posted
Yes, it was "The 37's". Japanese soldier expressed his amazement that everybody seems to be speaking japanese, and Janeway explained that it's because of UT and pointed at her commbadge.
But I don't remember when they worked on UT and had their commadges open.
-------------------- "Do I remember about my amnesia?"
Registered: Jan 2003
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posted
Ok... ok... but still I was hoping to make sense of it and not have one UT in one comm badge translate for an entire group of people... doesn't really seem plausible to me.
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posted
Probably the UT is a multi-tier system. When you are aboard a starship, all those ears-in-the-walls and hidden 3D speakers do the translating for you. Outside the ship, but still within comm range, the commbadges act the role. Yet in everyday situations, when you aren't wearing a badge or aren't in Starfleet, your implant handles the regular English-Japanese-English or Klingon-Trill-Klingon translations.
It's only when encountering *new* languages not already programmed into your implant that you feel naked without a badge...
And come to think of it, forget what I said about 3D speakers above. The UT must act on nerve impulses instead of sounds - your ear most probably hears Klingon, but the UT then messes with the nerve signals and the message reaches your brain in English. And if the opponent isn't wearing a corresponding UT, then when you think about saying something in English, your "voice-tract" nerves are tampered with and it comes out as Klingon.
And sometimes this "identify whether opponent understands" routine falters, and you blurt out random combinations of native and foreign words... This happens a lot with those crappy Klingon UTs.
posted
So, then, in "The 37s", how did the English-speaking "37s" and the Japanese guy understand each other?
Registered: Mar 1999
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Cartman
just made by the Presbyterian Church
Member # 256
posted
And if UTs are microscopic modems plugged into people's brains, what happens when the signal-to-noise ratio drops below fifty percent due to [technobabble interference] or when somebody reprograms them via [technobabble Telnet] to convert all in- and outcoming pulses to random gibberish?
"but still I was hoping to make sense of it..."
Don't. You'll go mad.
Registered: Nov 1999
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posted
Y'know, in 35 years of Trek, I'm shocked they haven't used that for a story idea. The closest we really got was "Babel". Or was that "Babble"? I forget?
Mainly, it's because I am curious about people like Kira. Worf I can see knowing English (or at least Russian), and same with Tuvok and Spock (due to them being uber-clever), but did Kira really sit down and learn English? Or Nog?
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
You can't make sense of the Universal Translator. Here's why.
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
Registered: Nov 2000
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