I was just watching DS9:7x11 "Prodigal Daughter"... When O'Brien and Ezri are reading the financial records on New Sydney, O'Brien appears to read Trill fluently. Has there been any indication that the universal translator works for text?
Posted by Johnny (Member # 878) on :
Not in so many words, but characters are usually able to read alien control panels, unless the plot requires it to be difficult(Klingon panels in ST:TVH).
Posted by Da_bang80 (Member # 528) on :
I always wondered how a person who is on a strange, never before seen alien wessel manages to piece together what the symbols and panels are supposed to do. Maybe they just randomly push buttons until they figure out what they all do? That's how I work some of those hundred plus button TV remotes.
Posted by HopefulNebula (Member # 1933) on :
Well, there's Hoshi's line in... erm... Sleeping Dogs, I think?... that's something along the lines of "Reading Klingon is a lot different from speaking it." Their UTs, at least, didn't do writing. That's a goodly amount of time between ENT and DS9, though, so I wouldn't doubt it if DS9-era UTs did.
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
There was talk in the early days of DS9 (as mentioned in the BTS book the Reeves-Stevens did) of the fact that since none of the cast could read Cardasssian, that for the first season or so, when they would call up information on the computers, it would be in Cardassian & they would have to voluntarily request a translation of it. Would've been neat, but for stroytelling ease & swiftness, I can see why they dropped that.
Posted by B.J. (Member # 858) on :
I would imagine that either getting the computer to translate it for you or learning Cardassian would be pretty high on the to-do list.
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
Well, I'm sure we could easily & correctly postulate that when the Corps of Engineers did all their readywork in prep for station handover, one of the things they did was have a programming team erase all Cardassian texts & make it all English/"Federation Standard"....but not ever Bajoran. Hm.