Universal Translator

[Timo]

I'm sorry about the overreaction - it was totally uncalled for, I now see.

What I propose is not mind-reading, but altering of information within the human cranium: information travels as sound from user A to user B, but is altered in form and content by machinery inside user B's head - machinery that involves the ear he was born with, the auditory cortex he was born with, and an additional implant that messes with the signals in between.

However, such a neural implant can apparently be placed on a number of paths other than merely the "auditory tract": a more direct, more telepathy-like connection is shown in e.g. DS9 "A Little Investigation" and "Honor Among Thieves". It does not appear that the Feds would fear cyborg technology as such, even though it may have gained a more sinister reputation after the first encounters with the Borg.

As for the UT actually mind-reading, well, that is a possibility if the UTs of two people choose to communicate directly. But if they work on the "auditory path", then they won't let slip any thoughts that weren't already milliseconds away from being verbalized by the person.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Myasishchev]

I'm sorry about the overreaction - it was totally uncalled for, I now see.

Don't sweat it. I think you just misunderstood what I wrote, which if it had meant what you thought might have justified a peremptory response. I'm a veteran of far meaner spirited fora than this one, and a swear word every once in a while is just spice for the stew.

Beyond that, I enjoy reading what you write. I lurked here for months before posting, and you've proven to be one of the finest minds to post here.

What I propose is not mind-reading, but altering of information within the human cranium: information travels as sound from user A to user B, but is altered in form and content by machinery inside user B's head - machinery that involves the ear he was born with, the auditory cortex he was born with, and an additional implant that messes with the signals in between.

And from whence the lexicon needed to decrypt the auditory signal? As you say, from the broadcast signal of the brain. I'll come back to this in a moment.

However, such a neural implant can apparently be placed on a number of paths other than merely the "auditory tract": a more direct, more telepathy-like connection is shown in e.g. DS9 "A Little Investigation" and "Honor Among Thieves". It does not appear that the Feds would fear cyborg technology as such, even though it may have gained a more sinister reputation after the first encounters with the Borg.

I had forgotten about those dabblings into William Gibson Lite. Interestingly, both instances involved events at least legally outside the Federation. But it is further evidence that mind-machine synthesis is possible--hard to say how far down that avenue of technology anyone has gotten.

Perhaps the Federation has laid down irrational strictures on its development, just as they have other useful but "dangerous" techs, like genetic engineering and cloaking. On the other hand, its lack of widespread use in more libertarian civilizations like that of Ferenginar suggests that it might well be an infant technology, unsuited for mass adoption and perhaps particularly risky. Additionally, the almost matter of course head-hackery of a world like, say, Ghost in Shell's, may make such neurological modifications undesireable as well (that guy from Grazer nearly gets his head fried in Honor Among Thieves, iirc).

As for the UT actually mind-reading, well, that is a possibility if the UTs of two people choose to communicate directly.

Then it is odd indeed we don't see that anywhere; and although it's referenced in the two episodes you cite, I'm surprised such a useful communication technology is used so rarely. Nautral telepaths would also be less special, although their ability to invade a mind could still come in handy.

Basically, my objection to this is that to assume that it works in this manner is to assume that people are working with only a fraction of their true capabilities. It would be as if the Enterprise only went to warp occasionally, and her crew preferred to use their near-light propulsion systems instead. Or instead of using a high-powered disruptor, an infantryman preferred to bludgeon his foes into submission with some kind of semi-sharp weapon that looks like a pair of antlers glued together. Okay, strike the last bit.

But if they work on the "auditory path", then they won't let slip any thoughts that weren't already milliseconds away from being verbalized by the person.

I don't find any real logical flaw in the principles you describe. But it seems sharply at odds with the six hundred hours or so of people talking.

Security concerns might also be something to consider with a translator operating in that fashion. Requiring an electromagnetic signal between, say, Kirk and Spock, or Damar and Kira, or any number of characters who have discussed matters best kept secret, opens up the door to the possibility of signal leakage and interception.

Although it is true that quantum cryptography, an emerging field today (based on the principle that information observed is information changed), may may have put a stop to tapping wired signal, a wireless signal is less accessible and the means of determining a security breach that much less effective.

 

[Unicron]

One of the better versions of a UT I've seen (though it clearly was not meant to be a universal device, but a more limited one) was in the My Teacher Is An Alien books. The unit consisted of a device implanted directly in the brain, presumably in the portion related to understanding speech, and thus could translate dialogue into the language of the person. So you'd still hear the alien speaking their own language, but you'd hear the translation mentally. Not unlike studying a foreign language and learning how to translate texts and other media mentally. It could also translate many types of physical gestures as well, although some things could not be translated (or at least not into a language like English). And some translations might still seem a little weird, because the translator might not have an exact equivalent for an expression or idea.

 

[Timo]

I don't find any real logical flaw in the principles you describe. But it seems sharply at odds with the six hundred hours or so of people talking.

Indeed. But I'm halfway ready to believe that this is for, let's call them religious reasons - the same reasons they don't use transporters to remove the need for walking, or robots to remove the need for using muscles. There are so many ways the basic tenets of human life would have changed with "technology unchained" that we wouldn't recognize anything familiar in the 24th century. In all likelihood, things like speech, movement, birth and death would be long gone. And these people may have seen it coming, and will have decided to stay away from "excessive" use of technology. The limits would be more or less arbitrarily drawn for each path of development.

However, this is a bit problematic in the sense of defining "these people". I have no problem believing that all humans (we see) bow to this particular religion (or are quietly put out), but I'd think that many of the other Trek humanoids would have opted for at least one or two applications of futuristic technology that fundamentally change their lives and biologies.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Praetor]

One of the better versions of a UT I've seen (though it clearly was not meant to be a universal device, but a more limited one) was in the My Teacher Is An Alien books. The unit consisted of a device implanted directly in the brain, presumably in the portion related to understanding speech, and thus could translate dialogue into the language of the person. So you'd still hear the alien speaking their own language, but you'd hear the translation mentally. Not unlike studying a foreign language and learning how to translate texts and other media mentally. It could also translate many types of physical gestures as well, although some things could not be translated (or at least not into a language like English). And some translations might still seem a little weird, because the translator might not have an exact equivalent for an expression or idea.

I'd completely forgotten these books.

 

[Unicron]

I really only had one, but I think it had some good concepts.

 

[Irishman]

One of the things that always got to me was the fact that every species actually looked like they were speaking english, rather than some very bad dubbing. Although, the translators could have some sort of holo-emitter that makes it look like they are speaking english. Another theory is that there is some form of drug that is released to make it look like it as well

Another thing is that on Klingon ships they spoke english. We could say that the translator did its job here, but then why do they shout something in Klingon all the time as well. Surely the Federation hasn't influenced the Klingons that much to make them speak their language all the time.

Yeah, if they'd done it right, it would have looked like bad overdubbing.

No Trek show has done it right.

Dammit, there goes my childhood. How many times can she be raped? ;P

Seriously, though, it would have been nice to see some Trek feature this (maybe Trek XI will, we haven't seen it yet).

 

[Timo]

Not only would a microphone/computer/loudspeaker -style UT look like bad overdubbing, it would not be realtime. In the general case, a phrase cannot be translated until it has been completed - only a few relatively unstructured languages such as English allow for mid-phrase translation.

However, if the UT is more like an ear/computer/brain type device, then this issue is alleviated, too. The brain is eminently capable of taking in fragmentary, grammatically incoherent input (say, a normal conversation, or a simultaneous translation as done by a human translator) and pretending that it is perfectly coherent and understandable. Thus, the computer could do its best at mid-phrase translation (which gives incoherent results), and would lag behind for half a phrase at least, too - but the brain would quickly accept this and start understanding this sort of translation as if it were in the brain's native language.

What the audience would get would not be the output of a loudspeaker, then - but the already brain-processed, brain-accepted version, which makes perfect sense despite the shortcomings of the actual UT machine.

This would also remove the bad lipsynch issue, as the brain would simply refuse to believe that the lips are out of synch, and would instead decide that lip movement and sound are in perfect harmony.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Unicron]

It wasn't very clear in the MTIAA books (at least not in mine) whether there was any sort of time delay for the translator to "process" the languages, or whether it was supposed to essentially be realtime. But as mentioned it couldn't translate some things, or didn't seem to translate other things correctly (the aliens the protagonist communicates with seem to understand some common English expressions, and not others). I also found it interesting that several aliens, despite having the basic resemblance to humans, didn't use the same body language. One pulled his nose to an exaggerated length and let it snap back instead of sighing, another flapped his ears instead of smiling.

 

[Myasishchev]

Not only would a microphone/computer/loudspeaker -style UT look like bad overdubbing, it would not be realtime. In the general case, a phrase cannot be translated until it has been completed - only a few relatively unstructured languages such as English allow for mid-phrase translation.

Something occurred to me earlier this morning, Timo--who says that alien languages need be structured in such a way that they can't be translated in mid-phrase?

Of course "natural" languages (although we know little of how a "natural" alien language would work) are often inflected or otherwise structured in a way that English isn't. Even Spanish, which is not heavily burdened by grammatical rules, translated realtime would often sound stupid. "Me gusta = to me it pleases."

However, there is no real need to suppose that a spacefaring species would use a natural language.

Most of the societies we see in Trek have been at space travel for many generations longer than humans, and would have run into the problems a real-time UT would present before the Phoenix ever hit Warp 1. The adoption of an auxiliary language which permits real-time translation and which presents a united and easily understandable voice to off-worlders seems logical and even likely. Most people of any planet would likely need to learn a second language anyway.

Rihan, tlhIngan Hol, and maybe even Fed Standard (although given the written language, it's probably so heavily based on English as to be English), are effectively artificial auxiliary languages learned for ease of inter-ethnic and inter-species communication...

 

[shipfisher]

I can almost buy the whole universal translator business in TOS:Metamorphosis as a one-off deal. If Spock had actually scanned a previous encounter with Cochrane and the companion and used an analysis of their relative "brainwave" interactions to cook up some sort of translation matrix, then you could almost pull the episode back from the realm of pure treknocrap. This would still presume that 23rd century feds could translate human brainwaves to start with, which would make you wonder why poor Chris Pike only got a couple of blinking lights to communicate with. Starfleet must have been pretty tight on the purse strings with their own.

 

[Timo]

...which would make you wonder why poor Chris Pike only got a couple of blinking lights to communicate with.

As regards that old chestnut, it's quite possible that it was Pike's brainwaves that were all messy, rather than his vocal cords. Medical history is full of examples of brain damage that makes production of speech (or writing, or other language-based expression) impossible even though every limb and muscle works perfectly. It wasn't just that Pike couldn't say anything beyond "yes" and "no" - it was that he couldn't think anything beyond those things, not in any human language anyway.

Different people might think in very different ways, that is, they could have very different brainwaves for "chicken" or "yellow" or "Iwannagetoutofherenow!". That's because thought is a complex thing. But the muscle movements needed for speech, or the impulses generated by the ear, are far more simple. It's quite possible that every human would have the same sort of impulses for "I want to verbalize the word CHICKEN now", and that a machine could intercept those impulses when they are on their way to the vocal cords. Similarly, the output of an ear might be universal, and it could be intercepted and altered before it continued its way to the "thinking parts" of the brain.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[shipfisher]

Fair enough Timo - certainly some interesting points on the nature of thought - we all agree on what the colour green is for example, but that doesn't mean we're all seeing it in the same way. I do seem to remember words from Commodore Mendez to the effect that Pike's mental faculties were intact, but trapped within a damaged shell of a body, which may be slightly at odds with what you suggest in his case. With regard to a practical "brainwave translator", I can see individually tailored devices utilizing a given subject's "mental/verbal signature", previously determined in series of tests. I can see where it would be too late to generate a signature for Pike if the relevant procedure hadn't been done before his injury.

As for a device you can point "cold" at some truly alien lifeform to instantly provide any viable means of "chatting" - pure bunkum.

I'm not sure if the translation devices in ENT were ever meant to do more than openly translate (ie. with all involved knowing the device was in use) between two previously known languages. Were they ever depicted as actually translating to someone seamlessly and covertly, mouth motions and all, without that someone knowing? I would be thinking bunkum again if so. I assumed that whatever I was watching was "we're hearing english but know it's supposed to be something else" a la Red October and ST:VI, etc.

 

[Timo]

I guess we just have to accept that a UT device is installed in the camera. And the purpose of that device is not merely to translate, but also to create the convincing illusion of fluency. So what we're getting from the camera isn't reality - it's the smoothed-out illusion that the UT has been built to create. Were an impartial observer present, he or she might hear the two original languages spoken, and some sort of half-formed interlingua being thrown back and forth between the speakers as well, with major breaks and delays in the process - and both of the speakers showing satisfaction at how the discussion proceeds because the feeling of a satisfactory conversation is what the respective devices are feeding into and past their senses. The amazing brain does the rest, designed as it is to make seeming sense out of fragmentary sensory input...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[JNG]

I'm not sure if the translation devices in ENT were ever meant to do more than openly translate (ie. with all involved knowing the device was in use) between two previously known languages. Were they ever depicted as actually translating to someone seamlessly and covertly, mouth motions and all, without that someone knowing? I would be thinking bunkum again if so. I assumed that whatever I was watching was "we're hearing english but know it's supposed to be something else" a la Red October and ST:VI, etc.

Yes, in "Civilization." They "infiltrate" an alien culture (that doesn't itself have translator tech or anything approaching it) by putting on some light makeup and freely engaging in conversation. At one point, the translator malfunctions and Archer starts making out with the alien woman to cover it, so the show is directly putting it out there that a functional translator not only lets both parties understand one another, but does so in a completely undetectable way. This is an Earth-built translator in 2151 working on a species and language they have just encountered, mind you.

All I can manage is to take the principles Timo has been discussing and think that the devices have multiple settings and are normally used on a sort of "hands-off" one, providing obvious translation without intrusion into jamming other people's brains and such. They must have other settings, becoming very intrusive to hide the work they are doing when it is deemed necessary, and these are the ethically dodgy settings used when they have to infiltrate the Tal Shiar or something. I am still willing to bet it wouldn't work when addressing a crowd of a hundred people or something; there must be limits.

I don't care for this idea overall and think they're kinda pushing it, but hey, in the Trek future the brain is thoroughly mapped and telepathy must be somewhat scientifically understood, and the Romulans and Klingons have those mind-probe devices, so their science must be able to handle the requirements of this plot device when it has to.

 

[shipfisher]

Thanks Timo and JNG. My "bunkum" sentiments towards ENT style UT's have been somewhat dispelled.