Star trek how does universal translator work

I like to assume that it's not bad timing or a random breakdown, but that Riaan's attempt to mention a native animal is specifically what caused the device to splutter. Archer : I have a similar one. I talk to my dog. Riann : My mother bought me a tousorobco once, but it tuployo pludak How does tousorobco translate?

What's a comparable animal both biologically and in terms of cultural significance, so that the translator can substitute something? It should just have said [translation error], but there was too much obvious from context for it to return that, I'm betting.

And while it's trying to find some suitable translation for what it knows is a workable noun with a reasonable translation and can't , it starts missing the rest of her speech and falls behind and it's all too much for its feeble little circuits. Shouldn't have mentioned the dog, Archer. Deranged Nasat , May 7, To paraphrase something a famous stage conjurer once said, when asked how he did a particular trick: It works rather well, don't you think? This is easy.

The universal translator works the same way the transporters, warp drive, subspace, and replicators work. Kor , May 8, In all seriousness, I really would put it on a level beyond all of those; those at least make some sense within the setting, but the UT doesn't even do that when taken at face value. Idran , May 8, Joined: Jun 4, Location: India. It's magic Like Babelfish. It works like a real time dubbing. Out of sync, though. Kilana2 , May 8, The problem is that translation could never work fluidly in real time.

Lots of languages have different word orders from one another -- for instance, one would have the noun at the start of the sentence, the other at the end. If you're translating from the latter to the former, you wouldn't know what the subject of the sentence is until the sentence was finished, so you couldn't start translating it until then. Any attempt at an instant, real-time translation would result in a bizarre, Yoda-esque word order, and that wouldn't fool anybody.

So the premise that UTs could be used to pass as native speakers of a language just can't be justified. It's always going to be something of a narrative cheat to move the story along.

In my original story "The Hub of the Matter," I made the translators implants between the speech center of the brain and the vocal apparatus, so that they'd intercept the words you planned to say and have them come out of your mouth in the listener's language. That would be sort of like how translators are shown to work in Trek, except that if both parties were using that kind of translator, we'd see and hear them speaking each other's languages.

And it'd only work with languages that are already known. I have another, as yet unsold original work where I'd originally written the characters as hearing the translations of alien speech fed into their ears, but then I realized, under influence from the age of texting and augmented reality that we live in, that it might work better if they actually saw subtitles projected onto their retinal implants with computer annotations as needed to explain complex or ambiguous concepts in the alien language.

That way, they could actually hear the alien speech clearly and it would be easier for them to learn it over time. Christopher , May 8, You must log in or sign up to reply here. Show Ignored Content. This implies that consent is required for translation. This theory makes sense given the context in which native languages are often heard.

Klingon is often heard when the Klingons are performing rituals. Bajoran is often heard when the Bajorans are praying. It would make sense that for these private, cultural endeavors, the speaker would not consent to be translated. Klingon is also frequently heard during arguments between two or more beings.

If the consent theory is correct, it suggests that the Cardassians were very careful about what they said and what they concealed. This would certainly fit with the personality and culture of the Cardassians, which was intensely secretive and manipulative. Though none of these theories gives a definitive answer as to why the universal translators sometimes fail to translate some words or phrases, they offer plausible explanations. Follow the Heavy on Star Trek Facebook page for the latest breaking news, rumors and content!

By Robin Zabiegalski. Updated Aug 5, at am. No copyright infringement intended For entertainment only TZ. I allow Heavy. It probably wouldn't have helped, but Scotty does make a point that the upkeep of the Klingon ship isn't hard because of the technical stuff, "reading Klingon, that's hard. This brings us to a big theory for Discovery Season 3. Because a starship from will suddenly find itself in the year , there's a good bet that Discovery's computer won't have any kind of frame of reference for what has changed in the galactic culture.

We know Burnham will meet at least one human, a man named Cleveland Booker David Ajala , who speaks English in the trailer. If we met a human being from years in our own past, the year AD, we would not understand their version of "English" at all.

So, when Cleveland Booker speaks to Burnham in the new trailer, it feels like there's a good bet her Universal Translator is working, or Booker just happens to speaks an old-fashioned version of English. The primary issue facing Discovery is similar to the classic crew having stolen a Klingon Bird-of-Prey and then traveled back in time in The Voyage Home. They're not only fish out of water, but they are also fish out of time.

The entire galaxy has changed around them, but all of their tech is hopelessly outdated. Imagine you got transported years into the future. The spell-check on your computer might still function, but if your computer didn't speak whatever language everyone else was speaking, it wouldn't matter. In real life, we're probably overly reliant on spell-check.

If Discovery Season 3 wanted to really hammer home some realism about what the crew is going through, it would break the Universal Translator.

This would be easy to do. Explaining why the Universal Translator has stopped working will make more sense than explaining why it still does. It might be goofy if Discovery suddenly has to talk to a bunch of aliens who speak in kooky made-up languages.