Since Spock is only half Vulcan and Torres is only half Klingon, does Spock normally the Vulcan language and does Torres normally speak the Klingon language? Since both of them are half human, do the both normally speak English or does Torres speak Spanish? I know the Star Trek uses a universal translator for alien characters.
I have a question about the Star Trek characters Spock and B'Elanna Torres?
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Good question! I would venture to guess that each character probably is at least bilingual. I have a hard time imagining that Spock wouldn't be fluent in Vulcan, but I'm sure he is fluent in English as well. Torres is harder for me personally to answer because I don't know her character as well. It's possible she speaks all three languages fluently, English, Spanish and Klingon, but I don't know her backstory well enough to comment.
Really, it all boils down to cultural exposure. Spock spent his childhood on Vulcan but has served in Starfleet for long enough by the time we first see him that he should have a pretty good mastery of the English language. I would love to see a future Trek installment address how much Spock knew about humans before he joined Starfleet, and whether or not he knew English or any other Earth languages well enough to be considered fluent.
As an aside, the language used by the Federation (or at least the humans) is referred to as Linguacode in at least Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and possibly a few other episodes or films. Whether or not Linguacode is descended from English or is in fact a mesh of multiple Earth languages is unknown.
Really, it all boils down to cultural exposure. Spock spent his childhood on Vulcan but has served in Starfleet for long enough by the time we first see him that he should have a pretty good mastery of the English language. I would love to see a future Trek installment address how much Spock knew about humans before he joined Starfleet, and whether or not he knew English or any other Earth languages well enough to be considered fluent.
As an aside, the language used by the Federation (or at least the humans) is referred to as Linguacode in at least Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and possibly a few other episodes or films. Whether or not Linguacode is descended from English or is in fact a mesh of multiple Earth languages is unknown.
My assumption is that almost everyone in Starfleet working on majority human vessels or bases is speaking English, as it makes sense for a crew to have a common language when they're all space scientists expected to understand and obey exact orders in crisis situations. Plus attention is sometimes drawn to people (like Linus on Discovery) who have to use a translator. The Bajoran station DS9 is an exception, as we know that certain characters (like Quark) can't speak English.
So I reckon Spock and Torres both speak English on the ship except for when they're not, like when Spock's talking to Saavik for example. Spock definitely spoke Vulcan at home as his first language and I'd imagine B'Elanna could speak both her parents' languages.
So I reckon Spock and Torres both speak English on the ship except for when they're not, like when Spock's talking to Saavik for example. Spock definitely spoke Vulcan at home as his first language and I'd imagine B'Elanna could speak both her parents' languages.
I think Linguacode is a simple language designed to be very easy to figure out and translate that's used for first contact situations.
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I looked it up and she was apparently raised on the Federation colony world Kessik IV and all we know about the place is that she and her mother were the only Klingons.
We don't know who in the Federation started the colony and it could be that it's one of those places where everyone's really into dragons or Scotland, but either way it seems likely that they probably taught Federation standard (English) at school as one of the main languages.
We don't know who in the Federation started the colony and it could be that it's one of those places where everyone's really into dragons or Scotland, but either way it seems likely that they probably taught Federation standard (English) at school as one of the main languages.
Spock was raised in a bilingual household, his father was an ambassador to Earth, and his mother, at least according to unofficial sources, was a linguist. It stands to reason that he learned both English and Vulcan from childhood. People raised in bilingual households are often fluent in both their parents' languages and can code-switch between them on a dime.
B'Elanna, similarly, probably learned both English and Klingon as she grew up, but she identifies with her human side and lives in the Federation, and thus presumably prefers English. I don't recall her ever speaking Spanish.
No, linguacode is not the language they speak. It's a protocol for computer translation when making first contact with a new species, a method for building a translation matrix quickly from basic principles. "In a Mirror, Darkly" established that Hoshi Sato invented it in the 2160s.
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The language the Trek characters speak has always been identified as English, except in a couple of recent productions which have referred to it as "Federation Standard," a term previously only used in tie-in fiction or fanfiction.
Yes, absolutely. The assumption that the crewmembers are all speaking their native languages and using translators to communicate all the time is ridiculous. First of all, technology can fail, and Starfleet would surely want its officers to be able to cope with situations where they can't rely on their machines. Second, even the most perfect computer translation will not be completely accurate, since no two languages map perfectly onto each other (although fiction tends to gloss this over for convenience). Some nuance and precision will always be lost. The only way to avoid misunderstandings is if everyone's fluent in the same language.
Also, though the shows and films tend to use the dramatic shorthand of having actors deliver "translated" dialogue in English, it would realistically work more like it was shown to work in Beyond, with the original language still audible under the translation. That would get confusing in a situation where a lot of people were talking right after each other, giving reports in quick succession, with the translation voices overlapping. Clarity would be better if everyone's speaking the same language.
B'Elanna, similarly, probably learned both English and Klingon as she grew up, but she identifies with her human side and lives in the Federation, and thus presumably prefers English. I don't recall her ever speaking Spanish.
No, linguacode is not the language they speak. It's a protocol for computer translation when making first contact with a new species, a method for building a translation matrix quickly from basic principles. "In a Mirror, Darkly" established that Hoshi Sato invented it in the 2160s.
Linguacode
Linguacode was a translation matrix used during first contact scenarios, often employed when the universal translator was unable to facilitate communication. The language was developed by noted communications officer Hoshi Sato in the 2160s. (ENT: "In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II") It was generally...
memory-alpha.fandom.com
The language the Trek characters speak has always been identified as English, except in a couple of recent productions which have referred to it as "Federation Standard," a term previously only used in tie-in fiction or fanfiction.
Yes, absolutely. The assumption that the crewmembers are all speaking their native languages and using translators to communicate all the time is ridiculous. First of all, technology can fail, and Starfleet would surely want its officers to be able to cope with situations where they can't rely on their machines. Second, even the most perfect computer translation will not be completely accurate, since no two languages map perfectly onto each other (although fiction tends to gloss this over for convenience). Some nuance and precision will always be lost. The only way to avoid misunderstandings is if everyone's fluent in the same language.
Also, though the shows and films tend to use the dramatic shorthand of having actors deliver "translated" dialogue in English, it would realistically work more like it was shown to work in Beyond, with the original language still audible under the translation. That would get confusing in a situation where a lot of people were talking right after each other, giving reports in quick succession, with the translation voices overlapping. Clarity would be better if everyone's speaking the same language.
I imagine they speak English because occasionally B'Elanna would curse in Klingon and it would be in Klingon. If that makes sense.
The universal translator was invented to handwave the issue of the crew being able to visit alien planets and blend in, so it can't really work realistically.
There are numerous examples throughout Trek of characters specifically indicating that they speak English; not just that a universal translator is somehow compensating. Captain Christopher says "you speak English" and Kirk says "that's right." Khan mentions being surprised that English is being spoken. And in TOS the universal translator was a handheld device, not something implanted in people's ears, so it was obvious when it was being used.
I think it is clear that English has become the standard language of the Federation and is used by most people aboard starships and space stations, with the universal translator being supplementary.
I think it is clear that English has become the standard language of the Federation and is used by most people aboard starships and space stations, with the universal translator being supplementary.
Sorry, but that's not actually the case. The first depiction of a translation device in Trek was in "Arena," as a device provided by the Metrons to allow Kirk to understand the Gorn. The term "universal translator" was introduced in "Metamorphosis" as a way of communicating with an incorporeal energy being. The only other references to translators in TOS/TAS were in the context of communicating with a spacegoing alien vessel or entity ("Journey to Babel," "The Changeling," 'The Counter-Clock Incident"), communicating with a non-humanoid life form incapable of phonetic speech ("The Lights of Zetar," "One of Our Planets is Missing"), or deciphering an ancient recorded or written language ("Beyond the Farthest Star," "The Ambergris Element").
The idea of the universal translator being used to blend in on pre-warp planets was never once asserted in TOS or TAS; it was basically just implicitly assumed that aliens all spoke English, or else that the crew had learned the native language but it was being rendered in English for the audience's benefit (not unlike TOS's sister show Mission: Impossible, where going undercover in foreign countries just meant speaking English with a foreign accent). The first explicit references to translator devices being used to pass as natives were in tie-in fiction. It never showed up explicitly in canon until the TNG era, and I don't think even TNG ever stated it overtly.
Indeed, even the tie-ins didn't catch onto the idea right away. The early Bantam novel Spock: Messiah! revolved around an experimental technology that linked a landing party's brains to those of a planet's natives so that they could draw on the natives' knowledge of language, culture, etc. to pass as natives, which they needed because otherwise they would've had to learn the language the hard way. So the book clearly assumed that there was no automatic machine translation used in such a context, or at least that it wouldn't allow convincing the natives that you were speaking their language. Similarly, the early Pocket novel The Abode of Life showed translators working like they did in Beyond -- native listeners heard the crew speaking English and then heard the translation in the native language. So the idea that translators could fool natives into believing a landing party was speaking the native language was something that came along later.
Okay, I did some research and even though the universal translator (telecommunicator) was mentioned in the first proposal for the series, it didn't mentioning anything about lip-syncing or being used to let a crew blend in. I suppose if they were going with their original parallel worlds plan, then the occupants really would speak English a lot of the time.
But the heroes do have a translator in TOS and they do communicate with aliens fluently with no one ever mentioning a strange echo. Later series made it explicit that with the UT in use people only heard the translated voice.
But the heroes do have a translator in TOS and they do communicate with aliens fluently with no one ever mentioning a strange echo. Later series made it explicit that with the UT in use people only heard the translated voice.
Not really. It was just commonplace in the science fiction of the era to just ignore the language question, just like it was common in spy fiction or war movies to have people from different countries all speak English with accents. It's just a storytelling trope, not meant to be taken literally. Implicitly, perhaps, it may be that all the characters are speaking a foreign language and it's just being acted out in English for the audience's benefit, or as a narrative shorthand. (It still happens today too -- in anime and tokusatsu, all aliens speak fluent Japanese, complete with correct use of honorifics, nicknames, idioms, and English loan words.)
No, that never explicitly happened in TOS. See my above examples. The only times we heard explicitly translator-generated voices were in episodes where the alien speakers were incapable of phonetic speech -- the Gorn, the Companion, the Zetarians, the alien captain from "Beyond the Farthest Star." In the cases of the Gorn and the alien captain, I'm fairly certain that we did actually hear their native alien speech noises underneath the synthesized English words.
Well, the Gorn did hiss a bit with his 's's.
No, I mean I think you could hear the growls and hisses of his actual speech with the English translation superimposed on top of them.
Torres is an easy answer. She speaks English... or... "Federation Standard". She largely rejects her Klingon heritage and generally sees herself as human. She does seem to be fluent in Klingon, but she almost certainly chooses not to speak it normally.
Spock is clearly bilingual. I would wager he tends to skew towards just speaking English, given that most of the people he tends to be around speak English. While his mother was likely also bilingual and spoke Vulcan, Amanda probably spoke English first. Sarek, having been ambassador to Earth for so long and living among humans, probably also tends to speak primarily English.
DSC and SNW complicate it and make it nonsensical. Even though we know English is "Federation Standard", which would imply... most in the Federation speak it, they ALSO use the universal translator on-ship 24/7, with people speaking all manner of languages. It was a plot point in Discovery that when the translator failed, Saru was still able to communicate because he knew so many languages... but... Federation Standard should have worked just as well...
Spock is clearly bilingual. I would wager he tends to skew towards just speaking English, given that most of the people he tends to be around speak English. While his mother was likely also bilingual and spoke Vulcan, Amanda probably spoke English first. Sarek, having been ambassador to Earth for so long and living among humans, probably also tends to speak primarily English.
DSC and SNW complicate it and make it nonsensical. Even though we know English is "Federation Standard", which would imply... most in the Federation speak it, they ALSO use the universal translator on-ship 24/7, with people speaking all manner of languages. It was a plot point in Discovery that when the translator failed, Saru was still able to communicate because he knew so many languages... but... Federation Standard should have worked just as well...
As I've said, it makes zero sense to assume that the crew speak different languages and have the translator constantly active. So I choose to interpret that scene not as the translator deactivating, but rather as the translator activating and malfunctioning, translating the crew's English into other random languages. It's the only way to make any sense of it.
Selecting in some (if not all) cases the crewmember's other spoken language instead of English, correct? So an error that skips over the default first choice and translates into the second/third choice, etc.
If I remember right they switch to a backup bridge system which means that the people who speak English can communicate at least. So it's actually one of the few episodes to confirm that they are mostly speaking English.
Franchise-wide, there are many explicit confirmations that they speak English. "Tomorrow is Yesterday," "Space Seed," "Metamorphosis," and First Contact all have 20th- or 21st-century characters stating that the Starfleet characters speak English. "The Changeling" had Chapel urging the mind-wiped Uhura to speak English rather than Swahili. In "Spectre of the Gun," when the bridge crew all hear the Melkots' telepathic warning in their native languages, Kirk confirms his own is English. TNG: "All Good Things..." and VGR: "Message in a Bottle" both have characters asking someone to rephrase an overly technical statement "in English," and TNG: "Pen Pals" has Picard say "In plain English" before rephrasing something. The character One in VGR: "Drone" confirms that Seven of Nine speaks English. There are also plenty of references to English in Enterprise, though that probably goes without saying.
You can't necessarily count 20th/21st century characters saying that they hear English if they themselves speak English, because of the translator. In The 37s, the kidnapped humans heard everything in their own languages, just like it was being spoken in that language.
But yeah, there is definitely evidence that English is the main language spoken by Starfleet officers, and when the broken translator is bypassed Nigerian character Owosekun and (possibly) German character Detmer communicate in English like nothing changed.
But yeah, there is definitely evidence that English is the main language spoken by Starfleet officers, and when the broken translator is bypassed Nigerian character Owosekun and (possibly) German character Detmer communicate in English like nothing changed.
