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

[Alakaizer]

Last night, as I was letting my mind wander, as I do every night to help me go to sleep, I started wondering how the universal translator in Star Trek works. I mean theoretically it "hears" the words being spoken, then translates them into as many different languages as necessary, each being hearing their own native tongue. If it's doing it based off of sounds, why aren't we hearing all the languages simultaneously? If it works by reading "intent" off of people's minds, why doesn't it always work, and how can people still lie? How does it know when someone wants to speak Klingon and have it be heard as Klingon and not be auto-translated? Why didn't I have to teach the dictionary in my web browser that Klingon is really a word? Wouldn't it just be easier to shove a Babel fish in everybody's ear and call it done? Why hasn't there ever been a deaf character in any of the series? Nothing short of magical healing planet radiation or the Q can restore Geordi LaForge's sight, but everyone can hear just fine? In the immmortal words of GOB Bluth, Huh, didn't realize how much of a rant that was going to be.

So, erm, any thoughts? Anybody?

 

[Rowan93]

Repeat to yourself "it's just a show, I should really just relax"

http://youtu.be/r31eE77b-9U?t=1m2s

 

[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?
In which case, it works because science:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
- Arthur Clarke [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke's_three_laws]

It's impossible to explain perfectly, because we haven't invented it yet.

 

[Queen Michael]

Reminds me of pretty much every sf show where we hear the aliens speaking English, and it's supposed to be an alien language translated into English, but if it is then why do their lips move just as if they were speaking the english words? What are the odds that pronouncing the alien-language words requires the exact same lip movements as pronouncing their English translation?

 

[Thaluikhain]

Magic.

You'll also notice that it allows the people hearing it to learn those languages very fast. When they leave their translator behind, they can generally still talk to people they've talked to in the past.

 

[Realitycrash]

Magic.

You'll also notice that it allows the people hearing it to learn those languages very fast. When they leave their translator behind, they can generally still talk to people they've talked to in the past.

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.

 

[sanquin]

This is what I liked about Star Wars. Plenty of aliens still spoke their native tongue, while the main characters would speak English. Yet they could understand each other. I assume most aliens spoke English in the movies, because humans had basically become rulers of large parts of the galaxy.

 

[Thaluikhain]

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.

Yes and no. With something like Google Translate, sure, it's got a list of words that the thing recognises.

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.

(For that matter, even perfectly translating a known language isn't that easy.)

 

[madwarper]

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

 

[Thaluikhain]

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

Well...they didn't, really. Each of the individual sentences translated perfectly, it just wasn't clear what they meant. The idea of that language was inventive, but didn't make any sense.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

Well, the first idea you need to map your mind around is that language isn't really about words or grammar but rather ideas. This is why you can't simply do a word for word translation between very different languages and end up with anything that even remotely appears to have been said or written in the secondary language. Presumably, language processing is a problem in computer science that will eventually get solved meaning that any language that includes the components of a terrestrial one (syntax, grammar, vocabulary, etc) could be included in a translator.

As far as how it specifically works, one thing to keep in mind is many things done in Sci-Fi (especially Star Trek) were done because they were cheap. Thus while a show might not show or explain the precise way a translated message makes it from the translator to the listener, I could present a number of options. For example, neural implants of some sort might be incredibly common in the Federation thus explaining how the Enterprise computer only manages to respond to commands when appropriate rather than every time someone says "computer".

 

[madwarper]

it just wasn't clear what they meant.

That's what I said.

It'd be like saying to someone just learning English "My dogs sure are barking." It is doubtful that they understand the idioms to know that I'm complaining about my feet, rather than saying I have noisy pets.

 

[Heronblade]

They met a new species/culture pretty much every other episode. The universal translator is just an excuse to avoid spending half your air time with the inevitable pointing, waving, and various other forms of awkwardness that comes without a medium of communication.

For that matter, even if the Federation had a universal language that everyone on board the ship knew (they don't), do you really think it would be English?

No it doesn't make a great deal of sense, but that's not really the point.

 

[Laughing Man]

They met a new species/culture pretty much every other episode. The universal translator is just an excuse to avoid spending half your air time with the inevitable pointing, waving, and various other forms of awkwardness that comes without a medium of communication.

Yup TV magic to spare time, the funny thing though is that Star Trek used Sci-fi magic were as Stargate just plain didn't acknowledge it. They would turn up on an alien world if the plot required some translation then Doctor Jackson stepped forward or Teacl was brought up, in Stargate Atlantis that role was taken by McKay and Universe well they got round it by only having two alien races and they just plain didn't even try to translate the languages.

 

[Tahaneira]

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.

 

[Slycne]

The pseudo-science idea behind the Universal Translator was that every sentient species method of communication, and in turn every language, followed varying degrees of patterns - alphabets, repeating sounds, etc. Once the UT had built up enough of the pattern it was able to more effectively guess at the meaning. Several episodes throughout the series have hinged on some languages being too complex or based on non-verbal components though.

For the sake of time, the lag that should have occurred, and was shown at times, was cut out. Though ultimately like many folks have mentioned it was a hand wave for the sake of production, not unlike how starships had "gravity plating". Star Trek's purpose wasn't to be a hard sci-fi show.

 

[Gorrath]

IIRC the claim was that the computer was so powerful and had such a massive database of languages already programmed into it, that it could instantly recognize patterns in languages even if those languages had just been discovered. Frankly, this would not work, but that was the hand-waive anyway. As to why different species would hear only what they needed to hear, I don't recall that ever being covered.

You could conceivably have a computer with the necessary logic skills and computing power to translate any language, but it would need a ton of spoken language and context to figure it out.

 

[Dr. Cakey]

Actually, the Universal Translator functioned through a series of logical steps that, with a powerful enough computer, could likely be replicated:

1. New alien language is heard by the Enterprise's computer.
2. ??????
3. Language is translated in real-time.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

The pseudo-science idea behind the Universal Translator was that every sentient species method of communication, and in turn every language, followed varying degrees of patterns - alphabets, repeating sounds, etc. Once the UT had built up enough of the pattern it was able to more effectively guess at the meaning. Several episodes throughout the series have hinged on some languages being too complex or based on non-verbal components though.

For the sake of time, the lag that should have occurred, and was shown at times, was cut out. Though ultimately like many folks have mentioned it was a hand wave for the sake of production, not unlike how starships had "gravity plating". Star Trek's purpose wasn't to be a hard sci-fi show.

Spoiler: I always figured it was the work of a...

...or more likely simply a plot device to enable ease of telling stories with other extraterrestrial races without having to go through the trouble of inventing another Klingon vocabulary. I like Star Trek but I'm willing to cut them some slack. I don't need a new fictional language for every alien species, that would just fall flat after awhile.

 

[Karma168]

I quite liked the Mass effect explanation; their not speaking English/whatever you play the game in but 'Galactic'. You might still speak English on Earth and Asari on Thessia but when they are talking with someone from another species they use a 'standard' language - sort of like how two countries with different languages use English as a common trade language. We just never notice the difference because it'd be a pain to put in the game.

The same problem popped up in Stargate. In the film they needed Daniel to translate everything when talking to the people on the other worlds. They kept in up for about half an episode once the series started and then everyone spoke perfect English, despite having no contact with Earth for at least 5000 years. Easy to see why it's done, saves on the whole 'tell him this' ... 'he said this' thing but is a bit jarring.

Simplest answer is 'TV magic' people don't want to read subtitles and there's not enough time to have every line of dialogue with an alien spoken twice. It's convenience above all else.