This is a fun piece, but just to tag onto it...what does it mean for the prestige of the ancient language usage when everyone has universal translators? Like, they work on written material too, right? So, does everyone just see the words in their own language?
It's an interesting question, and pertinent. According to Memory Alpha, the universal translators only work on spoken language, although one wonder why. Douglas Adams, mocking the SFnal premise with his Babel Fish, pointed up the absurdity: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Universal_translator
Yeah, but that can't possibly be right? I mean, even if all the controls used some standardized layout/structure which didn't need additional language, like, they write treaties and contracts and everything? Also, written translation is so much easier than oral translation? Like, if the system can make you hear English, surely it can make you see English? Though at this point it's basically magic?
1) There must be some way to either program, or in conversation, mark something 'do not translate this' which is why especially so many Klingon words end up being left in Klingon? Perhaps they're doing that?
2) Alternatively, maybe the translator is even 'smarter' than I'm saying. We see it in Latin because that's the 'prestigious old language' in our culture, but a Vulcan would see some ancient Vulcan language meaning the same thing? They've got a way to mark this as 'deliberately archaic'?
They strongly imply that the system uses a form of machine-based telepathy, so presumably it can "tell" if you intend a Klingon phrase emphatically AS Klingon rather than as simple communication.
Interesting...I like that idea, though don't remember it being implied, at least in other Trek? That as how it works now would be a helpful 'this is really ~800 years later, guys' marker?
I don't think Memory Alpha is right about that. There seem to be many episodes where they are able to interact with computer systems and interfaces from unknown species immediately, without mentioning language differences.
In the second Starfleet Academy ep, the Betazed president signs. If we assume he is signing Betazed Sign Language, would the UT make people see a Human Sign Language? Or wouldn't it translate the signing into audible words? Why then the need for an interpreter?
A good point. Perhaps the President is not a telepath (perhaps a percentage of Betazoids are disabled in that way) and is also deaf, and so has to communicate with signs. A slightly tortuous rationalisation though.
Is it right to say that _e_ is obligatory before consonants rather than only that it is ruled out before vowels and that either _e_ or _ex_ can be used otherwise? There seem to be many examples of Latin speakers using _ex_ before consonants - see https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ex#Latin
As a lapsed linguistician and a Trekkie, I've spent many happy hours headcanoning the universal translator. In one of my fanfic pieces, a character who happens to be a bit of a language nerd herself gives a detailed explanation of (my idea of) the UT. (When I posted this on the STO forums, I followed it immediately with a grovelling apology to the furious ghost of Ludwig Wittgenstein.)
Yer basic UT, as seen in TOS "Metamorphosis", is explicitly a mechanical telepath. It receives an input (not necessarily an audio input, since it's reading the Companion's energy emissions in that story) and latches on to the concept behind it in the mind of the speaker; then it converts the input into something the listener understands. The exact method for doing this is (ahem) left as an exercise for the alert student.
Since the 23rd century hand- held device is about the size of a tube of Pringles, we can figure that the technology is fairly compact. So we can also figure that it's incorporated into comms equipment - subspace radio and the like - so it can be used at long distances. But it's also based on the immediate intentionality of the speaker - it only picks up the utterance that the speaker is actually intending to communicate. So things like deliberate quotes in a foreign language, or comments muttered under one's breath, won't be translated. And written language, where the original utterer isn't anywhere near the utterance, can't be translated on that basis.
Yer full-scale UT package, then (IMO) consists of the mechanical telepath and a gigantic database of languages, written, spoken, or otherwise uttered. It can translate written language, if it can find sufficient matches in its database. But without the telepathic component, it can't produce output in the seamless fashion of the conversational UT. You may hear Standard English instead of tlingan Hol, but you won't see written English instead of Klingon script.
Telepathy is pretty common: Betazoids and so on. But is the UT the only telepathic machine? If the Federation can manufacture machines that can read minds, wouldn't they have all manner of them, for all sorts of purposes?
There's a "psychotricorder" mentioned in "Wolf in the Fold".... there's the verifier scan (supposedly a perfect lie detector). I suppose the Vulcan katric arks fall into the psionic technology category, too. The Klingons have a mind probe in "Errand of Mercy", and there's the machine in "Dagger of the Mind", too.
I suspect the problem here is a Doylist one, in that all this psionic gadgetry can make it very easy to short-circuit a plot. I mean, the UT itself really only exists for narrative convenience, so that e.g. "Errand of Mercy" didn't have to be partnered with "A Beginner's Guide to Klingonese".
The RAF Latin is probably not the basis for the SA use, but its wide currency inspirationally and that it's essentially about the same thing, a boy's own harking to something that didn't exist as the users thought it did (or in the RAF case would doom a pilot if they worked that hard), means the use of Latin is ripe for a little decolonising profundity in an episode, the way the moving of the Federation capital went down.
One extra piece of pedantry: over on Facebook, Murray Leeder points out that the first time we see Starfleet Academy, in the TNG episode "The First Duty," the motto is "Ex Astra, Scientia," which is ungrammatical. It was later, in the "Homefront/Paradise Lost" two parter, that they corrected it.
This is a fun piece, but just to tag onto it...what does it mean for the prestige of the ancient language usage when everyone has universal translators? Like, they work on written material too, right? So, does everyone just see the words in their own language?
It's an interesting question, and pertinent. According to Memory Alpha, the universal translators only work on spoken language, although one wonder why. Douglas Adams, mocking the SFnal premise with his Babel Fish, pointed up the absurdity: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Universal_translator
Yeah, but that can't possibly be right? I mean, even if all the controls used some standardized layout/structure which didn't need additional language, like, they write treaties and contracts and everything? Also, written translation is so much easier than oral translation? Like, if the system can make you hear English, surely it can make you see English? Though at this point it's basically magic?
Hard to disagree with this.
Okay, weird ideas:
1) There must be some way to either program, or in conversation, mark something 'do not translate this' which is why especially so many Klingon words end up being left in Klingon? Perhaps they're doing that?
2) Alternatively, maybe the translator is even 'smarter' than I'm saying. We see it in Latin because that's the 'prestigious old language' in our culture, but a Vulcan would see some ancient Vulcan language meaning the same thing? They've got a way to mark this as 'deliberately archaic'?
They strongly imply that the system uses a form of machine-based telepathy, so presumably it can "tell" if you intend a Klingon phrase emphatically AS Klingon rather than as simple communication.
Interesting...I like that idea, though don't remember it being implied, at least in other Trek? That as how it works now would be a helpful 'this is really ~800 years later, guys' marker?
I don't think Memory Alpha is right about that. There seem to be many episodes where they are able to interact with computer systems and interfaces from unknown species immediately, without mentioning language differences.
In the second Starfleet Academy ep, the Betazed president signs. If we assume he is signing Betazed Sign Language, would the UT make people see a Human Sign Language? Or wouldn't it translate the signing into audible words? Why then the need for an interpreter?
Also, why do Betazoids even have sign language? How would that have evolved in a culture of strong telepaths?
A good point. Perhaps the President is not a telepath (perhaps a percentage of Betazoids are disabled in that way) and is also deaf, and so has to communicate with signs. A slightly tortuous rationalisation though.
What a strange genetic fluke that a father who is not a telepath would produce a daughter who is a dangerously powerful telepath!
Is it right to say that _e_ is obligatory before consonants rather than only that it is ruled out before vowels and that either _e_ or _ex_ can be used otherwise? There seem to be many examples of Latin speakers using _ex_ before consonants - see https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ex#Latin
I think you're right, actually, and I'm wrong, about this. I'll edit the post.
As a lapsed linguistician and a Trekkie, I've spent many happy hours headcanoning the universal translator. In one of my fanfic pieces, a character who happens to be a bit of a language nerd herself gives a detailed explanation of (my idea of) the UT. (When I posted this on the STO forums, I followed it immediately with a grovelling apology to the furious ghost of Ludwig Wittgenstein.)
Yer basic UT, as seen in TOS "Metamorphosis", is explicitly a mechanical telepath. It receives an input (not necessarily an audio input, since it's reading the Companion's energy emissions in that story) and latches on to the concept behind it in the mind of the speaker; then it converts the input into something the listener understands. The exact method for doing this is (ahem) left as an exercise for the alert student.
Since the 23rd century hand- held device is about the size of a tube of Pringles, we can figure that the technology is fairly compact. So we can also figure that it's incorporated into comms equipment - subspace radio and the like - so it can be used at long distances. But it's also based on the immediate intentionality of the speaker - it only picks up the utterance that the speaker is actually intending to communicate. So things like deliberate quotes in a foreign language, or comments muttered under one's breath, won't be translated. And written language, where the original utterer isn't anywhere near the utterance, can't be translated on that basis.
Yer full-scale UT package, then (IMO) consists of the mechanical telepath and a gigantic database of languages, written, spoken, or otherwise uttered. It can translate written language, if it can find sufficient matches in its database. But without the telepathic component, it can't produce output in the seamless fashion of the conversational UT. You may hear Standard English instead of tlingan Hol, but you won't see written English instead of Klingon script.
Such, at least, is my opinion.
How could I forget that "Metamorphosis" makes the telepathic aspect explicit?!
Telepathy is pretty common: Betazoids and so on. But is the UT the only telepathic machine? If the Federation can manufacture machines that can read minds, wouldn't they have all manner of them, for all sorts of purposes?
I wonder if there is a special treaty carve-out for it.
Now I'm wondering how they ever have trials/security problems? Couldn't a machine just...you know, check?
There's a "psychotricorder" mentioned in "Wolf in the Fold".... there's the verifier scan (supposedly a perfect lie detector). I suppose the Vulcan katric arks fall into the psionic technology category, too. The Klingons have a mind probe in "Errand of Mercy", and there's the machine in "Dagger of the Mind", too.
I suspect the problem here is a Doylist one, in that all this psionic gadgetry can make it very easy to short-circuit a plot. I mean, the UT itself really only exists for narrative convenience, so that e.g. "Errand of Mercy" didn't have to be partnered with "A Beginner's Guide to Klingonese".
The RAF Latin is probably not the basis for the SA use, but its wide currency inspirationally and that it's essentially about the same thing, a boy's own harking to something that didn't exist as the users thought it did (or in the RAF case would doom a pilot if they worked that hard), means the use of Latin is ripe for a little decolonising profundity in an episode, the way the moving of the Federation capital went down.
One extra piece of pedantry: over on Facebook, Murray Leeder points out that the first time we see Starfleet Academy, in the TNG episode "The First Duty," the motto is "Ex Astra, Scientia," which is ungrammatical. It was later, in the "Homefront/Paradise Lost" two parter, that they corrected it.