![]() One of our closest friends is from Brasil, and when she first moved to the United States, idioms were the most challenging part of becoming fluent in English (I will never speak down of her progress, as I am English-speaking with only the distant memories of my high school Spanish, which I never mastered to the degree she did English within just a few months of arriving). Obviously these are problematic assertions, as the UT is often employed in first contact over transmission where close scanning of the aliens' brains would likely be difficult, or seen as aggressive.īut my major problem with UTs, which I'm focused on today, are the spotty translation of idioms. It has also been suggested that it reads brainwaves and looks for "universal" patterns which can easily be used as the basis of the translation matrix. So the supposed function of the UT is that it collects recordings and begins to build a matrix and database for interpretation* of a previously unknown language. This one is the deepest, most fun language-centered episode I have yet to see in the Star Trek universe, and yet it poses the same issue for the operation of the Universal Translators. The aliens encountered by the Enterprise, Tamarians, speak entirely in Allegory. There's an amazing episode in Star Trek: The Next Generation, "Darmok," which is famous in memes and held dear in the hearts of TNG fans. ![]() It added interest to the conversation, but raised some questions in my mind about the omnipresent Universal Translator that the Federation (and just about any alien they encounter) employs. It sounds like a homage to Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome with the inhabitants of a planet communicating in an "English" that is thick with euphemisms and idioms. Last night I was watching Star Trek: Voyager and the episode "Nemesis" came across the queue. Universal Translators, Alien Language, and Idioms ![]()
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