SPEAK ENGLISH!
Me first- The Gorn.
(Man, this is gonna be a short list)
Me first- The Gorn.
(Man, this is gonna be a short list)
Name the individuals, races, cultures and/or planets that don't...
- Thread starter Chrisisall
- Start date
The Jarada (now the list is even shorter)
^ Now that has always been one of my biggest gripes! I would have been sooo much happier all these years if, when an alien was speaking in their own tongue, but we heard english due to the universal translator, it should have looked like a dubbed japanese film. Where the words didnt line up with the actor's mouth. I really would have prefered that so much more.....although i am sure the actors would have HATED it.
Dear god. Was i just speaking english in THAT post? Talk about sounding like an idiot!
Hopefully you get my gist. Im not even going to TRY to edit that thing!
Hopefully you get my gist. Im not even going to TRY to edit that thing!
^ I dunno, Randi...Decades of Trek with dubbing? I think the cost of realism (in terms of shear tedium and annoyance for the audience, e.g., me!) would be far too high.
So I just accept the universal translator as it is. Hey, it's no worse than the Babel fish, after all.
So I just accept the universal translator as it is. Hey, it's no worse than the Babel fish, after all.
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I had a huge issue with that, too. However, I think I have to agree with Just Kate that it would've been too jarring and seemingly annoying to have the majority of alien characters always dubbed. I view it the same as the limitations of makeup. There are certain human features that will always look human, like pink gums and the lining of the eyes, even if they wouldn't actually be on any given race.
Kate, oh i know! Its just this stupid inner geek of mine. It BUGGED ME! But absolutely, it would not have made any sense at all budget wise and would have turned audiences off.
What i really need to do is do what BARNACLELAPSE does-- drink whiskey while i watch! See how much my inner geek cares then!
What i really need to do is do what BARNACLELAPSE does-- drink whiskey while i watch! See how much my inner geek cares then!
Back to the question at hand: would you include The Children of Tama as english speaking or not? What constitutes "english speaking"? Is it just the words used, or the concepts?
The Children of Tama didn't speak English. The UT translated all the words they spoke into English. It's just that the structure of their language was so different people didn't understand how they were communicating.
Darmok and Jilard at Tanagra!
AS GREAT AS THE EP IS, WHY ARE THEY USING "ENGLISH" WORDS????
AS GREAT AS THE EP IS, WHY ARE THEY USING "ENGLISH" WORDS????
Neither the Kreetassans nor the symbiotic lifeform in ENT's "Vox Sola" spoke English.
all around!
This thread needs more Breen.
the crystal entity didn't speak English.
Especially since the universal translator is, in itself, one of the most unrealistic things in Star Trek, and I am not exaggerating. Have you ever seen what a computer translation looks like? Try AltaVista or some other online translator - they are great only if you want to have a good laugh.
OK, I am not saying that there can't be more sophisticated programs, with a better vocabulary, more idioms and so on, sometime in the future... but any linguist will tell you that there is no way in hell that a computer device could ever perform successful translations from one language to another, all by itself. You'd get something like the infamous "out of sight, out of mind" = "invisible, insane" computer translation from English to Chinese and back into English. In speech, so much depends on context, so the only successful machine translator would have to be AI. And in that case, why bother at all? Why not have human translators who use computerized dictionaries to be able to translate quicker?And let's not even mention how unrealistic it is to have that device translate the words accurately at the same time as they are coming out of a person's mouth (without even having time to consider the meaning of the entire sentence). In reality, a non-AI machine working as a simultaneous interpreter would create such a high probability of error that the communication might completely break down.
There are a lot of illogical things about the translators. Like how come they don't translate Klingon insults; why, if the Federation knows enough about the Romulan language to teach its students three dialects, the translator can't be relied upon; why it couldn't do anything for Troi's outrageous accent when it managed to totally wipe out her father's etc. Can you imagine how embarassing it would be if a Galactican came on board the Enterprise...
Almost all of them? The thing I wonder about is which, if any characters among the main cast are not speaking English. Especially in DS9. Were Kira, Odo and Quark speaking English? Neelix and Kes in Voyager surely weren't.
