Is the English language lingua franca?

[Christopher]

There’s no need to even mention what they’re speaking.

There is in time travel episodes when they're interacting with present-day English speakers. Or in episodes where they revive 20th-century people in cryofreeze like "Space Seed" or "The Neutral Zone." Or in episodes where they're quoting Shakespeare or Milton or English-language poets, or singing English-language songs in Vic Fontaine's holosuite program. Really, it comes up a lot in Trek. As I said, it's a show written for present-day audiences, and thus it engages with present-day cultural elements.

 

[Arpy]

There is in time travel episodes when they're interacting with present-day English speakers. Or in episodes where they revive 20th-century people in cryofreeze like "Space Seed" or "The Neutral Zone." Or in episodes where they're quoting Shakespeare or Milton or English-language poets, or singing English-language songs in Vic Fontaine's holosuite program. Really, it comes up a lot in Trek. As I said, it's a show written for present-day audiences, and thus it engages with present-day cultural elements.

Disagree. Whatever Babel fish the UT is it both translates and holographically adjusts the speaker’s appearance for the listener. It should never be an issue for Federation languages of any era or a great many alien ones. The exceedingly few times the actual language spoken is brought up is an opportunity to sci-fi the sci-fi. I mean, it’s what we’re all here for.

 

[Christopher]

Whatever Babel fish the UT is it both translates and holographically adjusts the speaker’s appearance for the listener.

And as I already said, that's an unrealistic and fanciful conceit in many ways, far more fanciful than the idea of a language remaining relatively unchanged for three or four centuries. So it's strange that you're willing to suspend disbelief about something as ridiculous as magic instant translators that never get anything wrong and can work on previously unknown languages by oogy-woogy technotelepathy, yet refuse to suspend disbelief about a language remaining intelligible over centuries.

I mean, here's the first two paragraphs from Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders, published 302 years ago in 1722:

My true name is so well known in the records or registers at Newgate, and in the Old Bailey, and there are some things of such consequence still depending there, relating to my particular conduct, that it is not to be expected I should set my name or the account of my family to this work; perhaps after my death it may be better known; at present it would not be proper, no, not though a general pardon should be issued, even without exceptions of persons or crimes.

It is enough to tell you, that as some of my worst comrades, who are out of the way of doing me harm (having gone out of the world by the steps and the string, as I often expected to go), knew me by the name of Moll Flanders, so you may give me leave to go under that name till I dare own who I have been, as well as who I am.

I find that quite comprehensible; some of the usages are archaic and the punctuation doesn't fit modern rules, but every word of it is recognizably our language, even across three centuries. Shakespeare's English from four or more centuries ago is more difficult, but still largely comprehensible. So I don't see what's so unlikely about 23rd- or 24th-century English still being recognizable to a 20th- or 21st-century person without the need for invoking handwavey translator magic. Yes, as I said, it's plausible that Federation language would have become a creole of human, Vulcan, and other languages by that point, but it's not out of the question that that wouldn't happen and English would remain essentially the same language.

 

[Arpy]

And as I already said, that's an unrealistic and fanciful conceit in many ways, far more fanciful than the idea of a language remaining relatively unchanged for three or four centuries. So it's strange that you're willing to suspend disbelief about something as ridiculous as magic instant translators that never get anything wrong and can work on previously unknown languages by oogy-woogy technotelepathy, yet refuse to suspend disbelief about a language remaining intelligible over centuries.

1. It’s not language remaining intelligible but not changing AT ALL. That by itself is more fanciful than warp speed and the transporters combined.

2. Advanced communication technology is the least fanciful future technology in Star Trek. Again, we’ll have real time translation software THIS DECADE. The idea that 400 years in the future a people who can travel thousands of times the speed of light can’t develop some future real time fMRI that works in concert with Google Translate 2300 to aid communication is, yes, a failure of imagination.

I mean, here's the first two paragraphs from Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders, published 302 years ago in 1722:

Exhibit Beta

Also, there was no creative purpose to making contemporary English the lingua fanca of the galaxy. It wasn’t a statement about linguistics, history, or philosophy, and as a viewer I was grossed out by both the jingoism of it, of the English language practically goose-stepping across the stars, and the young-eating delusion of it being our version of it doing so.

 

[Christopher]

1. It’s not language remaining intelligible but not changing AT ALL. That by itself is more fanciful than warp speed and the transporters combined.

That's a very small bit of poetic license to forgive. Realistically, it's entirely possible that the language would still be intelligible, even if there are more differences in detail than the fiction chooses to depict. It's close enough that I have no trouble suspending my disbelief.

Fiction is not meant to be taken absolutely literally. It always glosses over the details. Do you get upset that characters in sitcoms don't lock their front doors so their neighbors barge in unannounced, allowing scenes to progress without dragging to a halt for the business of letting someone in? Or that cars in driving scenes often don't have their rear-view mirrors so that the camera can see the actors' faces through the front windshield? The details are always negotiable for dramatic convenience, but that doesn't invalidate the broad strokes of the story being told.

2. Advanced communication technology is the least fanciful future technology in Star Trek. Again, we’ll have real time translation software THIS DECADE.

I've already explained why "real-time" translation is impossible. Different languages have different word orders, so you often don't know what a sentence is really saying until it's done. Trying to translate every word immediately would result in frequent errors and bizarre sentence construction.

And again, translation is never perfect. Not every concept or idiom is translatable. Even the best machine translation between two languages is never going to be as flawless as fiction pretends, and is never going to be preferable to people actually learning and speaking in each other's languages.

Also, there was no creative purpose to making contemporary English the lingua fanca of the galaxy. It wasn’t a statement about linguistics, history, or philosophy, and as a viewer I was grossed out by both the jingoism of it, of the English language practically goose-stepping across the stars, and the young-eating delusion of it being our version of it doing so.

It is simply a fact of history that English is already the lingua franca of aerospace, science, commerce, etc., as well as being the most widely spoken second language on Earth. Assuming, as Trek does, that humans begin to colonize space in earnest in the near future, while current cultural conditions still prevail, it's pretty much inevitable that the first generation or two of space settlers would use English as their primary tongue, at least for communicating outside their home communities, which is what a lingua franca is for. There's no reason to assume it would be forced on anyone, because it's already the default.

More to the point, as I've been saying, fiction is written for the benefit of its audience. In Japanese shows, space travelers and aliens all speak fluent Japanese, and alien invaders always target Tokyo instead of Washington or Beijing. In British shows, aliens all speak English with British accents. And so on. It's not jingoism, it's just writing for your audience.

 

[Frontis]

Today languages are mixed up more and more. For example here in Austria especially younger people use more and more English words, we call this mixture of German and English "Denglish". So a new common international language of the future could be a mixture of different languages.

 

[Christopher]

Today languages are mixed up more and more. For example here in Austria especially younger people use more and more English words, we call this mixture of German and English "Denglish". So a new common international language of the future could be a mixture of different languages.

Quite probably. But fiction is written for the benefit of its audience, so dramatic license is taken.

 

[Arpy]

Fiction is not meant to be taken absolutely literally. It always glosses over the details. Do you get upset that characters in sitcoms don't lock their front doors so their neighbors barge in unannounced, allowing scenes to progress without dragging to a halt for the business of letting someone in? Or that cars in driving scenes often don't have their rear-view mirrors so that the camera can see the actors' faces through the front windshield? The details are always negotiable for dramatic convenience, but that doesn't invalidate the broad strokes of the story being told.

You know those Buzzfeed articles that point out all the unrealistic tropes movies use again and again? I'd pay real money if someone made a movie not doing any of them. Audiences like being surprised. Having to sit up in their chairs. It's what Star Trek did in comparison to the other sci-fi of its day, and what I think people are yearning for now. To trade up.

I've already explained why "real-time" translation is impossible. Different languages have different word orders, so you often don't know what a sentence is really saying until it's done. Trying to translate every word immediately would result in frequent errors and bizarre sentence construction. And again, translation is never perfect. Not every concept or idiom is translatable. Even the best machine translation between two languages is never going to be as flawless as fiction pretends, and is never going to be preferable to people actually learning and speaking in each other's languages.

Yeah, no one is saying a syllable for syllable direct syntactical translation. I don't know why you're framing it that way.

More to the point, as I've been saying, fiction is written for the benefit of its audience. In Japanese shows, space travelers and aliens all speak fluent Japanese, and alien invaders always target Tokyo instead of Washington or Beijing. In British shows, aliens all speak English with British accents. And so on. It's not jingoism, it's just writing for your audience.

And it's the lesser for it. I'd much rather see an alien invasion story that plays out where and how an alien invasion actually would than another remake of Independence Day. You're still in the jingoism family, even if its fun.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

You know those Buzzfeed articles that point out all the unrealistic tropes movies use again and again? I'd pay real money if someone made a movie not doing any of them.

Someone oughta make a movie called "Tropes", where the characters (a movie critic, his crazy friends, and his intern, secretly the daughter of a screenwriter whose movies have drawn his scorn) attempt to find (or create) tropes in real life.

 

[Christopher]

Yeah, no one is saying a syllable for syllable direct syntactical translation. I don't know why you're framing it that way.

Because it's how the show portrays it, and my point is that if you can suspend disbelief about the show's depiction of magic instant translation, I don't see why it should be harder to suspend disbelief about the premise of English remaining intelligible after 3 or 4 centuries. Of the two, the former is far more preposterous.

 

[Arpy]

Because it's how the show portrays it,

Does it?

and my point is that if you can suspend disbelief about the show's depiction of magic instant translation,

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." My phone is practically a pocket monolith from 2001. Heaven help you if you can't imagine something more advanced in the 24th century.

I don't see why it should be harder to suspend disbelief about the premise of English remaining intelligible after 3 or 4 centuries.

Because change is the only true constant in the universe. It's not intelligible English, it's contemporary.

It should be "Federation Standard" and left for the audience to wonder what that might be. Or better yet, get out there and invent it.

 

[kkt]

That was Diane Duane's coinage, I believe.



And that originated in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Its only other mentions were in TNG: "Tin Man" and in ENT: "In a Mirror Darkly, Part II," which was the source of the claim that Hoshi invented it.

Linguacode isn't a language, though; it's a translation matrix, a sort of Rosetta Stone that can facilitate translation across a language barrier. I assume it's something that begins with universal mathematical and physical constants that every society would have, then builds on that foundation.




On the one hand, as I've said, it makes sense to me that spacegoing human civilization would have English as its first lingua franca, since it's currently the universal language of aerospace, science, engineering, commerce, etc. However, it seems more plausible that a multispecies interstellar civilization would develop a creole of its members' languages -- much like English evolved as a blend of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and French/Latin antecedents as a result of conquest and settlement. By the 23rd or certainly the 24th century, Federation English should have a liberal admixture of Vulcan and Andorian vocabulary and grammar at least.




Except it's been explicitly shown that people from the 20th or 21st century can understand their language without translators being needed. McCoy didn't have his communicator when Edith Keeler tended to him, but they understood each other perfectly. And every time a character from the past has said "You speak English!," the Starfleet characters have just said "Yes" instead of saying "No, our Spaceperanto is being translated for your benefit."

It's implausible, yes, but it's a hell of a lot less implausible than magic universal translators that work instantly on previously unknown languages and always convey correct meanings and idioms accurately.

I just accept that it's dramatic necessity for all the characters to communicate easily (except when they can't). No need to hunt for an in-universe explanation that would be highly improbable.

 

[Christopher]

I just accept that it's dramatic necessity for all the characters to communicate easily (except when they can't). No need to hunt for an in-universe explanation that would be highly improbable.

But by the same logic, it's a practical necessity that officers on a starship would be able to communicate easily, even if the translators went down. And there's nothing even slightly improbable about a four-year Starfleet Academy curriculum including language classes among its required subjects. It doesn't have to be a dramatic handwave, because it's perfectly logical and believable.

 

[Commander K]

As once mentioned in Babylon 5....English is the "earth language of commerce"

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Do you think it will be able to translate previously unknown languages? As Christopher said?

We already know it can.

In one DS9 episode - Sanctuary - a new alien race (the Skrreea) come aboard and nobody can understand them, But as the Skrreeans continue to speak, the computer gradually begins translating them; English words start to pop up in Skrreean speech, until finally the translation matrix is complete.

And that’s a Cardassian universal translator. A Federation UT would probably be even more advanced. It would have been able to fully translate the Skrreean language from the get-go. Hey, it worked for the Tamarian language, didn’t it?

 

[Richard S. Ta]

We already know it can.

In one DS9 episode - Sanctuary - a new alien race (the Skrreea) come aboard and nobody can understand them, But as the Skrreeans continue to speak, the computer gradually begins translating them; English words start to pop up in Skrreean speech, until finally the translation matrix is complete.

And that’s a Cardassian universal translator. A Federation UT would probably be even more advanced. It would have been able to fully translate the Skrreean language from the get-go. Hey, it worked for the Tamarian language, didn’t it?

I think you misunderstand.

I asked the poster in question if he thought that the present technology he was citing as being similar to a UT would be able to (one day) translate previously unknown alien dialects instantaneously.

It was a rhetorical question.