Omnicommunicability

Captain Picard's Hair · Sun Jan 13, 2008 1:58 am

Here's one of the subtler aspects of Trek that is completely unrealistic: the Enterprise, Defiant, or especially Voyager run into alien species that no human has ever seen before, and in the time it takes to order "on screen," we're having a conversation in which they speak perfect English! Even if the computer is translating, it would take some time to generate a translation matrix. The few times Trek did it right, like in "Darmok," in some sense it only makes Trek look contradictory. This is one of the few things that "Enterprise" was absolutely correct on; it would have been more plausible if every ship in Trek had a Hoshi Sato.

Of course there's a real world problem in that it would be inconvenient to have to go through the whole shebang in every episode you meet someone, in universe it's completely nuts.

sunnyside · Post by **sunnyside** » Sun Jan 13, 2008 4:08 am

Obviously it works best for the show.

In world maybe it's a protocal that has spread throughout the galaxy. Kinda like unicode, only moreso. Just map your language to a set of numbers, and the computers do a little handshake after the hail and you're set.

Of course when contacting a new species that isn't space fairing you'd have to go through some shenanigans.

Of course the Galaxy class carries a whole pile of civilians and academics and stuff. Maybe they just have this stuff down...

Monroe · Post by **Monroe** » Sun Jan 13, 2008 4:27 am

I heard the Federation translater scans the brain waves of the aliens to detect what they mean. This always bothered me cause that opens up the often contradictory idea of Trek's mind's privacy.

I think in Enterprise the few cases they did understand immediately that was understandable since Earth's been spewing out information for 250 years or so by that time. Advanced races might have picked up on the language and had it in the database.

Though I'm sure after learning 20,000 languages the 20,001 language is really easy to learn.

Post by **Mikey** » Sun Jan 13, 2008 4:33 am

Maybe they thought Noam Chomsky was right after all, and sentient beings have an actual, physical apparatus in the brain for languages - and that this itself could be scanned and used as a basis for translation.

I can't believe I didn't just burst out laughing while mentioning Chomsky's language apparatus theory.

Sionnach Glic · Post by **Sionnach Glic** » Sun Jan 13, 2008 3:53 pm

Indeed, the universal translator makes precisely zero sense as it's shown.
I love how it's able to translate a completely alien language with no time lapse, even on the first time the language is encountered.

Post by **Graham Kennedy** » Sun Jan 13, 2008 4:03 pm

Very true, it's absurd.

But I think that they should just do this regardless of how stupid it is. I mean, if they took the realistic approach then every single first contact episode or movie they ever did, all it would be about was learning the alien language. That would get real old after the first twenty or thirty times, don't you think?

Post by **Mikey** » Sun Jan 13, 2008 4:33 pm

They just should use Babel fish, perhaps?

Reliant121 · Post by **Reliant121** » Sun Jan 13, 2008 4:41 pm

My french teacher is obsessive that Babelfish translates wrong. She saw students typing in the word for bedroom and it came out with the word for mother...

Post by **Graham Kennedy** » Sun Jan 13, 2008 5:10 pm

Reliant121 wrote:My french teacher is obsessive that Babelfish translates wrong. She saw students typing in the word for bedroom and it came out with the word for mother...

lol, the real thing doesn't have such problems

mlsnoopy · Post by **mlsnoopy** » Sun Jan 13, 2008 7:31 pm

The episode when Quark was sent back to 20 century Earth was well made, with the los of universl translators.

RK_Striker_JK_5 · Post by **RK_Striker_JK_5** » Sun Jan 13, 2008 8:02 pm

And another DS9 episode with refugees from the Gamma Quadrant. It took time for the UT to learn their language.

Sionnach Glic · Post by **Sionnach Glic** » Sun Jan 13, 2008 10:02 pm

Really? Weird...

RK_Striker_JK_5 · Post by **RK_Striker_JK_5** » Mon Jan 14, 2008 5:32 am

Rochey wrote:Really? Weird...

Yeah. Led to a semi-funny moment where one of the refugees pointed to a dress emphatically while the language wasn't yet known. Kira buys it for her and it turns out the refugee thought it was the ugliest thing she'd ever seen.

Post by **Mikey** » Mon Jan 14, 2008 6:54 pm

Reliant121 wrote:My french teacher is obsessive that Babelfish translates wrong. She saw students typing in the word for bedroom and it came out with the word for mother...

I was talking about using the actual fish from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Reliant121 · Post by **Reliant121** » Mon Jan 14, 2008 6:55 pm

oh...i knew that

That would be helpful...if we had them...which we dont...