Star Trek - Space: The Final Frontier

  • Want to keep track of this thread?
    Accounts can bookmark posts, watch threads for updates, and jump back to where you stopped reading.
    Create account
Honka Honka Burning Love said:
The Universal Translator was never specifically put down in any sort of detail as far as I know.

It is something that in universe people realize is being used though, Uhura had to actually use ((FUCKING PAPER)) dictionaries to translate into Klingon in Star Trek 6 so they wouldn't get caught because the Klingons would recognize the Universal Translator was being used to talk.
Click to expand...

That's another thing, you'd think by the time Undiscovered Country came around, Uhura would know some Klingon by then. They'd only been at war for how long at that point?
 
I get that the Universal Translator is needed for story reasons, but it's always bothered me too.

Granted you have a magical box that automatically translates everything you say and everything people say to you. How does the translator match your lip flaps? When you're incognito on some pre-warp planet, don't they see you talking into the box? I'll go along with a magical translator, but nobody seems to have a translator they use.
 
White Devil said:
That's another thing, you'd think by the time Undiscovered Country came around, Uhura would know some Klingon by then. They'd only been at war for how long at that point?
Click to expand...
Was it in The Undiscovered Country that they showed the Klingon speak in their language and the camera zooms to their mouths and then they speak english between them for the rest of the movie? I thought it was a nice gimmick to get rid of the Klingon language for the general audience.
 
That was one of the many things that Discovery fucking didn't get. It was bad enough they made Klingon looks like horror monsters but they'd kept talking in Klingon for entire scenes. I remember sitting there and thinking it was excruciating.
 
Miller said:
Was it in The Undiscovered Country that they showed the Klingon speak in their language and the camera zooms to their mouths and then they speak english between them for the rest of the movie? I thought it was a nice gimmick to get rid of the Klingon language for the general audience.
Click to expand...

Yea, that's a pretty common film making trick.
 
rabo said:
This is random, but it's something that has always just bugged me so much. The universal translator!

Preface: I understand that this was a choice, and one I support. You want your actors to act, to emote, you want your audience to resonate with those emotions. You're never going to get that with fucking made up giberish alien language and sub-titles. I'm looking at you Star Wars, in fact, this is a huge pet peeve of mine, I fucking hate made up language. It's even worse in the fucking Star Wars video games, ESPECIALY TOR because they clearly use any fucking random line and write whatever they want. They all have exactly the same fucking delivery, tone, and length. But even when there's a little more care to it, it's awful, I hate it, don't make me read subtitles to made up languages it's fucking terrible (And mind you, I'm a huge weeb, and hardcore subs over dubs, it's not the subs I have a problem with, it's the made up language that the actor reading is more busy remembering the nonsense he has to say than actually emoting real dialogue.)

That said, there's these bits that bug me. That I know is just stuff the writers writes for drama or whatever, but in this episode of Deep Space Nine this dialogue happens:
Nog: "And if our fathers couldn't break us up, no koopd, koopd, koopde"
Jake: "Coup d'état, it's French."

Hold up! Was Nog talking English all along? Nog should be talking in Ferengi. In fact in little green men, we find out that if their translators aren't working and Nog, Quark and Rom are unable to communicate with Humans that speak English over in Area 51. So Nog should be speaking Ferengi and using whatever fucking word in Ferengi have for coup d'état!

But yeah, the writers wrote this line to make Nog's ignorance endearing... It still bugs me!!!

And the worst offender are Klingons, who can on a whim start just speaking Klingon for dramatic moments. Does that mean Klingons all learned to speak some other galactic language that the translator CAN translate but can't do Klingon? The best example of this is when, again in DS9, Gawron says something in Klingon and everybody looks expectantly to Worf who says "He said; Today is a good day to die."

Seriously? Fucking federation translator can't translate an idiom like Today is a good day to die, that is fucking said ad nauseaum by Klingons. Like, I bet most of you fucks can't speak French but can tell me what Au Revoir means simply because it's such a common French expression.

I know, I know, I know, it's all shit the writers do because they're thinking about writing a story first and then thinking about all that tech lore shit and only somebody autistic would obsess over that.

I just wanted to rant about it because it's always bugged me, like I'm fine accepting that a magical piece of technology lets everybody understand each other and that for the benefit of the audience it's best everybody just speaks English. But it's when they ignore that and still do shit like that I start asking questions!
Click to expand...
I've always found it ironic because in a technical sense, EVERY alien species they run into should be like Darmok when it comes to the universal translator - like that's how it would probably work in real life. Words provided, but no contexts or hints.

It gets even weirder when you think about things like idioms, slangs, and metaphors. When O'Brien says, "we'll be burning the midnight oil" why was Data the only one to misunderstand? Shouldn't the aliens not get it either? etc etc

THAT is what bugs me most about things like Enterprise and Lower Decks. There's a lot glossed over for plot convenience in the original stuff, if you're doing prequels or "other side" style stories, well take advantage of it and explore just what you would have to go through for something like the universal translator. Would you go through the years needed to learn the other language and culture? Or just have T'Pol do a mind meld and let you speed download the info you need?

Or when you're one of the crew working on the ship - if the captain gives an order, do some members of the crew have to translate it for other members of the crew? etc
 
Flexo said:
Or when you're one of the crew working on the ship - if the captain gives an order, do some members of the crew have to translate it for other members of the crew? etc
Click to expand...

I'm a thousand percent certain you would not be put on a military ship if everyone did not understand a common, default language (English).

Especially in Space. I'm sure Starfleet Academy has classes for English for nonhuman cadets.
 
White Devil said:
I'm a thousand percent certain you would not be put on a military ship if everyone did not understand a common, default language (English).

Especially in Space. I'm sure Starfleet Academy has classes for English for nonhuman cadets.
Click to expand...
I'm talking about possible story hooks for their retarded series they could do. The lower decks potentially screw things up because there were misunderstandings about a simple idiom is a super obvious comedy plot that could work very well in that show.

Though if you want to get autistic, we could point out Data was assigned to the Enterprise without understanding many common phrases. ;) (now do you think Data has a universal translator built in? or was he just programmed with every known language?)

Heck, language itself could even be a plot hook on Enterprise. What if English isn't commonly known? What if say... Vulcanese is seen as one of the easiest to learn languages and can be universally pronounced by the majority of species with different shaped mouths, tongues, etc? So it becomes the language everybody knows?

Of course I'm a bit autistic on this because once upon a time I worked on a story & some world building where there was a specific, designed to be universal language used by a variety of species (especially considering that not all can speak and hear in the same pitch range), while each had their own specific-to-them language as well. So I know there are some stories you could milk out of the concept.
 
rabo said:
But it's when they ignore that and still do shit like that I start asking questions!
Click to expand...
wait, that's where you start and not the basic technical implementation? that rubbed the wrong way from the start when I watched TNG as a wee lad. even if you ignore knowing stuff from the get go (iirc in ENT hoshi still had to put in the work themselves on top the translator or something) and accept it works as a simple interpreter, how does it physically work? where is the original voice the translator picks up and turns into english (and as @Miller mentioned it would look like a kung-fu b-movie)? even if you go as far as explaining it works on the brain directly turning everything into an understandable language, how does it work for aliens? does it affect their brain too? I mean it's star trek, so you could explain it away with technobabble, but that would imply federation is running around with a device that can affect everyone's brain at will and either everyone's ok with it or doesn't know (although there were some races the translator didn't work, although ofc that was only for drama mainly).

it's like the teleporter, if falls apart the more you think about it.
 
ZMOT said:
iirc in ENT hoshi still had to put in the work themselves on top the translator or something
Click to expand...
We saw on ENT the evolution of the program, it was very basic at first since they've only met less than a handful of species and Hoshi was there to do most of the work like you said. By the end of the series (where Archer makes his speech in front of the Coalition) we see them wearing a device where the combadge in the other shows would be, so we can always assume that the combadge does the translation in real time and we as the viewers aren't supposed to think too much about it.
I like the idea of inventing languages for fictional characters but at the end of the day you have to remember that it's a tv show and that we shouldn't spend 40 minutes of an episode reading the subtitles.
As for the way it was portrayed in the movies, well, the goal was to make it accessible for a larger audience.

rabo said:
Hold up! Was Nog talking English all along? Nog should be talking in Ferengi. In fact in little green men, we find out that if their translators aren't working and Nog, Quark and Rom are unable to communicate with Humans that speak English over in Area 51. So Nog should be speaking Ferengi and using whatever fucking word in Ferengi have for coup d'état!

But yeah, the writers wrote this line to make Nog's ignorance endearing... It still bugs me!!!
Click to expand...
Wasn't he already in Starfleet when that episode happened? (I haven't watched that episode in a long time) Perhaps Starfleet Academy makes them learn the languages of each member of the Coalition of Planets.
 
ZMOT said:
it's like the teleporter, if falls apart the more you think about it.
Click to expand...

That's why they should just mention it and move on, instead of doing weird, immersion disrupting things like having people lips move while other words come out or doing anything to mention it again. If it falls apart when you think about it, but you have to do it for the show to work dramatically, just make it so people don't think about it much. Don't bring it up. Don't do things (like idiom jokes) that make you think about it.
 
AnOminous said:
That's why they should just mention it and move on, instead of doing weird, immersion disrupting things like having people lips move while other words come out or doing anything to mention it again. If it falls apart when you think about it, but you have to do it for the show to work dramatically, just make it so people don't think about it much. Don't bring it up. Don't do things (like idiom jokes) that make you think about it.
Click to expand...
Or an entire episode built around the idea? lol (shame, because it is one of their best episodes)
 
AnOminous said:
That's why they should just mention it and move on, instead of doing weird, immersion disrupting things like having people lips move while other words come out or doing anything to mention it again. If it falls apart when you think about it, but you have to do it for the show to work dramatically, just make it so people don't think about it much. Don't bring it up. Don't do things (like idiom jokes) that make you think about it.
Click to expand...
The Enterprise's translation circuit automatically and telepathically translates (almost) every written and spoken language for everyone who travels aboard her. Some call it "The Gift of the Enterprise."
 
So rate this autistic, but I'm actually enjoying Lower Decks so far.

It's filling the irreverent space sci-fi comedy show that we haven't had since Futurama.
 
Aqua Panda said:
So rate this autistic, but I'm actually enjoying Lower Decks so far.

It's filling the irreverent space sci-fi comedy show that we haven't had since Futurama.
Click to expand...
I would say that's an insult to Futurama, but Futurama got pretty rough by the end...

images.jpeg

Your opinion is bad and you should feel bad..
 
rabo said:
You're never going to get that with fucking made up giberish alien language and sub-titles. I'm looking at you Star Wars,
Click to expand...

Star Wars fake languages are great, they really sell how alien the aliens are (Star Wars, thanks to the magic of budget, also had better realized aliens than "guy with bumpy head")

c46badd7db135c22d6c70861b5dce089.jpg


What makes no sense at all is why R2 talks in beeps and squeaks that only C3PO can understand. What language does R2 speak anyway? If it's meant to be a kind of machine code, why does it take so long for him to say short sentences? They built a sentient artificial intelligence with less ability to articulate words than a child's Speak and Spell toy circa 1979? Why?

Droids in general don't make much sense in Star Wars. Why does an X-wing need a robot copilot? What exactly is the point of a protocol droid and why would you want that capability rendered in 6ft tall mincing gold robot form instead of a tablet you can easily carry in your pocket? Maybe George Lucas didn't know what software was.

Star Trek goes too far in the opposite direction, apart from Data the writers don't seem to like robots very much even though you might expect the USS Enterprise to use drones for a lot of different jobs.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom