Spoilers Everyone's native language

[F. King Daniel]

Okay, so everyone speaks their own language and when the translator goes down they're fucked and if it werent for Saru they'd be unnable to communicate.

I'm somewhat sceptical of the plausibility of that, but whatever. Can any language experts tell us what languages everyone was speaking?

 

[Tim Thomason]

Okay, so everyone speaks their own language and when the translator goes down they're fucked and if it werent for Saru they'd be unnable to communicate.

I'm somewhat sceptical of the plausibility of that, but whatever. Can any language experts tell us what languages everyone was speaking?

You need to rewatch the episode. They were speaking random languages because the translator was going haywire. Burnham and Pike spoke Klingon briefly, then she spoke Italian later, as did the Computer, and many others. Detmer couldn't read her screen because it was in a language she didn't understand.

People have stated that it would've been cool if this showed us a glimpse into their native language. But it didn't, and was instead random and chaotic. Saru sets everything to base English, implying that the bridge crew present (Burnham, Pike, Detmer, Owo, Bryce, Rhys, Airiam, Saru) all can speak English at least as a second language.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

English is "Federation Standard" though as stated by Christopher Pike in the last ep!

 

[Lior .B.]

the voice over of the tower of babel was in fact in hebrew.

 

[ISS-Magnum]

Okay, so everyone speaks their own language

Not sure. Michael speaks Klingon -obviously it's not her mother tongue. Unless she is another Klingon spy.

Later she speaks Chinese, then some Latin language, then some Slavic. Pike speaks German at some point... I think. Pronunciation of all actors are so terrible (typical Hollywood), can't understand a word.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Unless that actor can natively speak a language, expect it to be butchered by Hollywood

 

[Hythlodeus]

Not sure. Michael speaks Klingon -obviously it's not her mother tongue. Unless she is another Klingon spy.

Later she speaks Chinese, then some Latin language, then some Slavic. Pike speaks German at some point... I think. Pronunciation of all actors are so terrible (typical Hollywood), can't understand a word.

The Italian, French and Hebrew were pretty good, German though, that was terrible.
I mean I get it's not an easy language, but...

 

[StefanM]

I am German (I think, you too, Hythlodeus?), so will will watch the german version of the episode this evening, but also take a look at these scenes, when the speak german, in the original version, so I can tell how, how their german sounded.

 

[Q2UnME]

Well, if you want to dissect the scene, it wasn't quite right. Everyone would still be speaking their native language (mouth movements, etc.), others on the bridge (and we the audience) would be hearing something else. If the producers wanted to be accurate (and spend the money to do it) the scene should have looked and sounded like a badly dubbed foreign film with the audio track sent on "random play" languages. The cheaper route, which we got, was to have the actors say their lines in other languages.

 

[F. King Daniel]

You need to rewatch the episode. They were speaking random languages because the translator was going haywire. Burnham and Pike spoke Klingon briefly, then she spoke Italian later, as did the Computer, and many others. Detmer couldn't read her screen because it was in a language she didn't understand.

People have stated that it would've been cool if this showed us a glimpse into their native language. But it didn't, and was instead random and chaotic. Saru sets everything to base English, implying that the bridge crew present (Burnham, Pike, Detmer, Owo, Bryce, Rhys, Airiam, Saru) all can speak English at least as a second language.

Ahhhh okay. I thought it was incredibly implausible and that's why. I thought the translator had just died.

 

[Tosk]

Well, if you want to dissect the scene, it wasn't quite right. Everyone would still be speaking their native language (mouth movements, etc.), others on the bridge (and we the audience) would be hearing something else. If the producers wanted to be accurate (and spend the money to do it) the scene should have looked and sounded like a badly dubbed foreign film with the audio track sent on "random play" languages. The cheaper route, which we got, was to have the actors say their lines in other languages.

Trek has always presented the UT scenes with the actors speaking the lines as we hear them.

 

[Q2UnME]

^ Not always, Tosk. Star Trek: Beyond actually had the 'alien' actress speak the weird alien language and there was a 'voice over' from the Universal Translator relaying what was said into Federation Standard. I think it was the only time where a Trek production actually got it right.

 

[Tosk]

Good point, I sometimes have a tendency to stick with pre-JJ Trek in my head.

I'm glad they generally go with the "actor says the lines" approach though. It'd be tedious to do it the other way all the time. Seven years of Quark with the look of "looped dialogue"? No thanks.

 

[Tuskin38]

Someone made a list of languages here

https://www.reddit.com/r/startrek/comments/aocs44/comment/eg00011?st=JRW872SR&sh=a89da833

Rhys was speaking Andorian according to the subtitles

 

[Timo]

Well, if you want to dissect the scene, it wasn't quite right. Everyone would still be speaking their native language (mouth movements, etc.), others on the bridge (and we the audience) would be hearing something else. If the producers wanted to be accurate (and spend the money to do it) the scene should have looked and sounded like a badly dubbed foreign film with the audio track sent on "random play" languages. The cheaper route, which we got, was to have the actors say their lines in other languages.

Umm, no. The UT always does perfect lip synch, even in multilingual crowds. That's its gig.

How it does that exactly is up to debate. But the fact that it does is not.

...What sort of a language is Wolof? (Googles.) Hmm. Any relation at all to the languages the characters themselves know? I mean, we can't completely rule out that the UT would have been locking to some of the second or third or fourth languages floating around in that room. But it doesn't sound very likely, and thus we don't learn that Owosekun would have Nigerian'ish roots.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Jackson_Roykirk]

Well, if you want to dissect the scene, it wasn't quite right. Everyone would still be speaking their native language (mouth movements, etc.), others on the bridge (and we the audience) would be hearing something else.

This has always been a nerdy pet peeve of mine with the Universal Translator. In the episodes where they are on a planet hiding their identities from, say for example, a culture where the prime directive would apply, it seems to me that the aliens would notice that our heroes mouths are not moving along with the voices they are producing.

Plus, how does that work with what our heroes are hearing from the aliens? Is the translation of the alien language bypassing their ears and going straight to their brains, thus they wouldn't actually "hear" the alien language, but just hear English?

And I'm not really bothered by these thing. It's just something I laughingly point out about the tech we are shown. For the most part I ignore this and just repeat to myself "it's a show; I should really just relax."

 

[Timo]

Bypassing sounds like a natural way for the UT to work. An implant somewhere between the ear and the brain, and between the brain and the mouth, would be more efficient and plausible than some sort of a microphone-computer-loudspeaker combo overall.

Scenes like tonight's would require no explaining, then. But scenes like VOY "The 37s" where only a few of the participants actually wear UTs ought to run into the lipsynch issue all right. Except this specific VOY scene was fine because there would have been little reason for the characters to notice the lipsynch issue in the time allotted. And the classic scene with just the heroes and then the natives who all speak the same language would also be fine, because our heroes' lips would indeed be moving in synch with their speech - the lips would be producing the speech, as guided by the UT.

The rest just involves our TV sets being provided with UTs of their own, of course...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Kor]

Okay, so everyone speaks their own language and when the translator goes down they're fucked and if it werent for Saru they'd be unnable to communicate.

I'm somewhat sceptical of the plausibility of that, but whatever. Can any language experts tell us what languages everyone was speaking?

They appeared to be speaking random languages, not necessarily their own native languages. I don't think Burnham's native language is Klingon, nor Pike's native language French.

Kor

 

[Timo]

And the point seemed to be, most if not all of those languages were alien to everybody involved, save for Saru.

Makes sense. Why would anybody learn German or French or Mandarin if the UT exists? Or English, for that matter? Indeed, why would anybody bother to learn a first language when the UT ought to be able to cover for one there, too? Just say "goo goo googledy goo" and out comes perfect <insert your desired language here>.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tuskin38]

Is this the first time we've heard Andorian spoken on screen?