Tumgik
#universal translator
dduane · 11 months
Note
I was wondering what your thoughts about universal translators are in Star Trek? Because that’s the explanation for them being able to understand the people on whatever random planet they come across - apart from in the instances where it’s too different and doesn’t work. But then sometimes there’s times when a character speaks in another language, let’s say Klingon, and we hear the Klingon. Is it just for narrative purposes?
Thank you!
I've dealt with this problem on and off in Trek novels. (Uhura in particular is often pitched as an expert in translator tech... which makes sense.)
But obviously this would be a wildly complex technology, one really difficult to implement in even simple modes a lot of the time... and seriously difficult to make work with new species. Explaining how it could be made to function would be a whole novel's worth of work; one I'm happy to leave to someone else right now, as I've got more than enough on my plate.
Meanwhile I find its presence a useful storytelling tool that can save the writer a lot of work. (And when it breaks down, that's often useful too. I'm pretty sure I played around with that trope in Doctor's Orders.) And certainly, you can drive a plot pretty effectively, sometimes, with a normally well-behaved technology that suddenly starts misbehaving. The words "transporter malfunction" have driven a whole lot of episodes of Trek to their logical conclusions... :)
229 notes · View notes
bookanimeart · 1 year
Text
Alien translation software that learns English slang but doesn't realize that it's not "standard" English or the cultural context (like time) surrounding the slang and ends up with things like a diplomat saying "Warp drive is totes magoats the bee's knees, comrade!"
841 notes · View notes
writergeekrhw · 1 year
Note
i don't want to nitpick about the Universal Translator since as you said, it's basically pixie dust, but why does Garak know Klingon if presumably he'd have a Universal Translator? would he have not had one when the OO stationed there? do OO operatives have to actually learn all the languages - so can he speak Federation Standard? since you wrote a lot of Garak episodes I wonder if you'd thought about this
I'm pretty sure Garak knows a lot of languages including Klingon and Fed Standard and can speak them without the Universal Translator because he trained for that sort of thing in... ummm... tailor school. You never know when your Universal Translator might fail in the middle of a crucial inseam measurement.
312 notes · View notes
000marie198 · 11 months
Text
I can't believe I never pointed this out before!
So anyways, thinking about that tavern scene in Sonic 2, I recalled about the Miles Electric having a translating function. Now here's the thing, Tails' gadgets don't usually mess up, and the translator is supposed to be one of the least complex functions for a device that can perfectly replicate and create the most realistic, life like holograms which tricked even Robotnik. Also, deducing from how Tails was able to search up any helpful Siberian customs, it appears the device has a function that scans the internet's database for required info, and that could also be applied on translations.
So in theory, the Miles Electric shouldn't be messing up like that in the most hilarious ways unless it misinterpreted the recording. That's one reason aside from comedy of why it kept giving wrong translations.
BUT,
There might just be an additional reason. Let's focus on the translations provided by M.E (heh, Knuckles and Tails' respective fav things have the same initials).
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
See these lines? Notice something about them? They are all hilarious yet insulting in a manner that would make the subject upset and angry. Sounds familiar? Well, let's look at another invention of Tails that did the exact same thing.
I believe the sassy translator in Miles Electric was a subtle nod to U.T.
137 notes · View notes
Text
did you guys ever notice how all those human figures of speech used in mass effect are of english origin?
with universal translators, there should be all kinds of human idoms, not just english ones, thrown around in the game
some humans seem to be canonically speaking another language (maeko matsu comes to mind)
why don‘t we ever hear some non english idoms like some alien trying to be cool and blend in with the humans by saying stuff like ‚you‘re on the woodway‘ (german idom)
151 notes · View notes
mots-scifi · 8 months
Text
Enterprise was rough around the edges but at least they stopped to think "wait, if they were the first, how did they communicate with aliens?" and it wasn't until Sato developped a prototype of translator that they held an interplanetary conference. So Archer is famous and an important part in founding the Federation, and Cochrane is famous and important because of the warp drive, but where is Sato?
I am curious to see if in the new season of SNW somebody remembers Hoshi Sato, because it is very telling that NOBODY before Enterprise thought that somebody must have worked in the UT technology, and that people must have had to communicate otherwise before having UT widely available. No important person to remember in the xenolinguist and communications domain, why?
And I don't know, I think at least Uhura should mention Sato, even if it's à la Jeffery's tubes, the Sato code for trying a new style of communication or something like that.
21 notes · View notes
jackleg-penwright · 8 months
Text
Universal Translator head-canon
In case you’re actually coming to this post because you like my Tumblr, instead of coming from the AO3 link in my fic, I should probably mention that I’m kind of hijacking my account here in order to break down some of the quite frankly ridiculous amounts of worldbuilding that goes into the stuff I’m starting to write. I’m autistic, which in my case means that I was the kid who sorted her legos for hours (by color, by width, by length etc) and never did get around to building anything. For me, the worldbuilding is the fun part, while writing the story is the work (though I do hope I’m pretty decent at it too, or at least getting better). 
I don’t want to put the worldbuilding itself into the fics, that would just distract from the story (my acting teachers would always say, never act your homework. When you’re on stage/camera, you have to be in the moment) - but just in case you’re curious, or if you want to use my aliens in your fics, or if you’re just a nerd like me who loves sorting details for their own sake, here it is.
This one is my head-canon for how the Universal Translator works. 
Well, actually I don’t have any idea how it works - do you hear a real-time voice in your head translating, does a text-based translation pop up in your field of vision, does your brain just know what they mean? Not a clue.
But what I do figure is that you can choose how it’s translated - both for words, and for numbers and systems.
There are a number of levels that are preset for you to choose.
There’s translate everything, where everything you hear is turned into the closest approximation that you would understand. If someone said “para mi es chino,” you would hear “it’s all Greek to me,” even though the Spanish version actually references Chinese. Idioms are converted to the closest with a similar meaning.
Then there’s the level where you get the meanings at the level of phrases and expressions, but idioms are left intact. So if someone said “me gusta pasta,” you would hear “I like pasta," but if they said "para mi es chino," you'd hear "for me, it's Chinese" instead of the closest English idiom.
At the next level down, you would instead hear “pasta is pleasing to me.” The literal meaning of the words is preserved, although the word order is rearranged to make the most sense grammatically.
That’s probably as minimalist a translation as anyone who’s interested in the unique beauty of a language would choose to go, and that’s the most minimalist of the pre-sets available.  
If you actually want to LEARN the other language, then you’ll switch to manual settings. Ok, there’s one more pre-set, which is the “vocabulary only” setting. Every word is translated literally, and left in the exact order of the other language. So if someone said “me gusta pasta,” you would hear “to me, pleases pasta.” 
From the vocabulary-only setting, you can manually adjust all sorts of things - you can set specific words or phrases to be entirely untranslated whenever you hear them, you can have a literal translation but use the native-speaker’s original prefixes or suffixes. You can have the parts-of-speech information that’s embedded in the grammar be added to the translation (so “me gusta pasta” might include information like reflexive verb first person singular etc). The sky’s kind of the limit with the manual settings - you can even take a preset level and modify it so that you hear the native suffixes to your own words (which I suspect is where fan-terms like “federaji” come from). 
My headcanon is that when they recorded the episodes, there is a universal translator embedded in the recording equipment, and which settings it is on is chosen by the director for the purposes of his or her artistic vision for the episode. That’s why we hear Klingons speaking English - except when we don’t. 
There’s a whole other set of settings when it comes to numbers and units of measurement etc, which I may or may not get to in another note. For now, suffice it to say that the settings that both Garak and Julian use translate numbers automatically, but leave the units untranslated. So if I had those settings, and I were to travel from the US to the UK and hear people talking about a heat wave of 39 degrees, my translator would not automatically translate the centigrade to the 102.2 degrees fahrenheit I’d be able to picture - I’d hear 39 degrees and have to learn just how hot that actually is. 
I think, as xenophiles, both Julian and Garak would find that appealing.
16 notes · View notes
motsimages · 1 year
Text
When the Breen get to Damar's ship, Damar can't understand them and comments that he would have his translator ready for it if he had been told in advance. Later on, he can understand the Breen as well as Weyoun but, we, the audience, can't. Does it mean that because the Federation has virtually no contact with the Breen and we, Humans, are part of the Federation, we don't have a translator ready for it?
We have seen that the translator can deduce the grammar, syntax and phonetics of a language it has never heard and it can apply what it knows about other languages to translate into, at least one Human language (I assume it's English in DS9). Why can't it translate that Breen language into English then? How weird is Breen that the Human audience of the series can't listen to the translation?
What we hear from the Breen and what Weyoun translates/explains/replies to makes it look like the Breen are concise and don't require much words. English seems to always be longer (according to the translation we hear of Vorta speech, of course). In my experience translating from French and English into Spanish, English is always shorter than Romance languages so this is an interesting change.
It also sounds mechanic, so maybe the Federation's translator is not used to these sounds and as such, it cannot pick up language from it. It gets confused and thinks it's a machine or cannot identify words. In that case, it would be the phonetic database missing data. That seems to me the easiest explanation, but if it's not it, we are in for a treat when it comes to Breen languages grammar.
42 notes · View notes
neopronouns-in-action · 9 months
Text
Neopronouns in Action #055
055: Universal Translator Mistranslation
Neopronouns: joker/jokers/jokerself, which will follow the same rules as it/its/itself for this example.
Replace it with joker Replace its with jokers Replace itself with jokerself
EX:
"It is going to adopt a new puppy soon, as soon as it gets a fence set up around its yard so the puppy can go outside without it having to walk it. Its uncle is going to help set up the fence, since he has a set of power tools he's letting it use, since it lost its. It's going to buy toys and train the puppy itself."
Becomes:
“Joker is going to adopt a new puppy soon, as soon as joker gets a fence set up around jokers yard so the puppy can go outside without joker having to walk it. Jokers uncle is going to help set up the fence, since he has a set of power tools he’s letting joker use, since joker lost Jokers. Joker's going to buy toys and train the puppy jokerself.”
= = =
Kraevun lifted jokers hand in the local signal for “I'm a customer who is confused and needs help”, finally giving in to the overwhelming bewilderment that had started to overtake joker almost as soon as joker'd entered the shop.
Joker only had to keep joker hand raised for a few moment before one of the workers swung over along the bars in the ceiling, looking down cheerfully at Kraevun. with an array of shiny dark blue eyes like marbles.
Their face was grey-brown, wrinkled skin, surrounded by patchy black fur, and six yellow pointed ears fanning out like the rays of a sun. They almost looked like a flower.
Kraevun knew they were most likely an odnowi, a tree-like-dwelling species native to the planet Telane. They were the first of this species that joker had met.
They had at least six long limbs that Kraevun could see, covered in long yellow and orange-striped fur, with long claws at the ends, that they used to move around with, and four thinner, furless grey-brown, many-jointed limbs with softer, hand-like appendages on the end sprouting between the larger ones.
They were wearing a simple, flowing uniform secured with black belts, the fabric matched the colors on the shop's door, purple and white with a repeating pattern of black triangles on the edges.
They lowered one of the smaller hand-like limbs to Kraevun's eye-line, and and moved the eight fingers in the sign that was asking Kraevun what language joker wanted the worker's words translated into.
“Kanenevik.” Joker said, inclining joker head in thanks.
The worker dipped their head back, as their translator let out a short melody, then said, “Valeshiki to Kanenevik translation selected.”
The worker looked at Kraevun again for confirmation, and joker nodded.
Then the worker spoke by rubbing two small limbs together on what was either their front or their back, Kraevun couldn't tell and didn't ant to guess, producing a startling musical sound like a violin song for a few seconds.
After the sound faded, the worker's translator beeped once, then spoke, saying, [“Hello, how can I help you?”] then beeped again to close the translation.
“I'm looking for sunblock that's safe for humans.” Kraevun said, gesturing to the shelf in front of joker, which was displaying hundreds of different dispensers of lotions and creams. Joker wished joker'd brought jokers flash cards to help illustrate, but they'd been left behind on the shuttle and it was already on its way back to the central core.
Joker would just have to trust the translators to work properly. Sometimes they didn't.
The worker spoke, and their translator said, [“The purpose of sunscreen is to block the light of the sun from touching your skin, correct?”]
“Yes, that's correct.” Joker said, relieved the translation seemed to be going smoothly this time.
The worker made a gesture, and the translator said, in a different voice, [“Body language: Positive, cheerful, smiling”] as they swung one bar closer to the shelf, then grabbed down a black bottle that was below Kraevun's normal line of sight, and held it out to joker. [“This was created by humans, for humans.”]
And sure enough, stamped in gold on the black glass was the symbol of one of the top producers of human-intended products in this sector. They'd also made the flash cards that Kraevun had been using since joker left Filomina.
The worker continued, [“It is sunscreen, it will stop the light from touching your skin. We provide required safety screenings, and free sample afterward, before purchase, to make sure it's not harmful. Many humans have bought this since I have worked here, and been very happy with the results. One comes in a lot and tells me to always recommend this one to humans looking for it, because it's the best she has ever used, good in wet and dry conditions, long lasting, better than the more expensive ones, even. Sincerely.”]
Well, joker probably wouldn't find a better recommendation than that!
“How much is it?” Joker asked.
[“79.47.0 neyz”]
That wasn't bad at all. Especially since the bottle looked like it was handmade glass that joker'd be able to reuse later.
“I'll take it!” Kraevun smiled.
[“Is there anything else you would like to purchase? We will have to perform safety screening before I can sell this to you.”]
Kraevun started to say no, then paused, and asked instead, “Do you sell flash cards? Uh, translation image cards, that show symbols for words.” Ironically, sometimes the translators had trouble parsing the phrase for the translation flash cards.
[“Translation cards are by the register, I can show you when we get there.”]
“That'll be great, thanks!”
The worker led Kraevun through the store back to the front, swinging along on the ceiling while Kraevun followed from behind on the floor. Kraevun got the feeling that they were moving purposefully slowly so as not to leave joker behind, and joker appreciated it. Constantly having to ask people to slow down got aggravating.
They got up to the register without any problems, and the worker showed Kraevun to the shelf of translation cards nearby, and, after making sure joker didn't need help browsing, went to set up the safety screen.
Kraevun picked out the same set of cards joker'd had before, then met the worker at the counter.
The safety screening was simple and easy, done using a little digital box kept under the counter, and the results said that Kraevun wasn't allergic to the sum, or any parts, of the sunscreen, and it should be safe to use.
Then it was time for the free sample, to make sure Kraevun wasn't going to react to it in a way the scanner couldn't predict (sense of smell, texture, light refraction, the list went on).
So, the worker dispensed a small dallop of the lotion onto Kraevun's outstretched hand. Jokers eyebrows rose as joker realized that the lotion itself was black, so black it was like it absorbed all the light. Joker'd thought it was just a black bottle. Well. That was pretty weird for sunscreen, but it would probably fade when it absorbed into jokers skin, right?
Feeling slightly apprehensive, joker turned jokers other hand over, and rubbed the lotion in on the back of jokers hand, since it would be easiest to wash it off jokers hands if necessary. The worker had already prepared a basin with a running stream of water and special soap, just in case.
The lotion stayed pitch black against Kraevun's dark skin for the first few seconds, so joker continued to massage it in, starting to become disappointed but trying to resist it.
And then, quite suddenly, the lotion began to absorb into jokers hand, and to jokers shock, jokers hand began to disappear. Joker could see the counter through jokers hand. Jokers hand was turning invisible.
Then joker laughed. Joker couldn't help it. Joker knew what had been mistranslated, and how. This was not sunscreen, designed to protect your skin from radiation from the sun and prevent sunburn and skin cancer. No, this was invisibleskin, which bent the light in such a way as to render you invisible once it absorbed.
And both of those things could easily be described as stopping the light from touching your skin.
Kraevun'd had no idea you could buy invisibleskin on this station, and for so cheap. But joker could think of a lot of things to use it for, mainly involving animal photography.
Joker smiled at the worker, who was waiting for jokers response. ��I'll take it.” Joker said, and, considering the mistranslation, and unsure when joker'd next get the chance to buy protection from the sun, asked, “And can you show me to your clothes section?”
7 notes · View notes
Text
How does the Universal Translator translate sayings? Like, does it just translate it word for word or will it just give you the exact meaning?
E.g.
If I were to say " Du hast doch nicht mehr alle Tassen im Schrank" will it translate it to "You’re crazy", so what it's supposed to mean or will it translate it word for word so the person just gets "You are missing cups in your cupboard".
Because I think it would be quite funny if the UT would translate it just word for word.
Like imagine O'Brien saying in gaeileige ( is this how it's called?) something like "An té a luíonn le madaí, eiroidh sé le dearnaid." and Bashir looks at him like "What do you mean 'He who lies down with dogs, gets up with fleas'? We were talking about Garak."
27 notes · View notes
bigblissandlove1 · 1 year
Text
This would have made a brilliant episode. Worf would be cursing in Russian…Everyone panicking when Picard yells “Alerte Rouge!”
Tumblr media
22 notes · View notes
startrek-by-secret · 8 months
Text
I have so many questions about the universal translator.
We know that it is located inside the ear (at least in the case of the Ferengi). But where is Odo's?
We also know that not all parties involved in a conversation needs a translator (as proven in "little green men") for everybody to understand each other.
But how do ppl learn other languages? Can the speaker consciously choose that their words won't be translated, or why do some words sound klingon/ferengi etc even if the listener has a translator?
Do people have dialects? The humans certainly do...
Does Garak realize that some of the human books he reads are supposed to rhyme?
At what age does it get injected? That one baby that grew up within a few days was able to speak normally almost immediately....
I have so many questions
3 notes · View notes
10-4ward · 1 year
Text
I wonder how many star trek kids grow up around a universal translator and don't realize until they're adults that they don't actually speak any language, just a conglomerate of all the different speeches they were exposed to as a child.
19 notes · View notes
writergeekrhw · 1 year
Note
Apologies if you've answered this before but, as a star trek writer, what are your thoughts on the universal translator? I have friends who've gone insane trying to figure out how it's supposed to work and wanted to know your opinions
The universal translator is a necessary evil for storytelling in the Star Trek universe, but I have no idea how it works. My best stab at it is how Ira and I portrayed it in "Little Green Men," that it's some kind of implant that interprets alien languages, including gestures, and wires the interpretation directly into your brain so that you perceive them speaking your native language. Then, if you will it to, when you speak, it translates the language impulse into their language and that's what comes out of your mouth (but of course you perceive it as your own language because it translates it all back to you).
In other words... pixy dust!
220 notes · View notes
wandering-alien · 6 months
Text
Ok so I've been wanting to ramble a tiny bit about universal translators for a while so here ya go. It's a bit incoherent but hopefully someone will find it interesting.
So of course they're translating a huge range of languages, but even if you compare two relatively similar Earth languages, they bring up some interesting questions. Let's take English and German (and bear in mind I am not a linguist):
In English, we tend to have all the verbs near the start of the sentence/clause, even in past and future tenses i.e. 'I had been sleeping in my bed.' or 'I will go to the restaurant.'
In the German past perfect tense, the auxiliary verb is the second 'idea' or 'part' of the sentence/clause and the past participle is at the end of that sentence/clause i.e. 'Ich habe in meinem Bett geschlafen.' In the future tense, using the verb 'werden' and the infinitive, it's the same: 'Ich werde ins Restaurant gehen.'
This means that, in German, as an English speaker, sometimes you have to read/listen to the whole sentence first, before properly translating it, because one of the verbs is in a completely different place to where it is in English (and vice versa).
Now, a universal translator translates as someone is speaking, but there would be a significant delay, right? Because the sentence structures are different (and we're talking about English and German here, imagine English and Vulcan) there would have to be a reasonably large delay for the translator to get the message across in a normal way to the other person. I mean, it has to wait for basically the time it takes to say a sentence as well as however long it takes to actually translate (but I imagine that would be pretty quick).
I don't really know what all this is meant to mean/says about universal translators, I guess just that it must take longer than it seems on Star Trek and it would still be a pain having people who speak radically different languages working together on a ship (which is a shame).
HOWEVER.
In Doctor Who, the TARDIS' universal translator is psychic. In the words of the 9th Doctor: "a telepathic field that gets inside your brain- translates." So I reckon there doesn't need to be a delay there because the words/idea is in your head so the translator can work with that?
I have no idea how it works in Star Trek, I haven't watched all of the tv shows and films so maybe it gets explained more, but it doesn't seem psychic. Idk, maybe it is, in which case the same applies.
The other thing I find interesting is how it would basically be a massive AI but I think I'll talk about that in another post.
4 notes · View notes
tuttle-did-it · 11 months
Text
The Universal Translator broke completely on Prodigy. Why is this such a rare thing in almost 60 years of television and film?
Tumblr media
6 notes · View notes