I have a question about the Star Trek characters Spock and B'Elanna Torres?

[Christopher]

You can't necessarily count 20th/21st century characters saying that they hear English if they themselves speak English, because of the translator.

That's overthinking it. As I said, the idea of the translators being constantly engaged aboard ship is a modern (and extremely stupid) retcon that was never suggested or intended in TOS. The writers had them say they spoke English because they bloody well spoke English. Arguments should be based on the evidence. Choosing to invent some imaginary theory in conflict with the evidence and claiming that the evidence is deceptive because it doesn't fit the imaginary theory is circular logic.

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

I'm not saying that it was intended or suggested in TOS that the translator was always on. I'm just saying that "You speak English" doesn't prove that someone is speaking English when there is a device on board that translates other languages into English.

Granted we weren't told about Starfleet's universal translator until season 2, but the need for one was made clear in season 1's Arena. That episode came right before the Enterprise started actually visiting new civilisations that weren't parallel Americans or godlike telepaths in Return of the Archons and A Taste of Armageddon, so the question of 'How do they understand each other?' had been answered.

Anyway, I don't even think they were running a translator on the ship all the time, I'm on team 'Everyone In Starfleet Speaks Federation English'.

The real question is... did Neelix ever learn English? (Kes probably mastered it in an afternoon).

 

[Christopher]

I'm not saying that it was intended or suggested in TOS that the translator was always on. I'm just saying that "You speak English" doesn't prove that someone is speaking English when there is a device on board that translates other languages into English.

"You can't disprove it" is not evidence that it's true. That's backward reasoning. If the evidence shows that they're speaking English, the burden of proof is on the person claiming they aren't.

 

[evilchumlee]

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.

Yeah, i'm on board with that as well. DSC as a whole didn't make sense, but at least this one i'll chalk up to the universal translator kind of randomly translating what people were saying into all manner of languages.

It is quite clear the primary language of the Federation... or at the very least, Earth and Starfleet, is English. It makes an amount of sense in-universe.

Post-WW3, the western nations seemed to be doing better than the eastern nations, given that the USA is involved with sending out warp colony ships to other planets while a distinctly eastern looking courtroom is from the "Post-Atomic Horror" in the same timeframe, and add to the fact that even in the modern day real world, English is fairly commonly spoken in many countries.

So if English becomes the predominate language spoken by Earth's space agencies, and space becomes super important, it stands to reason that English would become even more prominent.

When we encounter aliens, there's a somewhat odd observation I can make that they seem to be better at learning English than we are of learning their languages. Take TNG "A Matter of Honor", Riker certainly doesn't know how to speak Klingon, but every Klingon on that ship can speak English... and that's implicit in the episode, "Speak their language".

So if Earth primarily speaks English, and aliens find it easier to interact with Earth by just speaking their language... English becomes the standard language.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

When we encounter aliens, there's a somewhat odd observation I can make that they seem to be better at learning English than we are of learning their languages.

Could that be a result of the fact that English is made up of words from so many other languages? Not that other languages don't have loanwords, but English has more, having begun to add other language words earlier and more eagerly?

 

[Christopher]

It is quite clear the primary language of the Federation... or at the very least, Earth and Starfleet, is English. It makes an amount of sense in-universe.

Post-WW3, the western nations seemed to be doing better than the eastern nations, given that the USA is involved with sending out warp colony ships to other planets while a distinctly eastern looking courtroom is from the "Post-Atomic Horror" in the same timeframe, and add to the fact that even in the modern day real world, English is fairly commonly spoken in many countries.

So if English becomes the predominate language spoken by Earth's space agencies, and space becomes super important, it stands to reason that English would become even more prominent.

No need to assume any of that. English is already the standard universal language of space travel, aviation, science, engineering, and commerce, so it stands to reason that it would become the lingua franca of space explorers and colonists, even if it weren't the dominant language on Earth.

 

[Shawnster]

As I've said, it makes zero sense to assume that the crew speak different languages and have the translator constantly active.

However, that's literally how Prodigy season 1 was.

 

[Christopher]

However, that's literally how Prodigy season 1 was.

Which makes sense in that specific context, since the crew were aliens and couldn't speak each other's languages, so they had to depend on the translator. But as I've explained, and as should be entirely obvious, it would be incredibly stupid to expect Starfleet officers to be completely dependent on the consistent operation of their technology and unable to cope when the technology failed, as it frequently does in crisis situations. Not to mention, again, that despite how it's portrayed in fiction, no machine translation would ever be perfect or error-free, so there would inevitably be misunderstandings and omissions that could be dangerous in a crisis. And that's not even considering the time lag that there would realistically be in a translation, another thing glossed over for dramatic convenience.

So naturally Starfleet Academy would teach all its cadets a common language, presumably English, so that they'd be able to communicate clearly regardless of the situation. That's just common sense.

 

[Shawnster]

Franchise-wide, there are many explicit confirmations that they speak English.

When these episodes were dubbed into other languages, did those dubs still sat English? Would have been a good opportunity to edit that so that each dub said they were speaking that language.

 

[Christopher]

When these episodes were dubbed into other languages, did those dubs still sat English? Would have been a good opportunity to edit that so that each dub said they were speaking that language.

There is obviously a difference between the original work and an adaptation.