#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).

[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.

[skymallnine]

Since different species have different audible wavelengths, I bet the Universal Translator has the ability to pick up wavelengths well outside the human range.

Engineers switching their UTs into diagnostic mode to “talk” to their machines. If it’s making any weird grinding/vibrating sounds they need to know, even if it’s outside their audible range.

Also, augments reversing that mode to turn their UTs into noise canceling headphones. Ferengi using that mode to help fall asleep. Or deliberately not including that mode in their UTs to adhere to some guideline in the Rules of Acquisition (something something always keep your ears open).

[chernobog13]

"Peekaboo, I sssssssssssssssee you!"

[hylianengineer]

I had a sudden realization. I always thought the universal translators in Star Trek were terribly unrealistic - they claim to decode languages based only on structural similarities, but I always thought, surely that's not actually doable? But then last semester I took a class about how language works in human brains, and it just occurred to me - that might fit into the theory behind the UT in interesting ways.

Because: detecting patterns, like the UT claims to do, is how humans learn languages. Including our first languages - which is very different from how we learn others after about puberty or so. You know how they say it's easier for kids to learn a language? It's way weirder than you've ever imagined if you've never taken a linguistics class but we don't have time to get into that just now. Point is, patterns.

There's a theory in linguistics that humans are born with this inherent ability to know how human languages work. That we're pre-programmed with certain behind-the-scenes rules that all of them follow - and not the rules you were taught in English class. These rules are very generalized, like 'languages have nouns and verbs and adjectives.' Then when babies start to be exposed to a specific language (or a few of them), they learn the rules specific to that language and fit them within the existing framework. i.e. 'in English, adverbs end in -ly. You can make one by adding -ly to an adjective.' Then you don't need to learn every adverb from scratch - you just take the adjectives you know and add -ly. Boom, adverbs!

So it seems like what the universal translator does is learn languages the way human brains do in early childhood - only faster. It can do in minutes what takes a human years. But the underlying process could be similar.

There's a lot of reasons our current machine translators can't do that, and they generally revolve around the fact that what human brains do when we know, understand, and or a language is so fucking complicated! Example: you know how when you hear someone speak a language you don't know, it sounds like they're talking really fast? Even like the words are blending together without gaps in between them? Fun fact, that's what you sound like to people who don't speak your language. You really do talk like that - it's just that to speakers of your language, it sounds like it has pauses because their brains know how that language works and where the pauses should go.

The pauses aren't real. Your brain's just going around inserting them where it thinks they go, because it knows how a given language forms words. Really - if you look at one of those little audio graph thingies (what the hell is that called?), there's no pause. The pause is in your brain, and the brain of everyone else who understands the language you're speaking. Crazy, right?

Computers don't know where the pauses go, so it can be really hard for them to tell where one word stops and another one starts. Remember, the pause is not real. The pause is in our brains - how do you make a computer program that knows where the pauses go? It's really hard.

[rjalker]

Anyways, Sci-Fi neopronoun concept for a setting that has so-called universal translators, where people go out of their way to create pronouns that will not be translated no matter what, so that when people use them the pronouns will not get transformed into gendered pronouns in the language being spoken, but will always stay exactly the same.

This plan would probably require constantly changing pronouns if the translators are being updated regularly.

[pierwsza-dyrektywa-fluora]

Obol dla Charona

Awaria automatycznego tłumacza w DIS 2x04 An Obol for Charon to jedna z moich ulubionych scen z Discovery.

Komputer pokładowy, przeładowany danymi ze sfery, ulega awarii i miesza języki, zupełnie jak na wieży Babel (dodatkowy punkt dla Pike'a za nawiązania biblijne – pasują do tej postaci).

Różne seriale i filmy nie miały spójnego systemu jak i dlaczego uniwersalne translatory działają. Po prostu są, bo są potrzebne, a gdy ich nie ma lub są zepsute, to znaczy że to istotne dla fabuły odcinka.

W tym przypadku pomieszanie języków ilustruje negatywny wpływ sfery na Discovery, ale nie jest to złowieszczy atak – raczej skutek przeładowania sensorycznego (przepełnienia pamięci).

Załączam klip z dialogami oraz podpisami. Warto zauważyć, że klingoński Burnham (świetny wybór scenarzystów) jest bardzo dobry gramatycznie i pod względem wymowy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNJxqohxt1M

No i Saru na samym końcu daje: Давай (dawaj). Czy tak wyglądałoby ukraińskie tłumaczenie słynnego picardowskiego "Engage"?

[jackleg-penwright]

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.

[postorbital]

They'd never managed to form a common language with the aliens, so the chief diplomat relied heavily on puppeteers and musicians.

[misty-feathers]

another thing about the universal translator/the cardassian language that is just so puzzling to me -- the word "legate"

legate is an english word for official ambassador, so seems pretty accurate for the cardassian legates and we can assume whatever their actual title is has been translated from kardasi right?

EXCEPT

we have the guls. english definitely has words for many types of low level officials, so standard should as well. but "gul" is left untranslated. assuming it's not because of lack of translatability, it's probably because it's a uniquely cardassian title. however, the same is also true of the legates.

so there's really only one possible explanation for UT translating one and not the other and it's that the cardassian language which is otherwise completely different from standard somehow independently evolved the exact same word as us which also happens to mean the exact same thing. wild

[neopronouns-in-action]

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?”

[startrek-by-secret]

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

[wandering-alien]

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.

[ronintheatrecollabrative]

Come and see the Shakespearian epic that critics say “boldly goes where no Bard has gone before.”

“A Klingon Hamlet” is beaming into the Beaver Street Theatre as guests of the Flagstaff Shakespeare Festival ! We’ll be running four shows from 5/30 - 6/1!

Finally, you will experience Shakespeare in the Original Klingon (in English)!

It is a good day to buy your tickets: https://flagshakes.app.neoncrm.com/nx/portal/neonevents/events?path=%2Fportal%2Fevents%2F17734

Until then, Qa’pla!

Read our review from Talkin’ Broadway here: https://www.talkinbroadway.com/page/regional/phoenix/phnx1229.html

Our Trek Dates:

5/31-6/1 Beaver Street Theatre, Flagstaff

Tickets: https://flagshakes.app.neoncrm.com/nx/portal/neonevents/events?path=%2Fportal%2Fevents%2F17734

6/6-6/8 Phoenix Fan Fusion, Phoenix, AZ

Tickets: https://www.phoenixfanfusion.com/pricing

6/20-6/29 stage Left Theatre, Glendale, AZ

Tickets: https://www.stageleftaz.com/tickets

[sammy-trill]

By no means is the universal translator is by no means a perfect tool as the name suggests thought it would be better than what I am working with here!