A question about Season 2 episode Minefield

[Tim Thomason]

3) The transmission was garbled, and the Romulans said Romulan but Hoshi didn't quite catch it, and the famed Universal Translator was of no help in spell-checking alien proper names.

Number 3. That was her first run-through of the language, and Hoshi might've only heard the species name once amongst a tough-to-understand translation. It's "something called the Romalin Star Empire," not "the Romalin Star Empire," so Hoshi might not be so sure if she picked up the name.

T'Pol, having heard or read of the Romulans, corrected Hoshi's pronunciation.

----

As for the language-issue: There must be two main Romulan languages, which are completely unrelated to each other. The one that Hoshi encountered (and probably used throughout the Romulan War and perhaps when dealing with outside races in general), and the one that was indistinguishable from Vulcan (probably the one used on Romulus amongst themselves).

 

[EmoBorg]

3) The transmission was garbled, and the Romulans said Romulan but Hoshi didn't quite catch it, and the famed Universal Translator was of no help in spell-checking alien proper names.

Number 3. That was her first run-through of the language, and Hoshi might've only heard the species name once amongst a tough-to-understand translation. It's "something called the Romalin Star Empire," not "the Romalin Star Empire," so Hoshi might not be so sure if she picked up the name.

T'Pol, having heard or read of the Romulans, corrected Hoshi's pronunciation.

----

As for the language-issue: There must be two main Romulan languages, which are completely unrelated to each other. The one that Hoshi encountered (and probably used throughout the Romulan War and perhaps when dealing with outside races in general), and the one that was indistinguishable from Vulcan (probably the one used on Romulus amongst themselves).

One language for communicating with outsiders and another for communications among Romulans. I could imagine they might have another non vulcan language for communicating with outsiders so that the Vulcans cannot trace it back to them. That suits their secretive nature.

 

[Long Syntax]

3) The transmission was garbled, and the Romulans said Romulan but Hoshi didn't quite catch it, and the famed Universal Translator was of no help in spell-checking alien proper names.

Number 3. That was her first run-through of the language, and Hoshi might've only heard the species name once amongst a tough-to-understand translation. It's "something called the Romalin Star Empire," not "the Romalin Star Empire," so Hoshi might not be so sure if she picked up the name.

T'Pol, having heard or read of the Romulans, corrected Hoshi's pronunciation.

----

As for the language-issue: There must be two main Romulan languages, which are completely unrelated to each other. The one that Hoshi encountered (and probably used throughout the Romulan War and perhaps when dealing with outside races in general), and the one that was indistinguishable from Vulcan (probably the one used on Romulus amongst themselves).

I vote #3 as well... we've seen that the universal translator needed a few passes at a language before things were reliable. I also don't believe T'Pol was holding back knowledge of Rolumans - I guess I've read too much to think other wise in non cannon books

 

[Timo]

There must be two main Romulan languages, which are completely unrelated to each other. The one that Hoshi encountered (and probably used throughout the Romulan War and perhaps when dealing with outside races in general), and the one that was indistinguishable from Vulcan (probably the one used on Romulus amongst themselves).

The thing is, how does Starfleet come to think that the latter (with its three dialects) is the one and only language of the Romulans? One would think Starfleet should encounter Romulans who speak the former language, if not exclusively, then at least often enough to learn about its existence in parallel with the Vulcan-like tongue.

It might not be all that far-fetched to think that Sato would dismiss the similarity here. Vulcans are potentially a planted or transplanted species, dropped on their hellhole of a world by Sargon's folks ("Return to Tomorrow"); said folks might have spread their seed all across the galaxy, so that a great many local species actually speak a Vulcan dialect - that is, a dialect of the original Sargonian language. This would also make things easier for the primitive translators of early Earth explorers (unless they got their UTs from the interstellar market and therefore had no tech gap to cross).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Binary]

I don't know how Starfleet knows. I have to brush up on my 'Enterprise' and see if the answer's in there somewhere.

Not that this is important, but why did TNG and DS9 always insist on giving all Romulans the same exact haircut?? It looks corny after a while. The commander from Balance Of Terror had grayish, wavy hair, and the female commander from Enterprise Incident had a long, relaxed cut. Yet every appearance in the spin-offs seems to have the identical, straight, jet black cut. Monotonous!!

 

[eyeresist]

I think they updated the Romulans in line with the way they updated the Klingons, to make them look more alien. With those new forehead ridges, there weren't many haircuts that would work.

 

[EmoBorg]

Don't Romulans and Vulcans have almost similar hairstyles?

 

[Timo]

Vulcan styles varied in the TOS movies, too.

The thing TNG did to the Romulans, besides adding the ridges, was to portray their culture as totalitarian. It was simply a new and different shade of evil, and called for uniformity and drabness. It was also a fun shade of evil, as Vulcans vs. Romulans now became South vs. North Korea, a slightly more modern and relevant conflict than the old Roman Empire or the Imperial Japanese or whatnot. But it didn't really allow for characters like the female commander any more.

The question then becomes, was Romulus "always" totalitarian, or was there "really" a moment of relative freedom during TOS? We might go a step or two further in the analogies and postulate a "Cultural Revolution" or something like that...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[eyeresist]

Vulcan styles varied in the TOS movies, too.

Saavik II's terrible mullet.

 

[Jeffe525]

I believe nobody including the Vulcan's knew what a Romulan looked like until 'Balance of Terror' a hundred years after this episode. The Vulcan's probably knew very little, at least as much as T'Pol disclosed.

I would amend this to say that only a few Vulcans knew about their common roots with Romulans. At the end of ENT Kir'Shara, V'Las meets with a Romulan revealing a plot to reunite the 2 cultures. So some Vulcans definitely knew.

Who knew what and when is open for debate, but I would guess that T'Pol's position and access would give her more knowledge (or at least more clues) than Spock had. I would also assume that any Vulcans who did know (or suspect) before Balance of Terror might see it as an embarrassment and keep it to themselves.

Since we're also debating proper pronunciation... I have long suspected that the Vulcan outcasts stopped by Earth during their exodus to find a new home, getting inspiration for the names Romulus, Remus, and the Romulan Star Empire. The time period fits, and I figure any direct contact may have influenced the development of the image of demons or the devil (especially if the Romulans directly contributed to the success of Rome's early conquests. Do the novels touch on this?

Thoughts?

 

[EmoBorg]

I do believe that Spock being half human and a member of starfleet would not have known much about the Romulans. The Vulcan high command may not have shared such info with him. As for T'Pol, i am not sure though.

 

[Timo]

The Diane Duane novels stated outright that the name "Romulan" was a human invention, chosen because the Romulans lived on twin worlds and the Romulus/Remus pairing occurred naturally to the Earthlings first spotting this pair of planets.

Is this at odds with "Minefield"? That depends entirely on how we view the Universal Translator. Remember how in "The Cloud Minders" there was this downtrodden population group called the Troglytes, and it only occurred to the heroes very late in the game that the word refers back to the concept of caves and the Earthling word for cave-dwellers, "troglodytes". Yet the locals supposedly weren't speaking English or any other Earth language (although opinions vary as to whether they were natives to the planet or colonists from elsewhere) - so it seems the UT chose an "apt" translation for a proper name without consulting our heroes.

Did the same sort of automation produce e.g. the name "Vendorians" for a species whose shapeshifting abilities are not known to our heroes from the get-go? And "Romulans" through the same sort of machine analysis, even when the actual word in the native tongue indeed sounds like "Rumalin"? Perhaps the UT constantly cross-consults a wider interstellar database of languages and frequently stumbles onto truly serendipitous translations that the users do not properly appreciate? That is, just by translating three phrases of Romulanese in "Minefield", the UT in fact has come to realize that these people are pseudo-Romans from a twin homeworld, a fact inherent if not in the language then at least in the language database... But the users never have the smarts to ask.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[vulcan redshirt]

I'm sure this theory won't be new but here goes:

In TOS Who mourns for Adonais? we meet Apollo, an alien who masqueraded as a god on Earth at the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans as well (presumably with others of his species), what's to say that after Earth no longer held interest for them, at least some of his cohorts found the Romulan exodus from Vulcan (which is stated as being approx 2000 years prior to the setting of ST) and attempted to culturally influence them as well? Obviously, the Romulans later dumped their 'gods', but traces of the romanesque influence remain, including the name of their star system and their government system. Problem solved a common origin to an unexpected cultural similarity in an alien culture.

 

[Timo]

That's an attractive idea. And we can also postulate the reverse, that the Romans of our planet got their origin myths from godlike people who had recently slummed on the planet Romulus.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[vulcan redshirt]

Indeed...

And possibly also inspired/guided the Roman parallel civilisation depicted in Bread and Circuses.

 

[Timo]

Then again, that one need not be particularly parallel or particularly Roman. It's a modern society with great industrial resources - it can remake itself in a matter of years. And it's also modern in following fashion trends and propagating those through global media.

For all we know, the place bore only minimal resemblance to old Rome before Captain Merrick got stranded there, but this man from beyond the stars had a few good ideas for the TV producers to use, and those became global fashion almost immediately. Namely, the style of weapons used in the televised games was altered, a few new names introduced, and soon everybody was naming their products funnily and even spelling their own names in accordance with the new fashion...

The "parallels" beyond the surface veneer are not particularly striking. This society had slavery and violent entertainment at an unknown timepoint predating the adventure, and that's about it. How more generic can you get?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[T'Girl]

Is this at odds with "Minefield"? That depends entirely on how we view the Universal Translator.

My impression is that Hoshi was translating by listening to the "Romulan" message directly, and wasn't using a UT.

 

[Timo]

But there's no telling what the Romulans were using...

(Sato is holding her finger to her ear, thus supposedly listening to a feed going specifically in there - is that the same as what the audience (barely) hears, and if so, why?)

One really wonders. The Romulans already know their way around space aliens. Why would they be making an ultimatum their enemies cannot understand? Unless they want an excuse for taking violent action, of course, but in this case the ultimatum appeared genuine enough - the Romulans did give them time to react and respond. So when T'Pol claims Sato only recently found a way to translate the language, how can she be believed?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Shark]

I think the writers were looking for a cheeky way of introducing the Romulans. Kidding.

I loved that little bit in that episode whose name I can't remember, where Archer and Daniels were far in the future, in a library, and Archer sees a book entitled: "The Romulan Star Empire" and Daniels says that Archer probably shouldn't read that; obviously knowing that Archer is going to be involved in the war. Yeah, fun...

 

[Willow]

I think the writers were looking for a cheeky way of introducing the Romulans. Kidding.

I loved that little bit in that episode whose name I can't remember, where Archer and Daniels were far in the future, in a library, and Archer sees a book entitled: "The Romulan Star Empire" and Daniels says that Archer probably shouldn't read that; obviously knowing that Archer is going to be involved in the war. Yeah, fun...

Interesting! I hadn't even thought about that angle. Is there anything in Trek "canon" that confirms the role of Archer and Enterprise in the Romulan War? Or are we to assume they had an involvement based on the time frame of the war? I know the Trek Lit books address this (in fact, IIRC Trip played a major role..) but the books aren't really considerd canon - though the are for ME.