The more the Universal Translator is explained away, the more improbable it becomes
Things that don't add up:
- Thread starter Discofan
- Start date
True. Biggest problem (that I see) is the mouth movements, without that multiple different explanations could make more sense.
The UT would be almost believable (with a delay) if it worked only with languages that are known in the Federation. The problem is that it works with languages that they had never heard before. Someday (soon?) computers will be able to translate as well as human interpreters. That I can believe but the rest is just nonsense.
It does exactly that, though.
Or if the UT makes everybody speak in the same language. Or both. All of these options are available if the UT works in the fashion described, that is, by intercepting the signal within the user's noggin. And if the UT relies on wireless assistance from the starship's computer (or at least welcomes it on occasion), as implied by those instances (VOY "Basics") where losing the commbadge means losing the ability to translate new languages (the caveman lingo) but not old ones (Kazon), then the starship computer going haywire will have effects inside the heads of the users, resulting in the lipsynced chaos we witness.
In contrast, the canceling-of-sound model fails to explain the lipsync, and also places greater requirements on the device. A doodad inside the user's head can bypass those mechanisms of the brain that would perceive faults such as lack of sync or use of poor grammar, and allows the organ to do in full what it is so good at, namely, self-deception.
Well, poor Leighton had half his face covered by a mask, and Pike got a chair instead of a body. Either there are hard limits in what future medicine can do, or then there are soft ones and these characters were merely waiting for their chance at getting the full cure. For all we know, that rasta-haired NCC-1031 transporter guy lost an eye, too, and already had it replaced more aesthetically than Detmer, while the other transporter guy lost both eyes and still hasn't gotten up to getting even Detmer-level treatment.
Which I guess is the point: L'Rell no longer gives a damn, what with being a Fighting Chancellor and a popular favorite who can now laugh at her political opponents (' rotting and beheaded corpses) and revel in her clever treachery in public.
Which in turn need not mean her initial fears were unfounded: for all we know, she's dead by Ep 3 of S 3.
Timo Saloniemi
I don't know any Leighton with half his face covered with a Mask. What episode of what series are you referring to?
In that one DS9 episode, we see the UT struggle to translate a language. So it is possible that it doesn't get them all right away.
TOS - The Conscience of the King
Only when it's plot convenient, otherwise it does get them all right away. Words are not necessarily linked to one another, so you have to hear them all before you can even hope to translate them.
For example, you can't possibly guess that a dentist is a doctor that treats your teeth!!
The UT that "guesses" a whole language based on a few sentences is a stupid idea.
It took Champollion a lifetime to completely translate the Rosetta stone and the SAME text was written in THREE languages, two of them were known ones.
Thank you. I completely forgot about that one.
They weren't on a D-7. They were on L'Rell's flagship, which is a different class ship that led the D-7 fleet there.
But yeah, I don't get how Tyler could be on the bridge with L'Rell either.
I agree that they went a bit overboard on that one.
Why don't we just accept that every fucking tinpot, two bit alien in the multiverse speaks perfect English.
Well English is otherwise known as Common. It's the trading language across the galaxy
British Imperialism ultimately won out if English is the Common Language throughout the galaxy and Klingons have adopted Shakespeare as their own.
Well the Klingons were working on their own timesuit so maybe Shakespeare was a Klingon
That explains: "Time is very slow for those who wait. Very fast for those who are scared.Very long for those who are lament.Very short for those who celebrate. But for those who love, time is eternal"
The lore is that it doesn't work based on the words themselves, but comparing them to the EEG of whoever is speaking (suggesting that all intelligent being have compatable "software" running in our gray-matter, but so does "The Chase," or the fact that telepathy is a thing in Star Trek), at least in face-to-face interactions. In communications between ships, presumably there's a lot of computer handshaking going on below the surface, sending mathematical formulas and the like back and forth until they've figured out how to talk to each other.
This reminds me of an interesting fact I heard once, that the science behind weather forecasting was developed before electronic computers could make it practical, so the first demonstration forecast the weather for the next six hours from a certain point, but it took six weeks to do the calculations by hand.
That doesn't exactly sound like iambic pentameter.
First of all, they don't speak English in Star Trek
Well, that's a curve ball
Wonder what Esperanto is for "We come in peace, shoot to kill" : )
There is precedent for that. Arne Darvin was a human looking Klingon in season 2 of the original series and the Enterprise crew couldn't tell he was Klingon until the tribble inspired McCoy to investigate further with his tricorder. And it makes sense that after Tyler, Starfleet developed better ways of identifying human looking Klingons.
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