On ‘Star Trek,’ Why Didn’t the Cardassians Ever Speak ‘Cardassian?’

However she spoke French with Odo... "The language of love".

 

That was just an accident. It was left over from his performance Chef Louie in the Little Mermaid.

 

I suspect that the Cardassians always kept their universal translators on, which is why we only heard them speaking English.
To test this theory, I turned on the SAP feature on my TV, and I heard them speaking Spanish. That must be proof that their translators were on.

 

The Cardassian language is not discussed with outsiders.

 

"Whoopie"? I didn't know Guinan was involved in the Cardassian language...

 

I kind of hate that scene. I can accept that having the UT be the one to "talk" would be recognized but they couldn't use it to translate the incoming and at least create the response as text and then Uhura just read that?

 

True enough.

It's like Pike and his "interface" that allows him to say "yes" or "no". None of these geniuses thought about asking him questions to learn what he was repeatedly saying "no" about. Stupid plot point!!!

Plus if you can say yes or no you can use binary or morse code to express yourself.

 

Unless you have lost the ability to use language to begin with. Back in the 1960s, the audiences might not have been all that familiar with such a possibility. Today, hospital porn has made selective brain trauma mainstream.

People who have suffered damage to the output parts of language processing might still express themselves, though. Say, how about giving Pike a pen? Even if he couldn't write language, he might draw pictures. (In the worst case scenario, just tape the pen to the corner of the chair. In a more realistic one, hook it up to a mechanical arm Pike can control, the same way he might control a voice box but doesn't because he can't form phrases.)

We meet Pike "months" after his big accident. Perhaps the boxy whole-body prosthetic is only the first step in his partial recovery, and arms and legs will be added later? Spock makes his own artificial hurry there.

But yes, setting up 20 questions ought to be informative if Pike truly and coherently can express the concepts of "agreement" and "disagreement". And no doubt Pike often got to play that game. But his bout of yelling "nonononono!" involved him refusing to cooperate - he "almost agitated himself into a coma" when "questioned". So yes, these geniuses did ask.

In contrast, giving the UT a free hand at interpreting the yes'es and no's would not be helpful. Somebody would then have to interpret the UT, resulting in messages no more coherent than those from the oracle of Delphi.

Timo Saloniemi

 

It doesn't help that Stephen Hawking came along and showed how silly Pike's chair was.

Morse Code was a known thing in the 60s. If Pike's chair could have answered in binary "yes" and "no", then it could have been programed to carry on conversations. Provided the other person knew Morse Code.

MCCOY: As long as any of us. Blast medicine anyway. We've learned to tie into every human organ in the body except one. The brain.

Good thing medical science progressed by season 3 so McCoy could rig a device to tie into Spock's brain.

 

Given that distrust seems inherent in Cardassian culture, wouldn't they rather prefer to only use them when strictly necessary? Those devices, after all, could be ... hacked, by, say, the Obsidian Order trying to listen in on all your conversations ....

 

You really, really don't want to be caught distrusting the Obsidian Order!

Oh, Hawking had it made, not in terms of technology but in terms of his aliment. He got to retain his good looks, his every organ, and his capability to produce language. We really don't know how much of Pike still existed from neck down (probably uncomfortably much!) and just because McCoy says his "mind" is intact doesn't mean he couldn't have lost lots of things relating to the brain.

Well, the point there pretty much was that he couldn't. So he needed to consult alien intellect in order to proceed. And thankfully, that intellect could make the brain connection with McCoy!

Moving Spock's body around on remote didn't involve tying into the brain as, you know, there was no brain there...

Timo Saloniemi

 

Plus Spock wasn't the only Vulcan in Starfleet or on Earth. They could have brought one of the Vulcans, he could have mind-melded with Pike (I mean if you can mind-meld with a Horta then mind-melding with Pike should be a piece of cake) and thus know exactly what he wanted to say.

 

But only as far as they trusted Vulcan mumbo-jumbo, and presuming that the Vulcan in question was willing to meld with a damaged individual in the first place.

Really, if Spock in the privacy of the starship he served on wouldn't confide in his closest colleagues and arguable friends, the idea of ordering a Vulcan mind meld delivered to SB11 might not occur to anybody much... Sure, a number of high-ranking people and medical and cultural specialists and spooks would know, but if they hadn't shared that knowledge before this, they wouldn't now.

The real issue there is that Spock himself might have had an incentive to meld with Pike, in secret. Then again, he might not have had one; he was acting against the wishes of his former captain, after all.

Timo Saloniemi

 

That's another issue that has been discussed before on this board.... how does the UT device know when to translate and when not? ('I am experiencing nIb'poH, the feeling I have done this before.') Those devices must be able to not only scan language patterns, but intent too (which might not be that surprising as they have to scan our thought patterns anyway). I even attribute to those devices some capability to sense other universes; after all we get to hear everything perfectly translated into our 20th/21st century English.

 

I think that when someone speaks a language other than his usual for a couple of sentences the UT considers that it's done on purpose and therefore refrains from translating it. If the person insists on using this language then the translation resumes.

 

It's all artistic license. What we hear is not what the characters hear. I'm fairly certain that Kira never spoke anything other than her native Bajoran on the show (and probably even a regional, caste-based Dahkur language or perhaps a secret terrorist lingua franca). Geordi is supposedly a language expert, but it never came up and we hear him speaking only American-accented English even though he was born in Somalia and probably raised as a Starfleet brat and boomer. Kirk doesn't sound like he's from Iowa, nor Archer from upstate New York, nor the famous example of Picard who is clearly from Shakespeare-loving eastern France.

What we hear is not what we get. It's like a comic book that surrounds the words with <<diacritics>> to tell us that they're speaking something weird. Maybe they're speaking some shared language (Federation Standard, "English", Esperanta), maybe they're relying on translators (universal or otherwise), maybe a bit of both. When Klingons, Cardassians, or Kazon are speaking amongst themselves, there's no reason to assume they'd be adapting some crazy foreign language. They are speaking what they should logically know. But unlike the opening scene of Discovery, they're just assuming we get that the language onscreen isn't what we're hearing.

 

A country next to never never land.

 

We know from Metamorphosis that the UT has a telepathic component, so I've always assumed it was like the telepathic circuits on the TARDIS in Doctor Who. Some one intentionally speaking Klingon or some such is much like Donna trying to say something in Latin.

 

There's most likely a telepathic output. Since two different people will hear a different translation of the initial language. If more than three people were present it would be nearly impossible to make anything out.