Should Star Trek look like a badly dubbed Godzilla movie??

[ED-209]

So the universal translator translates at the point of hearing it - so why is it when Aliens speak English their lips meet with what they're saying? It should look like a badly dubbed Zilla movie - I know the reason is real life and all that - just a bit of fun.

 

[Nyotarules]

They showed this in the Trek Beyond movie how the U.T should really work. If TV Trek followed this, the crew could never go undercover in alien makeup, they would be spotted as soon as they spoke.
Maybe the U.T has a holo projector device near your mouth so it looks like you are speaking the alien words...

 

[publiusr]

We are close to that now
https://techxplore.com/news/2023-11-realistic-ai-powered.html

 

[at Quark's]

The UT also manipulates subspace to synchronise their apparent lip movement, or something.

Beyond that, the UT must even have extradimensional detection capabilities, detecting us as out-of-universe viewers and rendering everything the characters say into our contemporary version of English. (These guys live centuries in the future after all, even if they still speak English it's bound to be noticeably different from what we speak today).

 

[Shawnster]

There was at least 1 episode of VOY where they did just that and the alien mouth on the viewscreen did not match the audio

 

[drt]

These guys live centuries in the future after all, even if they still speak English it's bound to be noticeably different from what we speak today.

I remember in the 80s there was the fanon idea that the Federation characters were speaking something called "Standard" -- ignoring the three or so occasions English was specifically called out as the language being spoken in TOS.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I remember in the 80s there was the fanon idea that the Federation characters were speaking something called "Standard"

Not "fanon," and not just "in the 80s"; it's pretty much what all officially licensed novels have been consistently calling the lingua franca of the Federation for the past four decades.

 

[ED-209]

There was at least 1 episode of VOY where they did just that and the alien mouth on the viewscreen did not match the audio

Really? I can’t remember that at all.

 

[Dee1891]

VOY: "Shattered".

 

[at Quark's]

I remember in the 80s there was the fanon idea that the Federation characters were speaking something called "Standard" -- ignoring the three or so occasions English was specifically called out as the language being spoken in TOS.

What if the UT renders references to 'Standard' as 'English' too, for our convenience? (In expressions such as 'in plain English, doctor?')

 

[Annie McCoy]

So the universal translator translates at the point of hearing it - so why is it when Aliens speak English their lips meet with what they're saying? It should look like a badly dubbed Zilla movie - I know the reason is real life and all that - just a bit of fun.

Not a Trek reply but I love when in Dr Who they addressed this with Bill and 12 in Eaters of Light saying how the TARDIS even does lipsync. Although that was more offhand in guessing Trek has a more scientific response with translation when they aren’t just speaking Standard

 

[Ragitsu]

(These guys live centuries in the future after all, even if they still speak English it's bound to be noticeably different from what we speak today).

Conventional swearing* (conventional by our standards, to be specific) went the way of the dodo. Yes, that speech was the result of broadcast television network limitations, but those limitations helped humans of the twenty-fourth century to sound that little bit different.

* Putting aside that one time Patrick Stewart dropping an expletive in French .