How in the hell does the Universal Translator work???

[Soundwave]

Also, while funny once in awhile, scenes like this would eventually render the show unwatchable


It's also reasonable to assume that there are only "so many things" you would say when meeting a new species for the first time. Also, in the case of Star Trek, by around TNG, humans had already encountered most of the space faring races, and had spent some time covertly observing the more primitive ones. I think they mentioned in the Darmok episode that they'd had encounters with them before that'd gone badly.

 

[Something Amyss]

The Universal Translator doesn't need that, it can take a sentence of a language nobody has ever heard before and instantly translate that perfectly.

The biggest problem isn't even instant translation of words. We have that right now. The problem is translating syntax and idioms in right order and meaning.

They still had that problem in Next Generation. Specifically Season 5, Episode 2, Darmok.

Spoiler: Relevant

I was going to add to thal's post specifically, but I saw your example and it's totally relevant.

"Darmok" takes place on a world the Federation has tried multiple times to communicate with, all unsuccessfully. Difficulties translating are really rare, and when they do happen, they tend to stymie Starfleet. Note have Picard talking to them, rather than a team of linguists. If safety is an issue, you send them on the Enterprise or another ship. Instead, Picard tries to brute force his way through the language barrier. Epic Shaka, when the walls fell. Even though we can't know exactly what the alien was thinking, but he seemed to have a stronger handle on bridging the communications gap. It seems like his biggest frustration was not being able to reach out to Picard's tiny brain.

It's best to ignore the details, honestly. It just exposes how poorly thought out Star Trek is. Scenarios are often written poorly to allow Picard to be considered awesome while being a complete dumbass. Half the crew is like this. Maybe more.

But still, if you think about it, it's a pretty strong indicator.

It's space magic. I'm surprised there's anyone in the Trek universe smart enough to maintain this technology, because they routinely seem helpless with minor failures (plot inconvenience) unless it's necessary for them to survive (plot convenience), in which case everyone turns into MacGyver.

 

[Caiphus]

Never watched any Star Trek, but I assume the whole thing functions in a similar way to the similar pseudo-science in Mass Effect, yes?

At least in Mass Effect they mention that massive teams of linguists and programmers work to keep the translation database up-to-date, handling ever-changing slang and dialects and all that fun stuff.

In Star Trek, they just point to the sky and say 'sky' and point to the ground and say 'ground' and hope the natives will be courteous enough to do the same and not say something along the lines of, "Yes, dirt is extremely interesting, very good, now who the hell are you people." And then somehow the translators work off of the words for sky and ground to figure out the entire language structure.

Oh sure. One of the reasons I liked the Mass Effect series was that they went pretty deep into their own technobabble. I spent a lot of time reading the Codex in the first game.

It still ran into some of the same sort of issues in this particular area. Which is totally understandable, I mean, how else would they do it? Again, you can't explain this stuff perfectly since we haven't invented it.

They still had:

- Perfect lip sync.
- Translation in perfect real time, which wouldn't even be possible from, say, German to English because of syntax differences.
- Some idioms or phrases are translated (e.g. when Wrex says "Damnit") and some aren't (e.g. when Tali says "Keelah se'lai", which she then translates in the third game, albeit into some saccharine Mary Sue nonsense).
- Javik quickly learning how to speak to everyone (through that Assassin's Creed-type 'DNA carries all information about everyone' semi-explanation)

But yeah. I mean, what are you going to do? Have a delayed translation sort of like they have on the news when they interview foreign politicians? That wouldn't have been any fun. In fact it would have been super not fun.