Undiscovered Country Anomolies

[Tomalak]

The Universal Translator is the most ubiquitous technology in all of Star Trek, but it's also the least explained. It's just magic, and always works exactly according to the needs of the plot.

The interesting thing about the trial scene is that there's no UT - it's a person manually translating. Which suggests the UT confiscation happened before the trial.

There's also the question of whether the use of a particular language is diegetic or not, and the film clearly switches between them as needed. The trial again shows this in real time - Chang starts in Klingon, then we cut to the translator, and back to Chang now speaking English for the audience's benefit. But he's still diegetically speaking Klingon.

I know Chang was quoting Adlai Stevenson at the trial, but the implication when he tells Kirk to not "wait for the translation" is that Kirk speaks Klingon and Chang knows it.

Could be, but Chang is primarily playing to the gallery. Either way, Kirk pauses before responding, allowing enough time for the translation.

I think the only time that Kirk speaks Klingon on screen is when he imitates Kruge calling for a beam up on Genesis. And that's not conclusive, as it's simple mimicry.

 

[Tallguy]

Chang starts in Klingon, then we cut to the translator, and back to Chang now speaking English for the audience's benefit. But he's still diegetically speaking Klingon.

Because they saw The Hunt for Red October.

 

[Tomalak]

Because they saw The Hunt for Red October.

100%! Honestly I think it's the best way to handle language in film.

 

[DonIago]

IIRC the novelization posits that Uhura could have at least used the UT to know what the Morska guard was saying and what she should say in response (think using Google Translate as a middleman to then directly interact verbally with someone) but that it had been sabotaged. I liked the idea that Our Heroes couldn't use it directly to communicate because it would have been recognized (though the line is almost an aside in the film, and seems like something that should have been better anticipated), though I reserve judgment on whether Uhura should have been expected to know Klingon herself.

One might argue that Uhura knew 'High Klingon' or such but that the Morska guard was communicating in a more informal/low-brow dialect that was unfamiliar enough to stymie her. This could be somewhat supported by his demeanor throughout the conversation.

 

[Maurice]

Because they saw The Hunt for Red October.

Yeah, and the gimmick predates that by decades. It at least goes back to Stanley Kramer’s Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), in which Shatner appears (as Captain Byers).

 

[Tomalak]

There's also the approach of the BBC sitcom 'Allo 'Allo, set in occupied France in the Second World War, in which everyone speaks English with outrageously exaggerated comedy accents to denote their language.

 

[Rowdy Roddy McDowall]

Yeah, and the gimmick predates that by decades. It at least goes back to Stanley Kramer’s Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), in which Shatner appears (as Captain Byers).

It's quite the retro-kick to see Captain Kirk talk to Dorothy Gale on the witness stand.

 

[CoveTom]

I really think people are overthinking the Uhura scene. It's a moment of levity in a pretty grim film, but also shows our heroes using their resourcefulness to successfully complete the mission. It's a great Uhura scene, not an insult!

It is most definitely not a great Uhura scene. Not at all.

 

[Tomalak]

It is most definitely not a great Uhura scene. Not at all.

She uses her resourcefulness and quick thinking to save the ship from detection, deep in Klingon space, enabling them to rescue Kirk and Bones and save the day!

YMMV.

 

[FormerLurker]

I think Uhura would agree it's not her best moment.

 

[CoveTom]

She uses her resourcefulness and quick thinking to save the ship from detection, deep in Klingon space, enabling them to rescue Kirk and Bones and save the day!

YMMV.

She does? We must have watched different cuts of the movie. I think she comes off looking like an incompetent idiot, personally.

 

[UssGlenn]

Doesn't the novelization continue the scene slightly more and have her remark "well that was embarrassing"? I'm not sure, Its been a while since I read it.

 

[Vger23]

I am not clear on why having a Universal Translation be "recognized" would necessarily be a bad thing. If you're masking yourself as a freighter or whatever, you could be from one of any 100's of species that don't speak Klingon.

I still think it's even more questionable that the Klingon sensor tech securing their border can't distinguish a freighter from a Constitution-class starship.

 

[JamesRye]

I am not clear on why having a Universal Translation be "recognized" would necessarily be a bad thing. If you're masking yourself as a freighter or whatever, you could be from one of any 100's of species that don't speak Klingon.

I still think it's even more questionable that the Klingon sensor tech securing their border can't distinguish a freighter from a Constitution-class starship.

I just thought they were analogs for the Russians at the end of the Cold War, so their tech was shoddy and the officers were a bit drunk / bored of their roles. One thing about the Klingons is that you dont really see their scientists, technicians etc...

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Doesn't the novelization continue the scene slightly more and have her remark "well that was embarrassing"? I'm not sure, Its been a while since I read it.

It wouldn't shock me. J.M. Dillard didn't seem to think much of the script for TUC.

 

[Tosk]

I am not clear on why having a Universal Translation be "recognized" would necessarily be a bad thing.

Maybe when Chekov says that he means that a Starfleet universal translator would be recognized. Perhaps (in the logic of ST6) different UTs have distinguishing characteristics?

 

[Tallguy]

It wouldn't shock me. J.M. Dillard didn't seem to think much of the script for TUC.

She essentially re-wrote the "enhanced interrogation" scene with Spock and Valeris.

 

[David cgc]

I liked what the Kelvin films did with Uhura's character, based on Hoshi from ENT, and later adopted by SNW, but in TOS she was a skilled technician and systems operator first and foremost. Speaking alien languages wasn't in her wheelhouse and nor should it reasonably have been expected to be.

The 25th Anniversary computer game had an expansion on Uhrua’s abilities that was more in line with the concept of her character as a tech and not a linguist, when it established she was the had the second-highest computer systems qualification on the ship. She was able to purge a cyber-attack on the Enterprise by reprogramming a Klingon computer virus in their library to eliminate an invasive program while Spock was out on a landing party.

As for why there was apparently no one on the Enterprise who could speak Klingon on a sensitive mission involving Klingons (who are all expected and assumed to speak English instead - which is Azetbur's point), happily we can simply point to the intentional sabotage that Cartwright's cabal intended. They planted Valeris, Burke and Samno, so they could easily have denied Kirk any Klingon cultural experts. He was set up to fail, and nearly played perfectly into their plans.

Valeris says that there are 300 people aboard the ship, which is a quite bit short of the 430 quoted in TOS and TMP. It makes sense that if it was just supposed to be a short run to the border and back, no eyebrows would be raised by not staffing the “payload specialists;” anthropologists, historians, linguists, probably most of the “hard science” staff like stellar cartography…

Lucky they didn’t offload unneeded equipment, too.

I still think it's even more questionable that the Klingon sensor tech securing their border can't distinguish a freighter from a Constitution-class starship.

It’s a bit early out-of-universe to expect the audience to take it as-read, but it became an ubiquitous trope in the TNG-era that it wasn’t that hard to fiddle with a ship’s “warp signature” and other emissions to disguise it as something else, at least from a cursory scan (though it almost never held up to a closer look, which would explain why they avoided doing anything else that would attract scrutiny, like using a UT).