Starship Captain: I am John S. Captain of the Starfleet Vessel Hubris. We are explorers, seeking out new life and new civilizations, boldly.
Alien: I am Kqwzytk, leader of the Blehassole people, from planet Zer-bo-bing-bah Three Point One Prime Alpha. Where do you come from?
SC: We have travelled from Earth, we come in peace to…
A: [interrupts with loud, then stifled laughter]
SC: Is something wrong? Have we offended your culture in some way?
A: No, it’s just that wait… you said… your planet is called ‘Earth’
SC: Yes! We are explorers, seeking…
A: [interrupting] Like, Soil? You’re saying your planet is basically called ‘Dirt’?
SC: Our planet is called Earth. Perhaps our universal translator is malfunctioning…
A: But you’re saying the word for ‘ground’ or ‘loam’ - that is, the portion of the planet’s surface composed of particles of eroded rock and decayed organic matter - is that what the name of your planet ‘Earth’ means in your own language?
What happens when they try to explain where they are from? The Sun/star/sky candle/Solar system… it does not have a name! At least, not any one that would mean fuck-all to an extraterrestrial. That’s when you whip out your pulsar map, I guess.
Don’t forget trying to explain the difference between “left” and “right”… the laughs never end!
The translator shouldn’t translate “Earth,” which is a proper noun, to whatever their word for “dirt” is, any more than a Chinese person named Liu would introduce themselves as “Mr. Battle Axe” in English.
Anyway, Earth is more inventive than a lot of other planet names in the Trek universe. Looking at you, Vulcan, Romulus, and Andor.
There was a recent NYT crossword that basically pointed out the same thing for names of things here. Sahara means desert in Arabic, Tahoe means lake in Washoe, Mississippi means river in Algonquin, Timor means east in Indonesian.
So, if you talked to a Washoe speaker about what we named the lake, it would be Lake Lake.
But wouldn’t the same likely be true for the Blehassole? Isn’t it common for cultures to similarly name themselves, their homelands, and natural phenomena? For example, Native Hawaiians referred to themselves as “kanaka” which literally translates to “people.” “Hawaii” most likely derives from “homeland” in Polynesian. “Aina” means both “Earth” and “land.” “La,” and “mahina” are “sun” and “moon,” respectively, and both literally translate as such. I’m no linguist, but isn’t that fairly common?
Also, aren’t Vulcan, Romulus, and Andor presumably *Terran/English names for those planets as opposed to the names assigned by natives of those worlds (similar to Germany vs. Deutschland)?
*I believe I recall Earth being called “Terra” with some frequency in Star Trek, but since “Terra” is Latin for “Earth,” I suppose that’s a distinction without a difference.
As an aside, translation can be a funny thing. I recall an anecdote of a non-native (but fairly fluent) English speaker explaining how much they loved something they were eating. They said it “tasted like dirt.” After some clarification, it was understood they actually meant it “tasted like the earth,” that both “dirt” and “earth” presumably translated to the same or similar words in their language, and that the negative connotation of the former was unknown to them.
On a more serious note, the “Universal Translator” makes no sense. Like “inertial dampeners” and the Transporter, it is a convention of convenience that has no attachment to scientific reality.
This was presented as a story that’s actually true to contrast with debunked Kangaroo or Yucanatan etymology stories (supposedly both meant “I Don’t Know”, but that’s not actually true).
Not an exact fit, but: IIRC a silver-age Superman story has our hero visit a world that looks almost exactly like Earth — only to have one of the locals condescendingly explain to him that, well, “The name EARTH, which means soil or land, doesn’t really fit your world since three-fourths of it is ocean, like my world! We chose the more correct name of OCEANIA!”
My favorite unimaginative and redundant name for something is, if you translate all of the baseball team name ‘The Los Angeles Angels’ into English, you have ‘The The Angels Angels’.
