So, I’ve been messing around a bit with bing translator because it’s the only one I’ve found that includes Klingon, and it brought to mind something I saw in a DS9 episode I watched part of.
In the episode Quark acquired a ship he was owed from a relative and took a trip to Earth with his brother and nephew. Enroute the ship malfunctions sending them to mid 20th century United States. Quark made a comment about “universal translator implants”.
My question is, is it only the Ferengi that have these implants or are they common in the Star Trek universe? Is there a known answer to this?
Memory Alpha does not quiiite match what was depicted in the episode though it does seem to give a description of that very scene. Star Trek. Com is even less informative
I remember some of the episode where Quark and his brother get captured by the American military (Airforce?) The implants in question were earpieces and they - themselves were a play on the babelfish in “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”
It is not that much of a stretch that someone in the Star Trek universe made ear pieces that would translate what was said in one language into another language and repeat it for the wearer. I am surprised that there are not contact lenses that have closed captioning, and low-light/night vision…
In the original series, there was a Starfleet-issued hand-held universal translator in at least one episode, which looked remarkably like a lightsaber.
But, yes, by the 24th century, and the time frame of ST:TNG and DS9, the UT was built into their com badges.
It’s logically a common thing for Ferengi, given their mercantile nature. I’m not sure if their general focus on ears makes it weird or not, though.
It’s not a routine thing for humans, and probably not for other Federation races, since it’s incorporated into the Starfleet combadge.
Cardassians, even if they’re implanted, they’re not standalone like the ones that Quark et al were using, because the computers on DS9 were part of the process. (See DS9: Sanctuary.)
Anyone else, we have no real evidence one way or the other.
This model translated verbally in a voice of the appropriate gender. On all other occasions, the translations seemed to be supplied by some sort of neural implant. Unless, of course, the majority of aliens were proficient in colloquial 20th-century American English.
The way the universal translators are depicted working in the episode makes no sense to me. Ok so they malfunctioned and the Ferengi can’t understand what the humans saying in English. Sure that makes sense.
Then Rom is able to repair them and they can now understand English. Ok that makes sense. But somehow the humans can now understand what the Ferengi are saying. I just don’t understand; do the translators somehow give its users the ability to speak other languages as well? It doesn’t make sense to me.
That’s the way the UT is always shown to work in the TNG era. Whether it’s combadge, in-ear, or some other system, it’s completely two-way, regardless of if one side of the conversation couldn’t logically have their own UT implant/badge/whatever. (See any ‘first contact’ scenario in that era.)
Which is the only way they could function, given their real-world reason for existing is to handwave away why everyone’s speaking English and not have all the first-contact scenarios bogged down by the translations. (Unless, as in Little Green Men, it’s done as a gag (which, honestly, probably existed purely to remind people that the UTs existed), or, as in Sanctuary, to create the plot.)
ISTR an episode where there was first contact and for a few minutes the crew – and the audience – couldn’t understand what the new folk were saying while the UT gathered data as they spoke. How just speaking could map words in the new language into the old was not really explained. Probably accomplished by reconfiguring the deflector array.
Brainwaves. The UT scans and collects brainwaves, identifies the concepts (universal to all forms of intelligent life) it recognizes, and then provides the necessary vocabulary and grammar. If there’s no neural implant, the device must be transmitting its translations directly into the brain(s) of the user(s), sort of like wi-fi.
As Kirk explained in “Metamorphosis,” it’s not 100% efficient, but nothing ever is.
Sorry, I didn’t mean the physical device breaking down, I meant the system breaking down because of input it couldn’t properly handle - I considered posting a clarification, but by the time I realized it might be a good idea, it was so long I’d figured most people had read it as I intended it, not as I wrote it.
Steve and Bucky, their friendship. Captain and Bucky on the train. Schmidt, his skull red. Bucky at the Hydra. Bucky and Captain on the street. Winter Soldier, his anger subsides. Bucky at Wakanda. Bucky and Capt at rest.
