and they can be nothing alike. We're now to accept that two languages, from completely different cultures that have had no influence on each other historicaly are now similar enough that they all come from one base root?
Oh, sure! Am I the only one who confuses the African clicking language with Swedish?
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Captain Picard's Hair
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Post by Captain Picard's Hair »

There are even some basic concepts in languages/cultures which don't exist in other languages/cultures. These are difficult to translate even when the two cultures exist on the same planet and come into contact with each other. This would surely become an even greater problem when the two languages come from entirely different species
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Post by Mikey »

Captain Picard's Hair wrote:There are even some basic concepts in languages/cultures which don't exist in other languages/cultures. These are difficult to translate even when the two cultures exist on the same planet and come into contact with each other. This would surely become an even greater problem when the two languages come from entirely different species
Which is why "Darmok" was such a great ep, although it technically fell down in that the UT was still able to translate the words, if not the syntax/grammar. Even among some similarly geographically-derivative languages - Germanic v. Romance, for example - some are dependent on adjectives and articles while some are inflected. Now add the fact that subjects are often optional in the inflected languages...

Now, supoose we had invented a translator to cover all those issues, so our major languages can all be filtered through it. Then, feed it a snetence or two in Basque...

You get the idea.
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Monroe
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Post by Monroe »

I thought it read people's brain waves to see what they wanted to say?
Sionnach Glic
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Post by Sionnach Glic »

But then we get to other problems. Such as how it's able to differentiate the wave for "I like you" from "Burn in hell", and how it's able to read the brainwaves of a creature that it has never encountered before, and is on another ship behind tonnes of steel and shielding.
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