#universal translator

[misty-feathers]

universal translator is my favorite trek concept because there'll be some throwaway word that has Implications for how the universal translator works and i feel like such a huge nerd but i need to Know

like for example how quark pronounces human "hyoo-mon"

presumably quark is not speaking standard which means that we the audience are hearing his dialogue as filtered through the universal translator, and assuming also that the universal translator can deal with different accents -- so the same word pronounced in two different accents gets translated the same way

why does the translator preserve that mispronunciation?

even if quark was intentionally mispronouncing it, the translator wouldn't have any way of knowing that, unless the translator somehow transcends language to translate the meaning rather than the actual words spoken (which is a CRAZY thing even for futuristic tech)

[cuterefaction]

Trektober Day 29 - Universal Translator Mishap. I'd imagine that without professional translation, most books run through the UT wouldn't be much better than Google Translate (although I suspect that Garak can read them just fine and is playing along anyway. It'd be weird to not learn at least a couple extra languages in the tailoring business).

[astro-egg-celent]

One thing I always find funny is sci fi media where the spacefaring civilizations have "universal translator" devices that can decode completely foreign alien languages automatically, not just because it's pretty impossible to do that as-is, but also because how would it know not to over-translate? All words except onomatopoeia come from other languages ultimately, and that can drastically change the meaning. Like imagine the look of horror on an alien who translates "Jenny, let's have hamburgers Wednesday!" when it comes out as "Pale one, let us claim possession of the people from Hamburg, Germany, on Woden's day!" or "Spirit of the dead, allow us to eat the people of the riverbend town, upon the day of the Lord of Frenzy!"

[skymallnine]

A human and a vulcan agree that the vulcan is “cold” but for entirely different reasons (“of course you would perceive me as cold, my body temperature is on average several degrees lower than yours”).

Meanwhile their gorn friend thinks both vulcans AND humans read as robotic because they’re so warm. Being ectotherms, the gorn don’t associate warmth with people, they associate it with objects — a dark-colored rock, an engine, a chugging computer. A “hot-blooded” gorn isn’t impulsive, far from it: their strategic position in the sun implies good planning and forethought.

[walkingstackofbooks]

The UT's been on the fritz all day, but there's nothing Miles can do: after several frustrating hours, they finally tracked it down to some idiot in Starfleet HQ sending out an update over subspace (subspace?!), and they're all just going to have to wait a few more hours for it to resolve itself. Miles is just looking forward to going home, turning his UT off, and having a nice evening in with his family.

When he gets home, he finds Keiko and Molly are hosting Julian, Jake and Ziyal - which isn't so unusual: their little drawing club meets up on a semi-regular basis. What he's not expecting is for them all to be chatting in Bajoran amongst themselves, or for Molly to greet him with a shout of a word he does know means "Daddy!", followed by a string of unintelligible syllables seemingly directed at Ziyal. He's so surprised, he just smiles at her and tells her how lovely the drawing is, and as he puts his things away listens to their lively conversation continue. He didn't even know Julian and Jake spoke Bajoran well, let alone this fluently!

But clearly, none of them have noticed the problem with the UT, or if they have, they haven't remembered that their all-Bajoran workaround wouldn't incude Miles. But he'd rather not intrude - Julian and Jake and Ziyal will probably head off soon, anyway - and it's kind of relaxing, in its own way, he finds, letting the wave of language wash over him in a way he couldn't back in Ops.

Until he hears his name called several times, and sees Keiko looking at him disapprovingly. She doesn't know about the glitch then, he's guessing. It's strange to think how many times she might have talked to him in Bajoran before, without him ever knowing it.

[ozziescribbler]

Tongue Mining

The fourth issue of the anarcho-sci-fi literary journal featuring 20 profound authors exploring humanity and beyond.

For people rightfully concerned about big tech perpetuating literacy crisis via AI summaries and the like... please don't forget about the monolingualism crisis. Making people rely on machine translation instead of letting them learn foreign languages or giving job to professional translators is another facet of the same fascist project. And companies like Google are accelerating it at the speed of light by FORCING it on us via AI bullshit like auto-dubs which nobody asked for and setting them as default if your IP is not in the anglosphere. I have to stay vigilant about my apps resetting back to Polish unprompted, sometimes even when I set my entire device UI to English. YouTube keeps condescendingly assuming I need everything translated to my first language, no matter that most things I watched over the 20 years of its existence were in English.

Please read this Jack Morton short speculative story for an idea of how letting capitalism run the universal translator would influence the society. And in case you can't read-read right now, I got you covered with Margaret Killjoy doing audio version on her podcast (brisk 28 minutes):

CZM Book Club: "Tongue Mining" by Jack Morton Cool Zone Media Book Club | iHeart

<p>Margaret reads you a story about AI, translation, and love across languages.&nbsp;</p><p>See <a...

And when you're done with that, and I know it's a fucking cliche, go read 1984. Orwell had a lot of things to say about how controlling the language serves a totalitarian project.

[ds-90210]

Worf: Friends are the family we choose. Quark: Lovers are the family we fuck. Worf: ... Quark: It's an old Ferengi adage.

[runesinthenight]

While it makes sense from a production standpoint, the way they show communication with alien species using the universal translator makes no sense in universe because the mouth movements are obviously English.

As a tv show, it is much more time and cost effective to just have the actors speak English instead of having them do random mouth movements that will be dubbed over in post. Plus it would look weird to viewers.

But thinking about it in universe, the universal translator would be like watching a live action movie dubbed in real time. If you're a Star Fleet officer speaking with a Klingon who is speaking Klingon Hol using the universal translator, you will hear English but still see the Klingon's mouth speaking Klingon Hol. So when you hear "What do you want?" you still only see their mouth move enough to say "nuqneH".

I understand why they don't do it from a production standpoint, but it would be cool to see what communication with aliens would really be like. Plus you could really see who actually knows English vs who doesn't.