Artistic license. The cameraman just went in at a different angle.
On ‘Star Trek,’ Why Didn’t the Cardassians Ever Speak ‘Cardassian?’
- Thread starter USS Excelsior
- Start date
Artistic license. The cameraman just went in at a different angle.
KHAN: English. I thought I dreamed hearing it. Where am I?
I think it's quite conceivable language drift will slow down. We have countless audio recordings and people all over the world are daily consuming recorded entertainment. This should slow any language drift that previous centuries went through
In the novelverse, there are at least six Nor-class stations.
Khan only heard English because that's what the Universal Translator translated it to (maybe because that's what he wanted to hear).
Kirk and McCoy speak some sort of incomprehensible baby language because they stopped learning how to speak at age three and relied their whole lives on translators.
This is star trek, sometimes they acknowledge the differences sometimes they don't.
Sometimes the transporter grows people from their DNAs, sometimes they are aware during transport....
Sometimes the Klingon speak to each other in English, sometimes in Klingon, sometimes they alternate!!!
Whatever's convenient.
Anyway, the Cardassian language exists since we've heard like a dozen words of it. To me, that's enough.
Sometimes the transporter grows people from their DNAs, sometimes they are aware during transport....
Sometimes the Klingon speak to each other in English, sometimes in Klingon, sometimes they alternate!!!
Whatever's convenient.
Anyway, the Cardassian language exists since we've heard like a dozen words of it. To me, that's enough.
The word "Nor" does have some significance in Cardassian culture, it would seem.
We don't know exactly what it means, but not only do we have the Nor-class station, there are Cardassian ships named Bok'Nor (shown on DS9) and Gav'Nor (mentioned in DSC). So "nor" could have some kind of military or spaceflight application.
Also, there is a word called "tal" which is apparently important as well:
- The ritual of shri'tal, where a dying person reveals their secrets to the rest of the family for use against their enemies
- And of course odo'ital, which literally means "Nothing".
So perhaps "tal" means "information". Therefore "shri'tal" could be "important information", whereas "odo'ital" means "no information".
Or something like that.
Edit: It's a pity @Nerys Ghemor doesn't seem to be posting much anymore. She knows more about the Cardassians than any of the rest of us do! (seriously. Check out her fanfic. It's awesome!)
We don't know exactly what it means, but not only do we have the Nor-class station, there are Cardassian ships named Bok'Nor (shown on DS9) and Gav'Nor (mentioned in DSC). So "nor" could have some kind of military or spaceflight application.
Also, there is a word called "tal" which is apparently important as well:
- The ritual of shri'tal, where a dying person reveals their secrets to the rest of the family for use against their enemies
- And of course odo'ital, which literally means "Nothing".
So perhaps "tal" means "information". Therefore "shri'tal" could be "important information", whereas "odo'ital" means "no information".
Or something like that.
Edit: It's a pity @Nerys Ghemor doesn't seem to be posting much anymore. She knows more about the Cardassians than any of the rest of us do! (seriously. Check out her fanfic. It's awesome!)
In TUC Uhura says that they can't use the UT because it would be detected? So what? How is the UT any worse than the delayed broken Klingon they were using????? Why would a UT be taken as something nefarious. Some of these plot points are really puzzling.
Terok Nor and Empok Nor are both space stations so maybe NOR simply means space station and Terok and Empok are Identification words of some kind, like numbers; letters, or people's names.
Probably because it would be reverse translated and they'd be detected as speaking English (or Swahili). By directly speaking Klingon, the listening stations can't reverse translate and doesn't detect a foreign language.
But, yeah, I would assume not using a universal translator would raise red flags. However, Discovery showed us that Universal Translators were not common objects in the Klingon Empire.
In this case, the lack of a UT works in the Enterprise's crew's favor.
They weren't just playing smugglers, they were playing bad smugglers. So their broken Klingon is just more "proof" of that. They were supposed to be incompetent amateurs who couldn't possibly pose a threat.
Remember the last thing the Klingon guard says to them - "Don't catch any bugs"? That's smuggler lingo. It means "don't get caught". And given how much the guard was laughing when he said that, he clearly expected them TO get caught.
Which was all part of the ruse.
If they had used the universal translator, their Klingon words would have been too good, too precise. It wouldn't have fit the kind of "newbie" smugglers they were trying to portray.
Probably because it would be recognized as Federation equipment and therefor a Federation ship trying to cross the border. Why wouldn't the UT be suspicious?
@Gazomog is a pretty big Cardassian fan. They might know something
Probably because it would be recognized as Federation equipment and therefor a Federation ship trying to cross the border. Why wouldn't the UT be suspicious?
Because while the UT may on occasion work by doing secret handshakes with fellow UTs, it should always be possible to ignore that and merely push the raw output into the ether. That is, what goes into the ether is merely fluently spoken Klingon, a set of sounds transformed into subspace ripples. The information that the sound emerged from the speaker element of a UT rather than from the lips of a Klingon is lost on its way from the source to the microphone of the comms system. (And if the comms system itself can be identified as Starfleet, the heroes are screwed already, so apparently it cannot.)
So we have to assume that the end result of Universal Translation, and not the fact that it comes out of a Universal Translator, would be the suspicious thing. In which case it wouldn't help if the UT first did the translating and printed the results on screen, and Uhura then read off that screen into the microphone: the contents would still be wrong (with wrong idioms because the Feds and their machines don't really know enough Klingoneseian, say).
The leather-bound books would be equally useless, then, and only waved around because the heroes are still trying to figure out what to do...
Rationalizing away the scene is a chore. But why the UT should work is easily established, and Mr. Laser Beam's "bad smugglers" workaround for why it nevertheless does not is really good there. Plus no doubt what the writers intended, even if their excuse for having the scene isn't all that good.
Timo Saloniemi
I assume she meant it would be detected as specifically a Federation UT.
I think they answered incredibly fast given that they seemed totally incompetent and that all they had were paper dictionaries!!! Anyone who's ever learned a new language knows how long it takes to translate even a simple sentence. Not to mention that they should have had trouble understanding what the Klingon said to them. That's usually what happens. When you don't know a language you can't even get the phonetic right unless you're some sort of linguistic genius, which these obviously weren't.
Anyway, that's entertainment, let's leave it at that...
Anyway, that's entertainment, let's leave it at that...
It's a nice explanation. But of course, it's only believable if the Universal Translator hasn't become ubiquitous by the 23rd century. If it has, even bad smugglers would be using it, and in that case, they would have needed to instruct the UT to translate in such a way it wasn't apparent that English was the original language. Given the language capabilities of the thing, that must certainly be possible.
Then again, now that DSC has introduced the idea that the pocketable UT would be news to the Klingons as late as 2257, we might just as well go with that. If there were such UTs around in Klingon space, Klingons would have taken possession of those - so it makes sense to assume a local UT vacuum. Would this be filled in the couple of decades allotted? Klingons might take, but they wouldn't give.
So smuggles might come in two castes: those with interstellar-standard gear, and those with whatever is allowed and obtainable within the backward Empire. Moving from one caste to another might be difficult...
Timo Saloniemi
So smuggles might come in two castes: those with interstellar-standard gear, and those with whatever is allowed and obtainable within the backward Empire. Moving from one caste to another might be difficult...
Timo Saloniemi
In the novelization, Valeris erases all records of the Klingon language from the UT. I suspect this was originally intended for the film, as well, but overdubbed at the last minute with Chekov's line about 'the universal translator will be recognized'.
I wonder if the story would have been improved if it was Saavik instead of Valeris.
The Cardassians always spoke in their own language or in Bajoran. Kira never spoke English, they didnt each it in Occupation school. In my head canon she took English lessons in honour of the English speaking emissary
