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Similar real-world technologies are currently far from performing as well as their fictional counterparts. See Machine Translation and Speech Recognition for a discussion of real-world Natural Language Processing technologies. GENERAL As a rule, a universal translator is instantaneous, but if that language has never been recorded, there is sometimes a time delay until the translator can properly work out a translation, as in the case of '' Star Trek ''. Some writers seek greater plausibility by instead having computer translation that requires collecting a database of the new language, often by listening to radio transmissions. Usually it ignores any grammar rules between languages, giving it as perfect English. The existence of a universal translator is sometimes problematic in film and television productions from a logical perspective (for example, aliens who still speak English when no universal translator is in evidence and all characters appear to hear the appropriately translated speech instead of the original speech), and requires some Suspension Of Disbelief when characters' mouths move in sync with the translated words and not the original language; nonetheless, it removes the need for cumbersome and potentially extensive subtitles, and it eliminates the rather unlikely supposition that every other race in the galaxy has gone to the trouble of learning English. DEPICTIONS Star Control In the '''', Captain Rand is referred to as saying "That is one ugly sucker" when the image of a VUX first came onto his viewscreen. However, in '' Star Control II '', Captain Rand is referred to as saying "That is the ugliest freak-face I've ever seen" to his first officer, along with joking that the VUX name stands for Very Ugly Xenoform. It is debatable which source is canon. Whichever the remark, it is implied that the VUX's advanced Universal Translator technologies conveyed the exact meaning of Captain Rand's words. The effete VUX used the insult as an excuse for hostility toward humans.
In the other direction, the Supox are a race portrayed as attempting to mimic as many aspects of other races' language and culture as possible when speaking to them, to the point of referring to their own planet as " Earth ", also leading to confusion. In Star Control III, the K'tang are portrayed as an intellectually inferior species using advanced technology they do not fully understand in order to intimidate people, perhaps explaining why their translators' output is littered with misspellings and nonstandard usages of words, like threatening to "crushify" the player. Along the same lines, the Daktaklakpak dialogue is highly stilted and contains many numbers and mathematical expressions, implying that, as a mechanical race, their thought processes are inherently too different from humans' to be directly translated into human language. Stargate In the television shows '' Stargate SG-1 '' and '' Stargate Atlantis '', there are no personal translation devices used, and most alien and Human cultures on other planets speak English. The makers of the show have themselves admitted this on the main ''SG-1'' site, stating that this is to save spending ten minutes an episode on characters learning a new language (early episodes of ''SG-1'' revealed the difficulties of attempting to write such processes into the plot). In the season 8 finale of ''SG-1'', '' Moebius Part 2 '', the characters go back in time to 3000BC and one of them teaches English to the people there. Fans have speculated that the language could have been secretly adopted then and carried on from planet to planet, leading to today's situation in which most planets speak English, in spite of the evident lack of scientific credibility in this theory. Star Trek In '''', to invent the linguacode matrix in her late 30's. It was supposedly first used in the late 21st century on Earth for the instant translation of well-known Earth languages. Gradually, with the removal of language barriers, Earth's disparate cultures came to terms of universal peace. Translations of previously unknown languages, such as those of aliens, required more difficulties to be overcome. Like most other common forms of Star Trek technology (warp drive, transporters, etc.), the Universal Translator was probably developed independently on several worlds as an inevitable requirement of space travel; certainly the Vulcans had no difficulty communicating with humans upon making "first contact." Improbably, the universal translator has been successfully used to interpret non-biological lifeform communication and even natural phenomena. In the '''' episode " The Ensigns Of Command ", the translator proved ineffective with the language of the Sheliak species, so the Federation had to depend on the alien's interpretation of Earth languages. It is speculated that the Sheliak communicate amongst themselves in extremely complex Legalese . Unlike virtually every other form of Federation technology, Universal Translators almost never break down; phasers can be rendered inert, communicators blocked, shields broken through, warp cores breached, but through it all, Universal Translators make certain that everyone knows what is going on. Although they were clearly in widespread use during Captain Kirk's time (inasmuch as the crew regularly communicated with species who could not conceivably have knowledge of English), it is unclear where they were carried on personnel of that era. By the 24th century, Universal Translators are built into the communicator pins worn by Starfleet personnel, although, since crew members (such as Riker in the Next Generation episode "First Contact") have spoken to newly encountered aliens even when deprived of their communicators, some other factor must also be at work. In some episodes of '''', we see a Cardassian universal translator at work. It takes some time to process an alien language, whose speakers are initially not understandable but as they continue speaking, the computer gradually learns their language and renders it into English. Ferengi customarily wear their Universal Translators in their ears. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy See '' Babel Fish '' Star Wars The '' Star Wars '' films feature a similar situation to ''Stargate'', with the setting featuring an "official" language, Galactic Basic , which sounds remarkably like English, though the written form ( Aurebesh ) is distinctly different. Unreal A Universal Translator device can be found in the game as a usable item. It is used to read mostly Nali and Skaarj inscriptions from books, screens etc. Non-device translators Most of the time, the universal translator is depicted as a machine that works with a communications monitor. An exception is the Babel Fish from '' The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy '', a small organism that fits in the user's ear. (The Babel fish itself is a Parody of the universal translator convention.) Another exception is the "translator microbes" from the '' Farscape '' series, which were probably inspired by the Babel fish. In K. A. Applegate 's famous science fiction series, Animorphs , all Andalite warriors have miniature translator chips in their brains, which enable them to readily understand any alien language, this is discussed in ''The Hork-Bajir Chronicles'' and ''The Andalite Chronicles''. In the computer game , Link learns to talk to the inch-high Minish race by eating a ''Jabber Nut'' acquired in the Minish village. Minish seems to be the only language that Jabber Nuts enable the user to speak, as otherwise the minish would eat the nuts themselves and learn to speak English. When Link is in his Minish form, he can talk to animals such as Dog s, Cat s, Chicken s, Cow s and Horse s; it is unknown whether this is an effect of the Nut or of Minish DNA. In Isaac Asimov's Norby series, being bitten by a Jamyan dragon enables one to speak their language.
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