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I cna understand a technology such as this running at almost realtime on a hailing transmission, but how does it work when they're face to face? or are they all just speaking english at those bits? i heard something ages ago about changing sound waves in mid air or some such explanation, but it didnt sound right. Does anyone know how this technology works?

Well, at least for the Ferengi, we saw the universal translators in their ears.
I dunno about the Feds though.

I guess it emits a kind of field that alters brain chemistry to make people understand each other. In Voyager a group of humans without UTs were wondering how they spoke the same language. Like a Japanese guy was wondering how an American guy was speaking perfect Japanese and the American guy was wondering how the Japanese guy was speaking perfect English.

My guess from what I remember.

neoolong wrote:I guess it emits a kind of field that alters brain chemistry to make people understand each other. In Voyager a group of humans without UTs were wondering how they spoke the same language. Like a Japanese guy was wondering how an American guy was speaking perfect Japanese and the American guy was wondering how the Japanese guy was speaking perfect English.

My guess from what I remember.

sounds sensible. is there any official matter on how this technology would work?

I don't know. Maybe in one of the Tech Manuals. I just made it up though.

It's a plot device. The UT is the most implausible and impossible of all Treknology. Never in a billion years.

Frank Hipper wrote:It's a plot device. The UT is the most implausible and impossible of all Treknology. Never in a billion years.

Even more so than the transporter? Or the "inertial dampers"? Or the magic gravity plates?

Well, ignoring the other "questionable" treknologies, i would like to know how the UT only works most of the time, and not when a klingon says "ech-ra-go-splikch" or something similar.

Rye wrote:Well, ignoring the other "questionable" treknologies, i would like to know how the UT only works most of the time, and not when a klingon says "ech-ra-go-splikch" or something similar.

That one's actually fairly easy to rationalize and explain away.

Assume that the UT establishes that a speaker is using a particular language. Thus, for instance, a French Starfleet captain would obviously be speaking English. If that speaker suddenly switches to another language for a few words or a turn of phrase, the UT leaves it at that. To do otherwise would require the UT to decide if someone tagged as an English speaker and using the term "je ne sais quoi" in a conversation was really intending to say "I don't know what" but suddenly had an aneurysm that made him switch to French, or if he was just trying to use a French term for effect. The use of more than a few lines of another language would then likely trigger a shift of the language the user is tagged with.

The fact that Klingons, especially officers, often speak English as a mark of culture is referred to in the Klingon dictionary. It would neatly explain away why Klingon leaders seem to speak English with their adversaries (such as Sisko) and then unleash a pithy Klingon phrase at the end without getting it translated.

neoolong wrote:I guess it emits a kind of field that alters brain chemistry to make people understand each other.

IIRC the UT in TOS read the brain waves of a person or entity to translate its language. UT in TNG was just a advanced translation program.

Uraniun235 wrote:

Frank Hipper wrote:It's a plot device. The UT is the most implausible and impossible of all Treknology. Never in a billion years.

Even more so than the transporter? Or the "inertial dampers"? Or the magic gravity plates?

They're working on a transpoerter as we speak. The scientists theorise that it may possibly tansport a single atom one day. They freely admit that the complexities of molecules may forever be beyond their reach, though. I saw this a few years ago on a documentary, and my steel-trap mind is getting a little rusty around the hinges with age, so accept this with the caveat of IIRC.....

I read a bit ago about that transporter, it had to do with "marrying" photons to one specific photon then transporting that one, im not overly sure how it was all done, but i fear that one day, transporting an entire human into digital information then recombining in another place wouldnt work, for one, it would include a "killing" of the first version of molecules, and then creation of a new set of molecules, intact with all the hopes and knowledge of the first lot. Not totally out of the question, but certainly a long time away without alien intervention or something.