It just occurred to me, in a realistic context there must be tons of aliens who communicate via methods other than sound, but by smell, vibration, pulsing electromagnetic light or radiation, etc. Presumably by the 32nd century at least, such tech would be so advanced that even animals' barks or meows can be given a rough human language equivalent through such a translator. However, has there ever been any evidence of this in Trek? Even Spot telling Data "I love you" via translator might be a touching moment, or could come off as ridiculous (to be fair the Pixar movie Up was able to make talking dogs work to some extent) I imagine since pets are simpler creatures, the translations would be very basic, so meows for example would be translated as "Hi" or "Help!" (if the cat is in danger) or "Hungry" (if the cat is meowing because they're hungry). At the very least, people in the Trek universe don't have to wonder what their cat is meowing about, because the universal translator would tell them. Thoughts?
Not as far as I know, but given how the UT is supposed to work (by reading and translating brainwave patterns) that would certainly be a possible application. I think the reason we don't see it is simply that it didn't occur to the writers.
There weren't any living humpback whales available. The UT qua UT works by scanning brainwaves and correlating those with linguistic concepts. The ship-to-ship version doubtless has different principles, but it would certainly a require a give-and-take from both parties, and the probe wasn't responding to humanoid language. After George and Gracie had been around for a bit and humpback-ese got into the universal translator's pre-loaded database, a ship probably could respond to the probe's signals in a way the probe would accept as communication. Some of the novels go into this, and generally take the position that animals can be communicated with much more directly in the Star Trek future thanks to the UT. A recent one by Christopher L. Bennett had one of Uhura's relatives work as a lawyer for African elephants (well, relatively recent, it came out just before SNW established Uhura's entire family was dead). As for why every pet on-screen hasn't sounded like Stella the Talking Dog... maybe it's like how Klingon swearing doesn't get translated. Not necessarily saying all the animals are constantly vocalizing filthy profanity that's unsuitable for television (maybe some of the cats), just that it's a creative choice, and the characters can understand them perfectly well. Which might be odd, in practice, since experientially, "The 37s" confirmed that using a UT seems exactly like seeing and hearing someone speak in your native language, it's not like mental subtitles and you still hear the original vocalizations, the way it's implied to work on "Farscape." So I guess kids in the Star Trek future might not necessarily know a cat goes "meow" and a dog goes "woof" from first-hand experience.
Trek character interactions with pets don't really corroborate this though. Riker for instance didn't say "Spot called me 'Nasty human!' and then scratched me" when recounting attempts to feed Spot in sickbay. Furthermore I don't think any of Grudge the cat's interactions with the crew indicate they are hearing what Grudge meows in a translated form. Same with Spot. Porthos I'll let slide since there really wasn't a fully developed universal translator as seen in mainstream Trek yet as of the 22nd century.
Perhaps the UT doesn't work on "languages" that don't have grammar. That structure could be key to decoding a language.
And/or, it only translates actual terms, not just any meaningful verbalization. So if a character, say, groans in frustration, the UT doesn’t replace that with “I’m frustrated!” In the same way, animals that only use meaningful verbalizations like barks or meows don’t get translated, even in cases where the “meaning” is in fact obvious (“Ow, don’t step on my tail!”), whereas whalesong or bird calls or bee dances that convey actual specific information probably would.
If the translator read nuance, mood, and tone, they wouldn't need empaths like Deanna Troi to do it for them.
We see it working in Cetacean Ops in Lower Decks. There are dolphin (or were they? It's been awhile) crewmembers.
Oh I forgot about that you're right. I wonder if dolphins were working in Starfleet as of ST4. You think someone would've asked them for help about the whole whale probe thing.
Though the Lower Decks example doesn't translate into English, as per the other cases of the UT (except when it chooses not to translate certain phrases in Klingon, of course). The beluga crewmembers are subtitled.
This raises the question of what happens to planets with multiple sentients, some of which achieved warp but others didn't. Our belugas presumably didn't develop warp, and presumably we didn't recognize them as sentient until AFTER first contact with the Vulcans (if not much later, possibly post-Whale Probe). But we now let them serve in Starfleet. If the locals don't know a creature is sentient, or acknowledge it as such, does the Federation reveal this to them and/or make them form a one-world government prior to admission?