e.g. consoles with what i assume to be cardassian script seem to be used by everyone on the station without issue. i have no problem suspending my disbelief but I'm curious if any of you trek-scholars have come across an explanation from the show's writers/creators?
I've wondered this exact thing. And books and other documents, too - I can accept the dramatic convention of the universal translator for speech, but how could that possibly work for print?
LOL--love the UT contacts idea, Temis. Actually, given the technological levels involved with the equipment, I would have expected there to be a custom language module whereby various Cardassian dialects could be swapped... and that this could be re-engineered to accept other languages the Cardassians hadn't anticipated (like English). The first order of business for Miles would be to convert the language system for all console displays, independently settable for each person in their quarters if they wish to use their own native language.
I would imagine Bajorans would have a working knowledge of the Cardassian language. Odo and Quark I think would be fluent in Cardassian due to their jobs. Rom and Nog and other residents of the station may have had a working knowledge of Cardassian as well. As for Starfleet, Jadzia and Ezri may have learned it - Jadzia may have taken the time to learn it and that was then passed to Ezri or one of the Dax Symbiont's past hosts may have learned it. Starfleet personnel assigned to DS9 may have had to take a course to learn to read Cardassian until the Station's computers could be set up to customize terminals to whoever was using them. Making that a prerequisite for assignment to DS9, would cut out anyone not interested in being assigned to the station unless they were essential personnel and were going there unless they quit Starfleet.
to be fair, if you're familiar with a computer system, you don't really need to understand the language displayed to work the computer... M
You seen that iPhone app that using augmented reality replaces the text in, say a road sign with the language of your choice? It works really well, sure it might not be a perfect translation, but enough to get by on. I'd guess that the UT's do something similar, it's it's a cranial implant it might augment what the user is seeing as well as hearing, or like Temis said, it could be as simple as contact's. We never saw it, but in the 24th century, I'd fully expect pretty much everyone to be using something similar to Google's 'glasses' concept.
Actually, in Enterprise, they did show the UT being used, in at least one episode to translate computer data. As said, anyone Bajoran or around with the Cardassians for any period of time would naturally know Cardassian. The Command staff, are shown many times using unfamiliar Foreign Electronics with little to no fore-knowledge. In fact, I think the only time there was shown to be a learning curve was with the Dominion Ships. Plus I think, as Methos points out, a computer is a computer, there's got to be some logic behind how it's laid out and so forth, so once you understand that logic, it really doesn't matter if you can read "Docking Clamp Release" or simply know the Docking controls are on this specific display and the green symbol releases the docking clamps.
How can anyone be sure it's green that the Cardassians chose for "go" and not any other colour? Or that green means released docking clamps and not malfunction?
LOL, once it's known, I doubt it would change. I wasn't meaning that Green stood for anything particular, I meant once you know what button to press, that will always be the button to press for that fuction.
...Yet damningly enough, those Cardassian interfaces appear to change shape and configuration just as readily as their Starfleet equivalents do. However, we have no particular reason to think the UT doesn't translate visuals. After all, whenever an alien speaks, his or her or its lips appear to move in synch with English! It instead seems that the UT doesn't do a "complete" job, so reading of Klingon remains hard work even after all the help the UT can provide to Scotty in ST4... Just like reading Japanese may be very difficult even after every word is translated. Timo Saloniemi
I've always been a fan of the idea that most Starfleet officers are effectively polyglots by today's standards, proficient in several languages (like in many parts of Europe today). So several of them might have already been proficient in Cardassian. (Perhaps the Chief picked it up during his time on the front during the Border Wars, for example?) I also like to think that people have gotten better at learning/picking up new languages in the 24th century, and perhaps place more emphasis on multilingualism than many of us do today. Not to get preachy, but I suspect that, because of the ubiquitousness of English today, we tend to forget that total immersion, with no crutches, can force a language to be learned (at least insofar as being able to read it) proficiently quite a bit faster than by deliberate but non-immersive study.
Two relevant pieces of Trek lore here: Star Trek technology offers the ultimate crutch, with the UT not only removing the need to learn foreign languages, but basically removing the need to learn language at all! If it can decipher Cardassian, it should be able to turn baby talk into intelligible conversation - so people might grow up developing their very own personal languages, which would be fundamentally incompatible with everybody else's without the aid of the UT. On the other hand, "The Icarus Factor" mentioned a famed polyglot who spoke 40 languages. An esoteric hobby of no practical significance? Or an indication that you have to master 40 languages in order to make any impact in a society where everybody is fluent in at least twenty? Said Commander Flaherty was credited with a "unique" ability to interpret and extrapolate any verbal communication he came across, so perhaps this means that he was the only person in the entire UFP who didn't need the UT and who bothered to learn languages at all? Oddly enough, among the "more exotic" of those forty were Klingon and Romulan, indicating that none of our TNG heroes spoke those languages - Worf possibly included! Timo Saloniemi