Human: "So we call the far north part of our homeworld the Arctic, and the far south part the Antarctic." Alien: "So Bearland and Not Bearland. Weird names, but okay." Human: "Wait, that's not what I said. It's Arctic and Antarctic." Alien: "Yeah, I got that. Bearland and Not Bearland."

Alas the poor Babel Fish, having removed all barriers to communication between cultures and species was responsible for more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of Creation.

English is, after all, four languages in a trench coat lurking in dark alleys to shake down other languages for bits of grammar and syntax.

The best thing about Sisko punching Q is that it worked. Picard played along with Q's games, trying to win with philosophy and morality, and Q came back again and again. Sisko decked him once and he was never seen again. Until Voyager at least.

At least the Ferengi had the good sense to put the translators in their ear canals.

If you are starting to suspect the British are doing this deliberately, if not vindictively... Welcome to English. Jog on.

re: universal translators and colloquialisms, the Australian 'get a dog up ya' or 'I ain't here to fuck spiders' will no doubt cause consternation.

just to clear up desert classification... they're all determined by annual rainfall... hence the Sahara being a "hot" desert and Antarctica being a 'cold' desert

3:46 Aye that Wabbit's got a vicious streak a mile wide! It's a killer!

"California Class Dumbazz Ship" - I found that appropriate in more than one way....

Dock Master, you're talking to the inhabitants of a world who named their planet after dirt...

That's why you get a protocol droid.

Do you think master Shifu knows about all these Desert deserts and River rivers? I'll ask him the next time we drink chai tea together.

"Don't wait for the translation, answer me now!" 👊

Imagine a mechanical translator attempting to deal with, e.g., "Good morning." ("What a lot of things you do use Good morning for!" said Gandalf.) Regarding place names, I like Terry Pratchett's take: "When the first explorers from the warm lands around the Circle Sea travelled into the chilly hinterland they filled in the blank spaces on their maps by grabbing the nearest native, pointing at some distant landmark, speaking very clearly in a loud voice, and writing down whatever the bemused man told them. Thus were immortalised in generations of atlases such geographical oddities as Just A Mountain, I Don't Know, What? and, of course, Your Finger You Fool."

"If I were to tell you to not think about a pink elephant" I'm thinking about the white bear, yes

It always comes back to D Adams. Always. Well, at least 42.

Darmok. One of my favorite TNG episodes of all time. “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra!” RIP Paul Winfield.

In Star Trek they usually have universal translation even without the comm badge. Rarely do you see someone who is without a ship and a comm badge and a tricorder and a phaser who can't understand someone else. Farscape solved it directly, pretty well with their injection of translation microbes by being determined to bull through and not explain anything.

I had a professor back in college who translated Russian plays. She had the same problem. The example she gave me is in Russian, a cute, friendly girl is called a cucumber. A literal translation is kind of… ah… X rated. But a more accurate translation would be to call her a peach.

After going up in Townsville, Queensland, Australia, the irony of this topic is not lost on me.

Ah fisticuffs the true intergalactic language

How appropriate you bring up the Tamarians, given that I saw someone today write that understanding the sentence "The cat lawyer milkshake ducked" made them realize that we (or at least those of us who are terminally online) are Tamarians.

Always beware the White rabbit. A most deadly enemy in every mmorpg video game.

This old sailor's videos are always a treat.

O'Neill: We'll cross that bridge when we get there. Bra'tac: No. The bridge is too well guarded.

5:32 the noise cancelling is pretty easy, its just negative phased sound beamed at your ear. The hard part is getting the dubbing synced... But for serious they have "noise canceling" devices that are designed to put out auditory interfernce canceling out the sound wave with matched but inverse signals.

The hour of payment passed! Dockmaster, his heuristics enraged! The holy cubifier hums. The Dockmaster at rest.

4:25 the person bolted like a rabit from the situation. As in they got cold feet. I grew up with some french idioms as a French Canadian.

I love how he doesn't notice the rabbit thing = to be stood up, but that also makes exactly zero sense. You - "Yeah, she stood me up" Alien - "Did you fall down?"

Temba with his arms wide Dockmaster!

I absolutely love that a shortcut developed for television (so that writers didn't have to create a whole new language so often or viewers didn't have to read subtitles....we are sometimes a lazy species, which isn't necessarily always a bad thing, there's a small difference between being lazy and efficient) has led to awesome episodes like "Shaka, When the Walls Fell" and, well, this one. Well done!

this goes back to oh why is there melee in sci fi. When all else fails, one can always just 🤜👊

If you think linguistics is fun, please come to Israel! I spent many years living there, and there's so much hilarity to be hand with languages To give a few examples: -Tel Aviv. Literally, Spring Hill (or Spring Aritifical Mound). It's not named for a Biblical site, as that'd be Joppa. No, its named for T. Herzl's Altneuland. However, if you never read that book, which was only popular in a single decade, you might think Tel Aviv was a hill of spring. -Ramat Gan. "Highgarden(s)". There are no gardens (there were once farms, when it was a moshav). It is not a height or hill. -Beni Brak. "The Sons of Barak." It was not founded by anyone named Barak. Barak also means Thunder, and no, it was not founded by any sons of thunder either. Barak might have been an ancient leader from the Tribe of Dan. Har Megiddo - Crowded Hill. Famously known by a different name, the Greek one, Armaggedon. Yes, that Armaggedon.

PIZZA PIE? - come on have a slice.

Amusingly and fitting the dock master's comments - the Brown Bear (or Bruin Bear) is Bear Bear, or properly Ursus Arctos Arctos, or Bear Bear Bear, and the Grizzly Bear (Ursus Arctos Horribilis) is Horrible Bear Bear. Amusingly, the Polar Bear, which lives in the Arctic, doesn't have Arctos in its name... it is Ursus Maritimus - Ocean Bear. Heh.

Ba weep granna weep ninny bong!

My Arakis! My desert desert!

Good thing I wasn’t drinking or brushing my teeth when you got to “hill hill hill hill” cuz I would have splattered the room

Once more with feeling?? That explains the rabbit reference....because "Bunnies, bunnies it MUST BE BUNNIES....or maybe midgets?" :) My fav episode! Haze grey Dockmaster!!

There is TOS episode where Spock and Kirk were being asulted by a gaseous entity. Spock attempts to mind meld with it, learning that it is indeed sentient. Kirk then uses his universal translator, built into his communicator, to communicate with it. When asked by the locals how that works when it has no speech, Kirk responds by telling them that the translator picks up brain wave patterns and translates it into the language it's programed to emulate. There is no need for physical speech so long as someone (a sentient being) intends to communicate with someone else.

Welcome to Burghville Town Montana! and about Avon, I know a place in Wales (near Newport) where you actually have two river Avons, one a tributary of the other.

One would seriously expect the Tartar Pits to be further east than California.

19:38 Thinking about Red hammer

dont forget the potamic river! also deathworlders has a cool universal translator idea that interfaces directly to the brain like the babel fish, then all the translators got hacked, and everything got really difficult.

Granny Weatherwax from Terry Pratchett's Diskworld series had the perfect way to not think of a pink elephant. She didn't know what an elephant looked like. Also, "Once More With Feeling" ?? I would never have pegged you for a Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan... Or is it Jerry Lee Lewis?? Your 'song' is always special

Unfortunately when you depart to far from the “desert” desert, “river” river and “lake” lake you can end up with a Lake Char­gogg­a­gogg­man­chaugg­a­gogg­chau­bun­a­gung­a­maugg, supposedly it translates to “You fish on your side, I'll fish on my side, and no one shall fish in the middle".

Here's an idiomatic pointer that seems both relevant and wildly age-gated: Ray, when Gozer forced the choice.

5:28 Based on the scene in DS9's "Little Green Men" where the Ferengi smack their ears when the Universal Translator malfunctions, I think that the combadges pick up the speech to be translated, then sends the translation to an implant in the ear. This would also explain why the Away Teams can hear the communications so clearly while in a noisy environment and/or on a planet.

We solved the bunch of the translation task for French by using Canadian court documents. Canadian court documents have to be entered in both French and English including testimony transcripts. Over time you end up with a huge database. So translation software writers were able to just import a whole bunch of this into their programs. Presumably there will be other languages with similar shortcut stories. Native American code talkers, for instance.

When someone tells me not to think about a pink elephant, I immediately start thinking about Inception for just long enough to actively put my mind to something other than a pink elephant. But I might just be a weirdo

That's become my main bone of contention with Lower Decks and what it does with Second Contact, which should be all about the extensive investigation and research of newly discovered cultures. Their job - and crews - should be more valued and important than exploration.

Rig the algorithm!

THERES A RUMBLE IN THE BOX

Counter example: the Calculator from the Stanislaw Lem’s “Eden”. It can be taught languages and then translate what it can reasonably understand. Or it can be switched to stochastic mode and spew cryptic, prophetic nonsense to be unpicked by the crew.

🎶Pico and Sepulveda Pico and Sepulveda 🎶

Temba, his arms wide!

I definitely read what you're saying.

Ah yes, the age-old process of grabbing the nearest local and asking them loudly what that thing is in your language. Results include: "What?", "Your finger, you fool", and "Don't you know what a river is?"

Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra. Darmok on the ocean. Jalad, Chenza at court, the court of silence. Still, Darmok on the ocean. Shaka, when the walls fell. Jalad, Sokath, his eyes opened. Darmok Temba at rest. Jalad his eyes opened.

the fun part of the mechanical translator is that it allows for mistranslations still, and for these idioms to take on cultural significances. it allows you to recognize who knows your people and who doesn'/

Sometimes there are blunt ways of communicating where it sometimes involved weapons, or a style of gunboat diplomacy and that particular kind of diplomacy has remained unchanged even in Star Trek.

An interesting thought to how alien language might exist is the idea that the aliens we contact might not even have a language that could be spoken. This comes into play with science fiction species like the so call "Formics" from Scott Card's ender's game. In lore this is kinda hand wavy but boils down to studies that are currently being researched such as intermolecular connection (and the book was written long before these concepts really existed). This connection forms both the Ansible (a device for instant telecommunication) and "The Outside" which is used by the Formics and Jane (and the Mother trees if you wanna count those too).

I dont remembr the exact episodes, but i remembered that several times during first contact the comms officer was told to transmit thier translation matrix. So id assume that contains not just individual words, but also turns of phrase and the like so the computer can tell the differance. I also like the answer to why Picard can swear in Klingon or french is because he knows the password to the UT parental lockouts.

2.6 people in Australia. that is good Kangaroo's and Dingo's like Sci-Fi.

I should have seen it coming, but didn't. I laughed out loud when you brought up the babel fish. At least it puts this whole "God" debate to rest finally.

You could call the Gobi desert the "go, be" desert

Cerritos proud!!!

well from the DS9 episode where quark went back into time its implated in his skull. i assume that most people that plan on traveling or dealing with other languages get the implant. i cant remember how it interfaces with his vocal cords. i figure most translators emit a binary signal that interfaces like bluetooth to other translators and then starts translating based on the base language set for the device. so an individual speaks their device picks it up sends out the signal with its translation then its picked up by the listeners device and translated for the listener. if the translator is operating independently it wouldnt work as well but would be good enough. this could still cause issues, depending on how the devices are set up.

Deserts are arid (dry) ecosystems that receive fewer than 25 centimeters (10 inches) of precipitation a year. That's why Antarctica is considered a desert.

I think we need to distinguish between languages already known to the universal translator and completely new ones (actual first contact situations). For the former: No problem at all (yes, left pectoral exclusively to owners ears or brain and better fast isn't exactly easy, but all the technology for making this happen is actually already there and we're talking about scifi in the future. If they figured out FTL travel and replicators, a UT is comparatively a piece of cake to throw a tasty idiom on your plate ... which is another one. ;)) For the latter: It is impossible to immediately translate an unknown language from the first word said. The universal translator (as would any xenolinguist) needs to hear a reasonable amount of sentences of the new language, preferably knowing about the context they were spoken in, to get a first rough idea. Reasonable sources for that information are not only the words spoken by people in hearing distance, but also all the electromagnetic waves the newly met aliens' communication devices on people, in ships, on planets, ... emit. Some (too few) StarTrek episodes elude to that and don't let the UT immediately come up with something nice. If you fly with a scifi high tech ship around Earth and let the computer analyze all radio and TV signals, they will very soon know how nuts we are ... probably still writing about our species and our little rock as "Mostly Harmless", because us pathetic dirt dwellers only made it to our own moon so far. Lucky us, because that's why they didn't nuke us just to make sure. ;)

This is why I expect if we ever make first contact and translate their message it will mostly likely be, "Greetings from Planet Earth!"

How did the Babel fish translate what Marvin was saying again? I don't recall the books or the radio dramas, or the Tv show or the movie's explanation for it.

And then there are women, who say and mean completely different things. Such as all time classics as: "Do you want to open the window?" meaning "Open the fucking window." "Are you hungry?" meaning "I want pizza specifically, right now." "Whatever, do what you want. I don't care." meaning "I dare you to do what you want." And "'I'm fine." meaning "I am not fine at all."

Shaka, when the walls fell Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel Desert is defined by a lack of rainfall. Avon calling...BUY...OR ELSE

The only way I can see a mechanical universal translator working, or something like it, is if you don't have aliens at all, and have the loads and loads of species done thru trans-humanisum, as is seen the novel further beyond the threshold

13:51 I might be a linguistic elitist with that comment, but, as someone residing in Japan and with a degree in Japanese, the word "富士山" (aka Mt Mt Fuji) isn't read as "Fujiyama", but as "Fujisan". That's because the kanji for mountain (山) had a few different readings, classified into 2 categories: - Kanji by itself : Yama - Kanji with other kanjis: San or Sen. This is the case for most Kanjis, and the rule applies I the great majority of the time (exceptions exist). So, because it is a combo of 3 Kanjis, it has to be "Fujisan" and not "Fujiyama". If you ever see Fujiyama written anywhere, it is either because the text is very old and the English writers at the time didn't have a proper grasp of the Japanese Language, or whoever wrote it isn't really qualified in the language... Or someone wanted to make their sushi shop sound very Japanese but didn't get an actual native to check it.

The Babel fish is probably one of the biggest idontgiveashits in the history of writing.

I LOVE CHIE TEA! I also love the CWIS system. The biggest problem with the English language in my opinion is that it’s the open source of languages. Tell me I’m wrong.

I think that the 1 for 1 translation of words the Universal Translator does is really just step one of the whole process, in fact not even step one except in emergency situations. What the UT actually does is exchange linguacode (which I think was only mentioned in TMP). Linguacode has everything a language is starting from universal constants and ends with explanations of idioms. When the Enterprise encounters another ship they exchange linguacode and the ship's computer figures everything out so the crew can just talk to them. You don't notice this is happening in the background because the Enterprise has a computer core the size of an apartment building doing all the work (3 of them if you're talking about the Big D). Tamarian is difficult not because they only speak in idioms and metaphor, but because their linguacode is indecipherable. Maybe their computer storage is formatted in APFS while the Federation uses NTFS so none of the files are compatible. So the UT defaults to a literal 1 for 1 translation of what is being said.

Wait for it, in England we actually have a hill hill hill hill.

4:20 in regards to translation systems with google translate. One can easily add the mostly likely idoms/metephors etc as an extension l. Similer to when you look for word definitions gives you multiple categories of information

Heh, I just realised that the channel logo looks a cow with horns if you rotate it 180 degrees.

Not as confusing as "CAC card."

Dock Master, you should do a video on the HELLDIVERS 2 ships. I would love to hear your thoughts on the Destroyers, Pelicans, Eagles strike craft, and oOOOH YEAH can’t forget the indomitable HELL PODS. 😂 Anyway just a thought. 👍

funny thing... "Yama" whilst it means "mountain" does not mean "Mount"... the phonetic for that would be "San"... so no sane Japanese would EVER say Fujiyama... that would be Fujisan... saying Fujiyama is sort of saying Kentucky Fried Hen... just weird always wondered why and how it could happen that this became the international name.

As far as languages running over the meanings of a place, as I would describe it, I believe Titicaca, Mississippi, Nile, have the same problems. Not to mention, some issues in greek and latin, arctic and anarctic, mean within the arc or curve, within the opposite curve. The best attempt at function Star trek idiom in my opinion, has to be the Rules of Acquisition, which contains not only short forms that are their own idioms, but stories referenced by number, and contradictory and supplementary ones. Tho we love things to clearly be described, greek and latin verbs became several loosely related nouns based of the base of cooking and food. Varieties of plain words compile and expand, much like modern german, but english will just get a term from the culture it is first found in, and add to itself. Basically, if language were to be an OS in strict terms, the blue screens would be constant.

Crazy to think that Google Translator CAN ACTUALLY TRANSLATE IDIOMS... at least from English to Brazilian Portuguese, and not rigth 100% of the time. But more ofthen than not it is rigth. To be fair, it is impressive. I can barelly translate idioms from other Brazilian states, mostly because we use local words. OH, yeah, we have 27 states, and 39 words for some things...

2 comments: 1. Why would a universal translator have to be squishy? You were able to convey all of that just fine. 2. I honestly have heard the “pink elephant” example so much I actually donʼt think of a pink elephant when itʼs brought up, any more than I think of literal running with “given the runaround”. It has become an idiom itself.

On the gripping hand, translation tools are going to dominate languages to the point that their bad translations will become factual/official. To be clear: Language itself will shift as a result of translation tools.

So yes there is idioms, but you can also translate them. Esp. if you already have a "universal" language, even if it's only "spoken" by the Translators (The translation ML)

Indian: We call this place "Hidden Lake." Explorer: Why do you call it tha--SPLASH!! Indian: That's why. Later on... Indian: We call this place "Little Elk Meadow." Explorer: Why do you call it that? Indian: Because little elk like to stand in this meadow. Explorer: Ah. A little further down the path... Explorer: And what do you call this place? Indian: Big elk meadow. Explorer: Ah! Because big elk stand in this meadow? Indian: No. Because elk stand in this big fucking meadow! Translation issues may be universal, but they can also be hilarious. Oh, and all three locations are real places, too. Just for extra hilarity.

I touch the fire and it freezes me. Discovery had many low points, but I did like the translation issues in that one season with the miners from beyond the rim. It's more often than not the intent that matters in speech, not the specific words used. An inarticulate scream may carry far more meaning and emotion than simply speaking about [insert trauma here]. Same with insults. Being too worried about specific words being bad while others are good can retard the flow of a conversation. Philosophy Tube has an older episode where she used the example 'today is Wednesday" that was fun to listen to.

I think the problem is how we teach culture. We can't make an adaptive translator unless we fully understand the nuances of culture like idioms. Hell, we're not even to the point that the idea of each culture having equal value is a universally accepted thing. Much less to standardize a method of understanding. The programs won't teach themselves culture. Look what happened with whomever's experiment with "ai" that the internet turned into a Nazi. But that's another story for another time that goes into Electric Sheep territory. Empathy has allot to do with understanding culture. Culture and language are mutually supporting. Can't have one without the other. So unless we can get past the empathy and equality hurdle, we will not likely ever understand language as a whole enough to have a uni-translator machine.

I may be wrong but you could apply the term desert to a large stretch of an ocean with no life in it, not that I'd imagine there'd not be many of those.

No hay pedo. Literally means there is no fart in Spanish. Actual meaning, no problem.

So betazoids are walking talking translators, deploy luxanna troi

none of those even the babel fish explain why the lip movement's match word's they did not speak even if the meaning's match up.

Tautologically (?) The Cumbrian "Torpenhow Hiil" would mean hillhillhillhill.

"No frame of reference for" Except we will both still have math. Eventually everything boils down to math. You can't escape math. 2 + 2 is always going to be 4 (anyone who tries to tell you it won't is trying to either change the definition of "two" or the definition of "plus" or the definition of "four").