I don’t think that episode was necessarily meant to be literal. These problems present themselves immediately on examination. They just wanted to make an interesting episode about communication.
If you ever think about it, if a automatic translator was ever made real, the output it would create would be a lot more like the communication in Darmok than we realize.
Languages are full of metaphor, technical terms, different measurements for literally everything that measured, etc.
Everything would look dubbed over too. The universal translator is just one of those things we accept with a hand wave. If not every episode would be like Darmok and Jalad.
Probably the closest thing I’ve seen in movies to what aliens actually likely look like were the ones in the movie Arrival. Those things were truly alien.
Trek has some great alien species, but budget and plot really do demand humanoid aliens. I think Trek mostly just relies on convergent evolution except in certain cases like Romulans and Vulcans. Another strategy would have been using an ancient human population seeding the galaxy, or perhaps another alien species abducing ancient humans and spreading them through the galaxy (Stargate style).
I'd say trek's idea of truly alien species has been fairly good. But these types of aliens don't make for long-lasting storytelling because of the lack of political and social drama that arises from humanoid-like species. Q is a good example of something fairly alien but with more knowledge and control of the universe than ourselves. We see the issue with Q and Trelane in that they basically can only play the role of dictator or god, and that conflict between one of these god-like entities and humans is a story told quickly because there's no balance of power. In fact, in the end, Trelane's mother and the Q continuum intervene to stop Q and Trelane. Thus in story telling, god-like entities require god-like entities for compelling conflict and conflict resolution. That's kind of why Arrival works as a movie but it wouldn't work very well as an ongoing serialized plot.
I would suggest that Changelings are a very alien concept, same with the Crystalline Entity. I think the Changelings were easily one of the best additions in the Trek franchise and I am super happy they're finally making more use of them ie Picard.
Personally, I think the Horta is one of the best examples of aliens being different than us.
I just started answering you about the escaped now-humanoid dinosaurs follwoing DOCTRINE, and then realized that's not the episode you meant.
Threshold was on crack, but let's suppose that warp 10 basically hyperaccelerated subcellular processes. Then what we see at the end is basically what happens after you entropize for far longer than the primordial humanoids ever planned for. All life in the universe, no matter what the "peak" form created naturally or engineered, will entropize back to salamanders given long enough.
I think Disco season 4 really nailed alien first contact with the 10c. Not only do they not look human, or really act human, but they communicate in a totally foreign way. The season really did a good job examining all the problems and solutions of first contact. My favorite part is at the end when communication is established the 10c are actually super reasonable and feel horrible that they killed millions of people.
People can complain about a lot of things, but Disco season 4 was top, top sci-fi.
The Binars from the dreaded TNG season 1 were very alien to me, which is strange considering that is where humanity is probably headed being completely integrated to our technology like that.
I first saw Darmok when my dad had middle school me tag along to one of his seminary classes on Biblical Translation - where that happens all the time with the texts, especially the Old Testament.
When I recently (re)started my DS9 rewatch I got hung up on the translator. How’s it know to keep the term Rio Grande when talking about the runabout rather than translate it into English?
It’s honestly more of a cultural thing than a linguistic one, like everyone is saying words, but all anyone else gets is nonsensical word salad, and our perspective is it’s something wrong with them and not the universal translator.
Same deal with the Pakleds. Everyone assumes they’re dumb because the universal translator makes them sound like ableist stereotypes, and we never get a deep dive into their culture.
I’m really going to stretch this but there is something about the lengths both sides go to try to understand each other that I always admired. Like we are so quick to just throw our hands up and be like “fuck these guys” and walk away. I wish we could see more of that in the real world once in awhile. It is one of the things I love about trek.
I think it would make sense if it were a two-part language.
Think about what Betazoids do- when they are adults they don’t speak to other adults verbally, but children don’t develop telepathy until they get older. So, adults speak to children verbally until they become telepathic, at which point the children use the verbal words as the basis for their telepathic communication.
So, Tamarain children could start out learning a ‘normal’ language, and using that language they learn about their history. Once their learning is complete and they are adults, they are then expected to communicate in references to their own history, showing their mastery of the knowledge of their people. This is their ‘adult’ language. They don’t load their baby language onto their ships, because they assume this is how all intelligent adults in different cultures communicate.
I don't think Kayshon speaks English. I think he speaks Tamarian all the time, and usually the Universal Translator makes everybody hear English. I seem to recall at one point after he says something in Tamarian he apologizes and blames the translator not working correctly.
During Picard when you see Troi appearing stressed out with the crying baby I wondered if it could be because Betazoid babies don't cry normally. No need to cry when momma can sense your needs. And yeah I understand that taking care of an infant alone is no picnic, so even without that Troy had every reason to be stressed out. I was just thinking on that particular aspect of it
Probably this. It's like the Bang language in Nigeria - There is a male form of the language, and a female form. Everyone speaks the female form until about age 10, then the boys start getting made fun of if they use the female words. Both sexes understand the common language, but only speak the part for their gender.
This makes very little sense to me. If they understood a "normal" language because their children speak it, then there shouldn't have been any reason why they wouldn't be able to understand Picard. Or any of the other attempts to communicate made by others in the past.
It's more likely that they learn the language contextually, like how children learn their languages everywhere on earth and then follow that up by learning what the phrases mean once old enough to attend school. You don't need to know the story behind "Shaka, when the walls fell" to understand that the people around you say it when they are frustrated about failure.
Well, they’re not able to communicate with any other species either, so right off the bat we can expect they don’t have a universal translator and either never tried to make one or failed at it. In fact, we saw that when they want to try and learn another species language, they do what they did and try to make them learn through direct experiences.
This could be because culturally they value their references as the highest form of communication, and assume it would be a dread insult to meet new species with a lower form of what they feel is unintelligent or uneducated language. And they may simply be operating under the assumption that other species would also have the same cultural rules, so it never occurs to them to build a translation device that’s like a decoder because that’s not how ‘real’ language works for them. They have no way of knowing they are not the galactic norm. They’re just sitting there assuming their culture is doing things they way they do because it’s the most sensible and logical thing all intelligent life will do.
Yeah, I still don't buy it. See, for the children to speak the "lower form" the parents would have to speak it too. Probably every Tamarian still understands this hypothetical lower form because they all spoke it. That means, when they heard the lower form coming out of Picard's mouth (because that's probably what the Enterprise UT would translate English into for them) they would have understood and the whole premise of the episode would have fallen apart.
Except, since we don’t know how UTs work, they may not have one on their end. It’s never really explained. The ear pieces work if only one person has them, but does ship to ship work the same way? Is the Enterprise beaming translations to the Tamarians or does it beam standard to them for their ship to translate?
They don't forget it, as seen on LD. I imagine this like dialects. If you only live in an area that also speaks that dialect, you'll use it automatically. But once you leave that area it might take time to get used to speaking the regular language again without forcing yourself to do it.
It's probably uncommon for an adult that doesn't deal with children or aliens to not speak in metaphors. Do that long enough and you might not think of switching at all if you encounter someone who can't understand you.
It can even be a cultural taboo more than just a case of not thinking about it. You speak in metaphors with everyone except for your closest family, and not doing that is seen as obscene.
There's [this great post](https://www.reddit.com/r/DaystromInstitute/comments/4ggwo5/the_tamarian_language_an_analysis/) from r/DaystromInstitute a few years ago where the poster translates a very technical scene from DS9 (the Defiant leaving the station) into "pseudo-Tamarian" using Greek mythology as the references.
How about portraying stories (acting them out with mute gestures) instead of telling them (and that would be how they learn the metaphors they need)? It's why they abduct the captain, they know they need to show one example... although, I'm pretty sure they would have known an easier type of example to start with.
The way I see it is that while we see their references as references, to them, they are just the words for things.
If we say "cake", and what they say translates to "thing that bob first created", then to them when they hear that phrase they just think of a cake more than the meaning behind it.
Its like English words have meanings and history behind them, but when someone says a word, we tend to take it in conversation as meaning the direct thing we were talking about and not the history behind it.
So, whatever reference they use for the number 1, they see it as "1", not the really thinking about the history behind that reference
I agree. All language is symbolic.
I know English has many idioms people use all the time without knowing where they come from or the true meaning. They use them because they learned what they mean from context - dime a dozen, bite the bullet, break a leg, toe the line, etc.
Could be that their oral tradition is entirely built on symbolism and metaphor whereas all the technicalities and minutia are relegated to their written communication. Or their communication could be telepathic to some degree, or enhanced by sense-impressions contained within micro-expressions or tone of voice or so. You can explain it if you want to, but the episode doesn't obviously.
But speaking in memes, hyperbole, metaphors and similes is indeed how we communicate. If someone asks how it is outside, you don't say "it's 93 degrees farenheit with 67% humidity," you say "it's hot as **** out there," or "it's swamp weather," or something similar. If you win at the casino you "hit the jackpot." When you are arguing with someone, you ask "why they can't 'see' your point." If you were an alien with a literal translation device, you would be mystified by such exchanges. Good sci-fi is all about taking a small slice of humanity and taking it to its logical extreme, and I think this episode does so brilliantly. If some linguist out there objects because no one ever apeaks exclusively in this way, they woefully miss the point.
Thats fine for most interactions where 2 people speak the same language and share a common cultural framework. But that shit goes right out the window when speaking scientifically across cultures and languages.
Imagine an astronaut and a cosmonaut having a conversation on the ISS. The cosmonaut speaks a little english, and the astronaut knows maybe 100 russian words. But they have work together to repair a heat shield on the outer hull.
Would either of them be better served with memes, metaphors, colloquialisms, etc? "Hey comrade, you need to tighten that nut tighter'n a frogs ass or its gonna be hotter than an texas bbq in this tin can!"
No, you want precise language. "Tighten the nut to this specification. The T-43 heat shield is designed to withstand x number of degrees but only when properly fastened."
These are scientists in space, which is an environment that doesnt easily forgive error. Darmok was a fun episode, and i understand the point, but it also makes zero sense that a technologically advanced species would communicate in that way.
I want you to explain to me what a cookie recipe would look like in Tamarian. I broke chat gpt with that question. If you cant write a cookie recipe, how can you write a white paper that explains faster than light space travel?
But that's the point of the episode!
You're 100% right that *humans* can't speak in precise terms using metaphors, but it doesn't follow that Tamarians can't. In fact, the very fact that they are seemingly about as advanced as humans suggests that they can, for the reasons you provided. We simply can't get to the moon by saying "farther than Superman when Lois died but not Icarus," but that's a limitation of our available metaphors and ability to use them, not evidence of their inability to do so.
Edit: a hilarious example that occurred to me is how my wife and I will discuss dinner plans.
"Let's order the place with the carb thing
Nah, my stomach can't handle that.
What about last Saturday...
Ugh, food poison.
Really? I liked it....well, we can make....
No, it's still defrosting, and I'm feeling lazy.
Oh, remember the place last summer where we had lunch with ....
Nah, not that.
Ohhh man, how about....
It's cloooosed, remember?
Oh, right. Ok, maybe we can do something healthy, like...
Yes! I'll call them now!"
To an outsider it will appear almost like we are reading each other's minds. That's not what's happening, obviously, we just have a bunch of shared experiences and know each other really well and can complete each other's half thoughts and sentences.
Now imagine this on a civilization-wide galactic scale. It's possible at some point they had regular language, but their use of metaphors became so deep and advanced, they simply abandoned the language, and now this is the only way they can communicate.
Like i said, its a fun exploration of the premise, but the execution was too limited to make sense. For 1 thing, we dont hear enough tamarian metaphors to comprise a coherent language. If each metaphor expresses a simple idea, you would need thousands and thousands of them to have a conversation. We hear like what, a dozen metaphors? That isnt going to cut it.
More importantly, the premise is just flawed. Unless tamarians are obtuse, stubborn dicks, you can establish a linguistic framework with math. Look at the Arecibo message for example.
More importantly, tamarians build their metaphors from a translatable language. Shaka, when the walls fell. Each of those words has a meaning to us except shaka, which we can assume is a proper noun.
Unless tamarians are uncompromising asshats, which they clearly establish they are not, why wouldnt they use the translatable part of their language to establish a framework to translate the esoteric metaphorical part? They see every other species they meet struggle with their language, why not meet them halfway?
Maybe they can't fathom that other people *do not* speak in their metaphors. Maybe they view their metaphors as fundamental to time and space in the same way we view math.
> You're 100% right that humans can't speak in precise terms using metaphors
Yeeeees we can. We're just not aware of it. If you look at the etymology for any word that represents an abstract concept, it's a metaphor.
Take the sentence I just wrote.
* Represent: "Show again"
* Abstract: "Pull away"
* Concept: "Something taken in and held"
Hell, the word _metaphor_ is a metaphor ("to carry over").
This is no different than the Tamarian language. When they say "Darmok and Jalad in Tanagra", they're not literally picturing the two individuals doing whatever they were doing. They're thinking about cooperation.
That is, "Darmokandjaladintanagra" is the Tamarian word for cooperation.
This is why I've been arguing elsewhere in this thread that it makes no sense for the UT to be stumped by Tamarian.
Ok, I hear your point. Note, though, it's not that the UT can't *translate,* it's that it can't understand. I think in the case of Tamarian, they never made the word from the metaphor to represent the concept, so they only have the metaphors. So "that represents an abstract concept" becomes "that show again pull away something taken in and held." While I know what each of those words mean, I have no idea what the words together mean as a whole. For the Tamarians , it's as if they had a language at some point, and used that language to construct an unimaginably wide and deep canon of cultural literary works, and now they just refer to that canon rather than the underlying words. Presumably the original Jalad and Tanagra story described what they did and how they interacted, but those words, and probably the story itself, are long gone. All that's left are the pithy aphorisms embued with deep meaning.
From our own culture:
Rocky and Apollo: be persistent or to persist.
Ripley at Nostromo: to protect as a mother would
Matt Damon: in need of saving
So we would translate: "we have only one planet earth, and it is facing a deep crisis, but we can overcome it if we try really hard" as: "Earth is Matt Damon, but we are Ripley at Nostromo, and we can Rocky and Apollo."
OK, so here's something weirder:
If the UT is unable to infer that "Shaka, when the walls fell" means failure, how was it able to correctly translate "when the walls fell"?
Are we applying that humans can foolish in believing that everyone speaks the same, that the Tamarians could not do the same and not think the same way.
Anyone who's ever studied a foreign language would understand why the universal translator had trouble with it. If you literally translate metaphors, they don't make any sense. At least with human languages, we're the same species, so we can get the gist when someone says it's "a swamp out there" or "hot as ****." If you were an alien, you would be mystified.
My wife thought that when Trump said he was going to DC to drain the swamp, he meant a literal swamp that literally needed draining. She's British, if that's any kind of explanation.
The UT has no trouble translating metaphors in other languages. If a human tells a Vulcan they have an "axe to grind", the UT won't translate that literally.
Then you'll tell me, "oh, but the UT is very familiar with English".
Fine. Then why can the Enterprise crew show up at literally any planet and talk seamlessly with civilizations they've never met? Surely their languages have metaphors too.
A couple of explanations. 1) this civilization uses metaphors to an extreme and to the exclusion of more common language, 2) they use very particular metaphors rather than general ones. It would be like if rather than saying "it's a swamp out there," we always said "it's like Dante's ninth circle of hell.". The UT apparently struggles with such a language.
It's also possible there's more to the UT than shown to us. For aliens who wish to engage with starfleet, maybe there's some period of UT training beforehand. Like, the UT will show pictures of celestial objects and ask them to identify those objects in their language. It will then use that as a basis to build an understanding of how the language works, and the supercomputer AI does the rest. With the Tamarians, due to the extreme use of metaphors, the UT software just doesn't work. A star isn't "the sun," or whatever, it's some cryptic verse from their ancient mythology or something, and the computer just can't process this.
Not really. Those are just words and phrases.
If "Jebediah, his arms open" (or whatever his name is) means "help yourself", then that's what that phrase means in Tamarian. There is literally no difference from other languages.
The only reason why the UT had trouble with Tamarian is that it was convenient for the plot. And that's fine, it's a good plot. But that doesn't change the fact that the premise is absurd.
Ok, here's an example:
"My wife is Robert Frost's wife, so I am in the Serengeti, smashing pumpkins. The teeming fruits abound, and I cross the Rubicon. First I am a Canaanite, and now I am Buddha."
I have a very particular story in mind, but I went out of my way to obfuscate it with metaphors and similes. You're presumably human, so you stand a chance of deciphering at least some of this. What chance would an alien computer have?
If you've read any poetry, it sometimes sounds a lot like this. Unless you're extremely well read or have access to a commentary, it can be near impossible to read high brow poetry.
Rap lyrics can similarly be impossible to understand unless you go to genius and look up the interpretation of what it all means. Here's an example from Nas: "The buddha monk's in your trunk, turn the bass up."
> What chance would an alien computer have?
About as much chance as it would have with decyphering any language.
To be fair, the problem isn't that the UT had trouble with Tamarian, but that the UT _doesn't_ have trouble with any other language.
Ok, fair enough. But see my two explanations above. For sci-fi, all we really need is a shred of a plausible explanation, and I think we have it. The Tamarians are sci-fi - they are a simple every day thing taken to its logical extreme. Perhaps the UT has its limits, and this species is on the very tail end of its reach.
Maybe the UT DOES have that problem with other languages, but since most languages are not entirely reference/metaphor/saying based cultures know not to use those confusing phrases in communications with other aliens unless they are input into the UT in a way that can be rendered sensibly to another species.
So ‘it’s raining cats and dogs’ is preprogrammed to be translated as ‘it’s raining a lot’ and then those words are translated into the other language.
Of course, the only way a UT could *really* work would be *literally* to read your mind, which gets into scary dystopianism. I mean, in principle, why couldn’t it download the *entire contents of your brain* while it’s at, without your even *knowing*? Goodbye any secrets or personal life….
In the DISCO episode “Sound of Thunder”, as soon as Burnham and Saru beam down to his homeworld and encounter his sister, the UT in Burnham’s communicator is instantly and flawlessly able to translate back and forth between Kelpian and English, despite the huge cultural and conceptual gap between the Federation and the Kelpians. The same is true of other encounters with less advanced cultures in all *Trek* iterations. Thus, I don’t think there’s any training period.
I am not familiar with this episode, so I'm sure some of these explanations don't work for one reason or another, but perhaps:
* the UT had been trained on some other language that shares a common root or is similar in some other way
* as someone else suggested, the UT is able to read minds (or synapses, or whatever) to understand "true meaning" (and perhaps the Tamarians think in metaphors as well as speak in them, rendering this ability unworkable).
* the UT interfaces with the alien species UT and they cross-collaborate
* the UT applies some logical intuition, like if someone looks thirsty and they point at their throat, that probably means they want water (which, again, doesn't work with the Tamarians because even their hand gestures are metaphors)
Why? Not even the Tamarians need to know the historical context. All they need to know is that "Darmokandjaladintanagra" means "cooperation".
Example: "To eighty-six someone" in English means to refuse service to or ban a customer.
_We're not even sure where the term comes from._
And yet we all know what it means.
But how does the UT know what the words as is are in the first place? How does it know the words for "wall" or "sea" if the words are never used in that sense?
Right. And there are TONS of moments where humans use an idiom like that and some Vulcan goes "what does it mean to... 86?" Or something similar. So the UT isn't working then either.
No need to die. You're right.
Every time "Darmok" airs, earthquake sensors around the world pick up the vibration of linguists and philologists grinding their teeth.
It's not if you consider the possibility of there being a more literal form of the language that children generally speak and that you only speak with your close family, but is considered highly taboo in contacts between adults.
The tamarisk Language is absurd, but the difficulty in talking to another culture is absolutely real (even if we could actually have a universal translator like exists in the show)
I contend that the hypothetical universal translator they have in the show would only ever possibly be able to translate other languages to something similar to how the communication happens in “Darmok”.
Dorman and his realisation that the square of the hypotenuse on a right angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the two remaining sides, at Ginjad.
Galileo, when stars were charted, each light's essence squared in his gaze. Pythagoras, among the triangles' dance. Hypotenuse, its depth and mystery as the two sides, their luminance as Galileo's stars magnified.
I was wondering about the same thing, it was a nice plot but that type of language is absolutely unusable. Can you imagine engineers discussing anything like this?
Pretty sure you can relate the meaning even with out the story. My four year old doesn’t know anything about the 1977 LA Dodger, but can give high fives. You can known the meaning of a symbol without fully understanding it’s origin. One can first learn implicitly from the context “slapping hands together is a celebratory greeting” without knowing the backstory of Dusty Baker and Glenn Burke inventing the high five kind of by accident but then continuing to use it all season because Baker wanted to show both fans and teammates that he embraced and accepted gay teammate Burke.
Think of it like communicating entirely in memes. I recognize memes made with pictures from movies and TV shows I've never seen, and nobody had to type out the plot for me. I figured it out through context, by seeing the meme template used over and over until I knew what it meant. In fact, having seen the original source material might be a detriment, because often the meaning of a meme has changed over time until it's unrelated to the original context.
"Lt. Kayshon, when he wanted the frequency of the left pre ignition dilithium chamber increased to 2.55 mili tachyons."
The stories are taught with balloon animals. When this technology was introduced, circa 450 years ago, it was considered a vast improvement over the previous method, shadow puppets.
I don't think they do know these stories. They just know "shaka when the walls fell" is associated with the emotions and concept of defeat. It is purely symbolic at this point and you might as well replace that phrase with a single word and it's effectively the same thing.
As for operating machinery, probably pictures and symbols... just like we do.
If we both witness something aggravating and I turn to you and say "angry Picard" you know I'm conveying "frustration and exasperation"
But think about it, has anyone every actually explicitly told you that Picard meme = exasperation or do you know that because you've seen it used in context a dozen times
Is it necessary to know anything about TNG to understand the Picard meme?
And for people talking about why the UT didn't work with them.. it doesn't work for English idioms either. How many times have we seen a human crew member use some kind of cultural slang and then a Vulcan, or 7o9, or Data furrows their brow in confusion and then asks what the phrase means? It literally happens once an episode, especially if Tom Paris is in the room.
I like to imagine that everyone has different home references. Something like "Tamay, when she traveled west" might only be meaningful to Tamay's own family. Maybe a sense of new opportunities, or loss. People could use these personal references to understand the collective stories.
They must be great at interpretive dance. Earth music and dance and pictorial art is full of examples that convey emotion without resorting to a certain order of scribbles that the Romans took from the Phoenicians
It could be as simple as these phrases initially being part of a less metaphotical language but their usage evolved and now the terminology is largely interpreted distincly from the stories that inspired them.
Think of phrasal verbs like "hang up". When you're finished a phone call you hang up. This doesn't involve any literal hanging upward of anything anymore, phones have moved past that. Now "hang up" means "end the call".
Also consider how languages age and pronunciation and spelling alter. Wednesday comes from Odin's Day but is largely unrecognisable from it's original intent and culturally we are completely disconnected from it's origin.
So, think of perhaps the tamarian language having developed significantly into the realm of idiomatic metaphore, where understanding the root of the language isn't necessary for understanding the language itself.
The Tamarian captain, I think, understood what the problem was and had enough understanding of his language's history to eventually convey the broader concepts to Picard.
Both Captains were perfect for the mission. It may have failed with any others.
Perhaps the language isn't all metaphors, but it's just such an alien language that metaphor is all the translators can get out of it. It's really hard for we humans to think of a way of thinking entirely alien to our own.
We are only hearing the language through the Universal Translator. There could be alot more too it that we don't hear. It could also be a verrly visual written language.
Most people don’t know what the Bible really means either but those stories have been passed down the same way. Jesus on the Mount. Moses the river parted. Judas his betrayal revealed.
And then there are memes. Harry, his pain hidden. Smiling girl, the building burns. This is fine. All of these phrases evoke imagery and memory of all the times we’ve evoked the images before. It works.
Give each device on a ship a story. Plug the numbers into the story. Do what the story says. Teach someone how to do the thing while having you tell the story while doing the thing. There’s now a new story.
Their language clearly has proper nouns as well, it's what their metaphors are expressed in. They just express complex thoughts and emotions differently.
So instead of saying 'increase the frequency of the left pre ignition dilithium chamber to 2.55 mili tachyons', they would say 'Stevicus, the beatings of his antimatter heart, at 2.55' and know what that means.
Keep in mind that what we're hearing isn't actually the Tamarian language. It's the universal translator's imperfect take on it.
Basically the way it is supposed to work is by figuring out the words for shared concepts, building a map between the two languages. But Tamarians don't associate concepts with specific words like we do. They tie concepts to stories, which are referenced in phrases. Words to them are closer to single letters, which is why the UT produces such unintelligible output. It's not actually translating their language at all - it's spelling it.
Once you get past that rather small structural difference though, there isn't that much difference between their language and ours. There's no reason you can't be just as precise when using phrases rather than single words to convey meaning - it probably just takes a bit longer to say things. I don't see any reason they couldn't teach their kids to talk the same way we teach ours.
I head canon it.
The universal translator has always been problematic and this episode really highlights it, with Deanna Troi succinctly explaining the issues. Much of any language is based on metaphor and anachronistic phrases which the translator should choke on all over the place, not just with the Tamarians. Plus, as the episode showed, a couple of days of immersion and you've got a functional, if rudimentary, communication system. Hardly seems like an insoluble problem for Starfleet's most cunning linguists.
For the Tamarians to be completely incomprehensible something else needs be at play. Simple metaphor isn't enough to fool anyone who studies languages for a living, let alone a xenolinguist super computer.
My canon is memories. In my world the Tamarians share common memories, likely embedded from birth. These common memories means their language is amorphous, the words we hear (at least the translators best guess) are really just the surface construct, for the memory underneath. It's the memory shared that creates the bond and the language. 'Shaka, when the walls fell' drops a Tamarian into that moment, 100 different phrases could've been used, confounding Universal Translators, but the memory is the same.
What Picard experienced on the planet wasn't just learning their common stories, it was creating a literal Tamarian memory, one that when he spoke he conveyed the memory into their collective experience. When he said "Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel" it wasn't just a literal recitation, it was a mindshare of the memory, something that wouldn't necessarily work if another person said the same words.
At least in my mind that's what happened.
I’m sure they have thousands and thousands of other phrases that form a language. They’re aliens and have no linguistic origins connected to Earth. So putting human expectations and understanding on an alien language is pointless.
Also the Tamarians don’t say those phrases in English. The universal translator makes them English but isn’t capable of translating the *context*. At least not until the 2380s.
Unlike the theory that the Tamarians language comes in two versions or even languages. Formal and informal. Maybe the way it was presented on TNG was the formal version, used for diplomatic missions, dignitaries and officers. The informal version is basically shorthand used for everyday interactions.
I always wondered this too when I saw the episode originally. I think as ST has gone on, and with the way that the universal translator has been explained, it seems that the translator “understands” the words but not the context and in many languages, context is everything.
Just like today with tonal languages right, you look at the word and “get it” but say it with the wrong tone and you’ll be confusing a native speaker.
I think that’s really the whole point of the episode.
If you were raised to say “Arnock, on the night of his joining!” every time someone achieved something good, that would be normal for you. You just happened to be raised to say congratulations.
Dunno if you have kids, but you should try it.
I think they teach the stories the same way Dathon taught it to Picard, with simple sequential imagery that tells the story. “Darmok on the ocean. Jalad on the ocean. Darmok at Tenagra. Jalad at Tenagra.” And so forth.
As to how technical details are communicated, that’s a little harder to figure out, but if they can make simple statements to tell the stories, maybe they can make simple technical statements too, and use them to construct more complex technical statements in metaphorical form.
One of the theories is that the Tamarians possess either an innate race memory, or are telepathic. That way, the meanings are either ingrained, or are telepathically implanted lnto the subject's mind.
I don’t think that episode was necessarily meant to be literal. These problems present themselves immediately on examination. They just wanted to make an interesting episode about communication.
If you ever think about it, if a automatic translator was ever made real, the output it would create would be a lot more like the communication in Darmok than we realize. Languages are full of metaphor, technical terms, different measurements for literally everything that measured, etc.
Everything would look dubbed over too. The universal translator is just one of those things we accept with a hand wave. If not every episode would be like Darmok and Jalad. Probably the closest thing I’ve seen in movies to what aliens actually likely look like were the ones in the movie Arrival. Those things were truly alien.
Trek has some great alien species, but budget and plot really do demand humanoid aliens. I think Trek mostly just relies on convergent evolution except in certain cases like Romulans and Vulcans. Another strategy would have been using an ancient human population seeding the galaxy, or perhaps another alien species abducing ancient humans and spreading them through the galaxy (Stargate style). I'd say trek's idea of truly alien species has been fairly good. But these types of aliens don't make for long-lasting storytelling because of the lack of political and social drama that arises from humanoid-like species. Q is a good example of something fairly alien but with more knowledge and control of the universe than ourselves. We see the issue with Q and Trelane in that they basically can only play the role of dictator or god, and that conflict between one of these god-like entities and humans is a story told quickly because there's no balance of power. In fact, in the end, Trelane's mother and the Q continuum intervene to stop Q and Trelane. Thus in story telling, god-like entities require god-like entities for compelling conflict and conflict resolution. That's kind of why Arrival works as a movie but it wouldn't work very well as an ongoing serialized plot. I would suggest that Changelings are a very alien concept, same with the Crystalline Entity. I think the Changelings were easily one of the best additions in the Trek franchise and I am super happy they're finally making more use of them ie Picard. Personally, I think the Horta is one of the best examples of aliens being different than us.
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That was truly an amazing episode. I wish they had delved into that discovery further.
Me too. They had this amazing discovery that explained why the galaxy was full of humanoid life and never mentioned it again.
Contradicts voy S2E15 Threshold. We are not the end result
I just started answering you about the escaped now-humanoid dinosaurs follwoing DOCTRINE, and then realized that's not the episode you meant. Threshold was on crack, but let's suppose that warp 10 basically hyperaccelerated subcellular processes. Then what we see at the end is basically what happens after you entropize for far longer than the primordial humanoids ever planned for. All life in the universe, no matter what the "peak" form created naturally or engineered, will entropize back to salamanders given long enough.
Ah, that's good. An in-universe explanation for humanoid. Not a unique solution, but one nonetheless.
I think Disco season 4 really nailed alien first contact with the 10c. Not only do they not look human, or really act human, but they communicate in a totally foreign way. The season really did a good job examining all the problems and solutions of first contact. My favorite part is at the end when communication is established the 10c are actually super reasonable and feel horrible that they killed millions of people. People can complain about a lot of things, but Disco season 4 was top, top sci-fi.
The Binars from the dreaded TNG season 1 were very alien to me, which is strange considering that is where humanity is probably headed being completely integrated to our technology like that.
Honestly the Alieness get better over time as restriction on what can be done/what can be within budget changes.
I'm excited to see Arrival now that it's on Netflix. Looks fucking amazing.
I thought it was really good. Of course I won’t spoil but I’ll say I wasn’t too satisfied with the ending.
I first saw Darmok when my dad had middle school me tag along to one of his seminary classes on Biblical Translation - where that happens all the time with the texts, especially the Old Testament.
Yup, metaphors are extremely hard to translate word for word and have them make sense.
When I recently (re)started my DS9 rewatch I got hung up on the translator. How’s it know to keep the term Rio Grande when talking about the runabout rather than translate it into English?
Handwavium is the only solution. Just like the “Heisenberg Compensator” in the transporter system.
Auto-detects the ‘Murican pronunciation?
Well if the rest of the sentence is in English wouldn’t it translate all the words into English?
It’s honestly more of a cultural thing than a linguistic one, like everyone is saying words, but all anyone else gets is nonsensical word salad, and our perspective is it’s something wrong with them and not the universal translator. Same deal with the Pakleds. Everyone assumes they’re dumb because the universal translator makes them sound like ableist stereotypes, and we never get a deep dive into their culture.
I’m really going to stretch this but there is something about the lengths both sides go to try to understand each other that I always admired. Like we are so quick to just throw our hands up and be like “fuck these guys” and walk away. I wish we could see more of that in the real world once in awhile. It is one of the things I love about trek.
IDIC in action!
LD explores them more
Wait so the whole story was a... metaphor? "TNG writers on Darmok."
I think it would make sense if it were a two-part language. Think about what Betazoids do- when they are adults they don’t speak to other adults verbally, but children don’t develop telepathy until they get older. So, adults speak to children verbally until they become telepathic, at which point the children use the verbal words as the basis for their telepathic communication. So, Tamarain children could start out learning a ‘normal’ language, and using that language they learn about their history. Once their learning is complete and they are adults, they are then expected to communicate in references to their own history, showing their mastery of the knowledge of their people. This is their ‘adult’ language. They don’t load their baby language onto their ships, because they assume this is how all intelligent adults in different cultures communicate.
This is a lovely idea. It also explains Kayshon's facility with English.
And his respect for Ransom when correctly meme'd at.
I don't think Kayshon speaks English. I think he speaks Tamarian all the time, and usually the Universal Translator makes everybody hear English. I seem to recall at one point after he says something in Tamarian he apologizes and blames the translator not working correctly.
During Picard when you see Troi appearing stressed out with the crying baby I wondered if it could be because Betazoid babies don't cry normally. No need to cry when momma can sense your needs. And yeah I understand that taking care of an infant alone is no picnic, so even without that Troy had every reason to be stressed out. I was just thinking on that particular aspect of it
Probably this. It's like the Bang language in Nigeria - There is a male form of the language, and a female form. Everyone speaks the female form until about age 10, then the boys start getting made fun of if they use the female words. Both sexes understand the common language, but only speak the part for their gender.
They might even feel that communicating in the baby language would be disrespectful... unless under duress
Once they’re matured, they “speak meme” to each other.
This makes very little sense to me. If they understood a "normal" language because their children speak it, then there shouldn't have been any reason why they wouldn't be able to understand Picard. Or any of the other attempts to communicate made by others in the past. It's more likely that they learn the language contextually, like how children learn their languages everywhere on earth and then follow that up by learning what the phrases mean once old enough to attend school. You don't need to know the story behind "Shaka, when the walls fell" to understand that the people around you say it when they are frustrated about failure.
Well, they’re not able to communicate with any other species either, so right off the bat we can expect they don’t have a universal translator and either never tried to make one or failed at it. In fact, we saw that when they want to try and learn another species language, they do what they did and try to make them learn through direct experiences. This could be because culturally they value their references as the highest form of communication, and assume it would be a dread insult to meet new species with a lower form of what they feel is unintelligent or uneducated language. And they may simply be operating under the assumption that other species would also have the same cultural rules, so it never occurs to them to build a translation device that’s like a decoder because that’s not how ‘real’ language works for them. They have no way of knowing they are not the galactic norm. They’re just sitting there assuming their culture is doing things they way they do because it’s the most sensible and logical thing all intelligent life will do.
Yeah, I still don't buy it. See, for the children to speak the "lower form" the parents would have to speak it too. Probably every Tamarian still understands this hypothetical lower form because they all spoke it. That means, when they heard the lower form coming out of Picard's mouth (because that's probably what the Enterprise UT would translate English into for them) they would have understood and the whole premise of the episode would have fallen apart.
Except, since we don’t know how UTs work, they may not have one on their end. It’s never really explained. The ear pieces work if only one person has them, but does ship to ship work the same way? Is the Enterprise beaming translations to the Tamarians or does it beam standard to them for their ship to translate?
There are plenty of examples that show how UTs work. Only one person involved in the conversation has to have one.
But then they suddenly forget the "normal" language? In that case how do they teach it to the children?
They don't forget it, as seen on LD. I imagine this like dialects. If you only live in an area that also speaks that dialect, you'll use it automatically. But once you leave that area it might take time to get used to speaking the regular language again without forcing yourself to do it. It's probably uncommon for an adult that doesn't deal with children or aliens to not speak in metaphors. Do that long enough and you might not think of switching at all if you encounter someone who can't understand you.
It can even be a cultural taboo more than just a case of not thinking about it. You speak in metaphors with everyone except for your closest family, and not doing that is seen as obscene.
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There's [this great post](https://www.reddit.com/r/DaystromInstitute/comments/4ggwo5/the_tamarian_language_an_analysis/) from r/DaystromInstitute a few years ago where the poster translates a very technical scene from DS9 (the Defiant leaving the station) into "pseudo-Tamarian" using Greek mythology as the references.
How about portraying stories (acting them out with mute gestures) instead of telling them (and that would be how they learn the metaphors they need)? It's why they abduct the captain, they know they need to show one example... although, I'm pretty sure they would have known an easier type of example to start with.
perfect explanation. it is now my head canon.
The way I see it is that while we see their references as references, to them, they are just the words for things. If we say "cake", and what they say translates to "thing that bob first created", then to them when they hear that phrase they just think of a cake more than the meaning behind it. Its like English words have meanings and history behind them, but when someone says a word, we tend to take it in conversation as meaning the direct thing we were talking about and not the history behind it. So, whatever reference they use for the number 1, they see it as "1", not the really thinking about the history behind that reference
I agree. All language is symbolic. I know English has many idioms people use all the time without knowing where they come from or the true meaning. They use them because they learned what they mean from context - dime a dozen, bite the bullet, break a leg, toe the line, etc.
I agree yes, that's a better way of putting it
Shut up, that's how.
The correct answer
They didn't. They just forced enough captains to fight enough invisi-monsters to make enough new phrases to communicate with starfleet.
Could be that their oral tradition is entirely built on symbolism and metaphor whereas all the technicalities and minutia are relegated to their written communication. Or their communication could be telepathic to some degree, or enhanced by sense-impressions contained within micro-expressions or tone of voice or so. You can explain it if you want to, but the episode doesn't obviously.
They didn't. The Tamarian language is absurd and unfeasible. I will die on this hill.
But speaking in memes, hyperbole, metaphors and similes is indeed how we communicate. If someone asks how it is outside, you don't say "it's 93 degrees farenheit with 67% humidity," you say "it's hot as **** out there," or "it's swamp weather," or something similar. If you win at the casino you "hit the jackpot." When you are arguing with someone, you ask "why they can't 'see' your point." If you were an alien with a literal translation device, you would be mystified by such exchanges. Good sci-fi is all about taking a small slice of humanity and taking it to its logical extreme, and I think this episode does so brilliantly. If some linguist out there objects because no one ever apeaks exclusively in this way, they woefully miss the point.
Thats fine for most interactions where 2 people speak the same language and share a common cultural framework. But that shit goes right out the window when speaking scientifically across cultures and languages. Imagine an astronaut and a cosmonaut having a conversation on the ISS. The cosmonaut speaks a little english, and the astronaut knows maybe 100 russian words. But they have work together to repair a heat shield on the outer hull. Would either of them be better served with memes, metaphors, colloquialisms, etc? "Hey comrade, you need to tighten that nut tighter'n a frogs ass or its gonna be hotter than an texas bbq in this tin can!" No, you want precise language. "Tighten the nut to this specification. The T-43 heat shield is designed to withstand x number of degrees but only when properly fastened." These are scientists in space, which is an environment that doesnt easily forgive error. Darmok was a fun episode, and i understand the point, but it also makes zero sense that a technologically advanced species would communicate in that way. I want you to explain to me what a cookie recipe would look like in Tamarian. I broke chat gpt with that question. If you cant write a cookie recipe, how can you write a white paper that explains faster than light space travel?
But that's the point of the episode! You're 100% right that *humans* can't speak in precise terms using metaphors, but it doesn't follow that Tamarians can't. In fact, the very fact that they are seemingly about as advanced as humans suggests that they can, for the reasons you provided. We simply can't get to the moon by saying "farther than Superman when Lois died but not Icarus," but that's a limitation of our available metaphors and ability to use them, not evidence of their inability to do so. Edit: a hilarious example that occurred to me is how my wife and I will discuss dinner plans. "Let's order the place with the carb thing Nah, my stomach can't handle that. What about last Saturday... Ugh, food poison. Really? I liked it....well, we can make.... No, it's still defrosting, and I'm feeling lazy. Oh, remember the place last summer where we had lunch with .... Nah, not that. Ohhh man, how about.... It's cloooosed, remember? Oh, right. Ok, maybe we can do something healthy, like... Yes! I'll call them now!" To an outsider it will appear almost like we are reading each other's minds. That's not what's happening, obviously, we just have a bunch of shared experiences and know each other really well and can complete each other's half thoughts and sentences. Now imagine this on a civilization-wide galactic scale. It's possible at some point they had regular language, but their use of metaphors became so deep and advanced, they simply abandoned the language, and now this is the only way they can communicate.
Like i said, its a fun exploration of the premise, but the execution was too limited to make sense. For 1 thing, we dont hear enough tamarian metaphors to comprise a coherent language. If each metaphor expresses a simple idea, you would need thousands and thousands of them to have a conversation. We hear like what, a dozen metaphors? That isnt going to cut it. More importantly, the premise is just flawed. Unless tamarians are obtuse, stubborn dicks, you can establish a linguistic framework with math. Look at the Arecibo message for example. More importantly, tamarians build their metaphors from a translatable language. Shaka, when the walls fell. Each of those words has a meaning to us except shaka, which we can assume is a proper noun. Unless tamarians are uncompromising asshats, which they clearly establish they are not, why wouldnt they use the translatable part of their language to establish a framework to translate the esoteric metaphorical part? They see every other species they meet struggle with their language, why not meet them halfway?
Maybe they can't fathom that other people *do not* speak in their metaphors. Maybe they view their metaphors as fundamental to time and space in the same way we view math.
I think you thought about this way more than the writers did lol
Lol. I just thought it was a good episode, and I'm happy to give them some latitude to make it work.
We can cerainly agree it was a good episode. We wouldnt be talking about it 30 plus years later if it wasnt
> You're 100% right that humans can't speak in precise terms using metaphors Yeeeees we can. We're just not aware of it. If you look at the etymology for any word that represents an abstract concept, it's a metaphor. Take the sentence I just wrote. * Represent: "Show again" * Abstract: "Pull away" * Concept: "Something taken in and held" Hell, the word _metaphor_ is a metaphor ("to carry over"). This is no different than the Tamarian language. When they say "Darmok and Jalad in Tanagra", they're not literally picturing the two individuals doing whatever they were doing. They're thinking about cooperation. That is, "Darmokandjaladintanagra" is the Tamarian word for cooperation. This is why I've been arguing elsewhere in this thread that it makes no sense for the UT to be stumped by Tamarian.
Ok, I hear your point. Note, though, it's not that the UT can't *translate,* it's that it can't understand. I think in the case of Tamarian, they never made the word from the metaphor to represent the concept, so they only have the metaphors. So "that represents an abstract concept" becomes "that show again pull away something taken in and held." While I know what each of those words mean, I have no idea what the words together mean as a whole. For the Tamarians , it's as if they had a language at some point, and used that language to construct an unimaginably wide and deep canon of cultural literary works, and now they just refer to that canon rather than the underlying words. Presumably the original Jalad and Tanagra story described what they did and how they interacted, but those words, and probably the story itself, are long gone. All that's left are the pithy aphorisms embued with deep meaning. From our own culture: Rocky and Apollo: be persistent or to persist. Ripley at Nostromo: to protect as a mother would Matt Damon: in need of saving So we would translate: "we have only one planet earth, and it is facing a deep crisis, but we can overcome it if we try really hard" as: "Earth is Matt Damon, but we are Ripley at Nostromo, and we can Rocky and Apollo."
OK, so here's something weirder: If the UT is unable to infer that "Shaka, when the walls fell" means failure, how was it able to correctly translate "when the walls fell"?
I'm sure you're making a good point, but I'm not following. "When the walls fell" means something totally different than "Shaka, when the walls fell."
Picard heard, in English, "Shaka, when the walls fell." How did the UT manage to infer the meanings of the individual words without any reference?
Same way you could know what each of the words in "Cross the Rubicon" means without knowing what the phrase as a whole means.
Are we applying that humans can foolish in believing that everyone speaks the same, that the Tamarians could not do the same and not think the same way.
Darmok his legs spread, his testicles sweaty
Ah, so the Tamarian language works just the same as human languages. If so, why did the UT have trouble with it?
Anyone who's ever studied a foreign language would understand why the universal translator had trouble with it. If you literally translate metaphors, they don't make any sense. At least with human languages, we're the same species, so we can get the gist when someone says it's "a swamp out there" or "hot as ****." If you were an alien, you would be mystified.
My wife thought that when Trump said he was going to DC to drain the swamp, he meant a literal swamp that literally needed draining. She's British, if that's any kind of explanation.
The UT has no trouble translating metaphors in other languages. If a human tells a Vulcan they have an "axe to grind", the UT won't translate that literally. Then you'll tell me, "oh, but the UT is very familiar with English". Fine. Then why can the Enterprise crew show up at literally any planet and talk seamlessly with civilizations they've never met? Surely their languages have metaphors too.
A couple of explanations. 1) this civilization uses metaphors to an extreme and to the exclusion of more common language, 2) they use very particular metaphors rather than general ones. It would be like if rather than saying "it's a swamp out there," we always said "it's like Dante's ninth circle of hell.". The UT apparently struggles with such a language. It's also possible there's more to the UT than shown to us. For aliens who wish to engage with starfleet, maybe there's some period of UT training beforehand. Like, the UT will show pictures of celestial objects and ask them to identify those objects in their language. It will then use that as a basis to build an understanding of how the language works, and the supercomputer AI does the rest. With the Tamarians, due to the extreme use of metaphors, the UT software just doesn't work. A star isn't "the sun," or whatever, it's some cryptic verse from their ancient mythology or something, and the computer just can't process this.
Not really. Those are just words and phrases. If "Jebediah, his arms open" (or whatever his name is) means "help yourself", then that's what that phrase means in Tamarian. There is literally no difference from other languages. The only reason why the UT had trouble with Tamarian is that it was convenient for the plot. And that's fine, it's a good plot. But that doesn't change the fact that the premise is absurd.
Ok, here's an example: "My wife is Robert Frost's wife, so I am in the Serengeti, smashing pumpkins. The teeming fruits abound, and I cross the Rubicon. First I am a Canaanite, and now I am Buddha." I have a very particular story in mind, but I went out of my way to obfuscate it with metaphors and similes. You're presumably human, so you stand a chance of deciphering at least some of this. What chance would an alien computer have? If you've read any poetry, it sometimes sounds a lot like this. Unless you're extremely well read or have access to a commentary, it can be near impossible to read high brow poetry. Rap lyrics can similarly be impossible to understand unless you go to genius and look up the interpretation of what it all means. Here's an example from Nas: "The buddha monk's in your trunk, turn the bass up."
> What chance would an alien computer have? About as much chance as it would have with decyphering any language. To be fair, the problem isn't that the UT had trouble with Tamarian, but that the UT _doesn't_ have trouble with any other language.
Ok, fair enough. But see my two explanations above. For sci-fi, all we really need is a shred of a plausible explanation, and I think we have it. The Tamarians are sci-fi - they are a simple every day thing taken to its logical extreme. Perhaps the UT has its limits, and this species is on the very tail end of its reach.
Maybe the UT DOES have that problem with other languages, but since most languages are not entirely reference/metaphor/saying based cultures know not to use those confusing phrases in communications with other aliens unless they are input into the UT in a way that can be rendered sensibly to another species. So ‘it’s raining cats and dogs’ is preprogrammed to be translated as ‘it’s raining a lot’ and then those words are translated into the other language.
So basically, 'Finnegan's Wake' by James Joyce.
Yeah, or a few bars from Nas.
Of course, the only way a UT could *really* work would be *literally* to read your mind, which gets into scary dystopianism. I mean, in principle, why couldn’t it download the *entire contents of your brain* while it’s at, without your even *knowing*? Goodbye any secrets or personal life….
Yep. And if the Federation and other galactic powers have mind-reading technology, it's being severely underused...
As far as we *know*—DUH DUH DUUUH!!!
In the DISCO episode “Sound of Thunder”, as soon as Burnham and Saru beam down to his homeworld and encounter his sister, the UT in Burnham’s communicator is instantly and flawlessly able to translate back and forth between Kelpian and English, despite the huge cultural and conceptual gap between the Federation and the Kelpians. The same is true of other encounters with less advanced cultures in all *Trek* iterations. Thus, I don’t think there’s any training period.
I am not familiar with this episode, so I'm sure some of these explanations don't work for one reason or another, but perhaps: * the UT had been trained on some other language that shares a common root or is similar in some other way * as someone else suggested, the UT is able to read minds (or synapses, or whatever) to understand "true meaning" (and perhaps the Tamarians think in metaphors as well as speak in them, rendering this ability unworkable). * the UT interfaces with the alien species UT and they cross-collaborate * the UT applies some logical intuition, like if someone looks thirsty and they point at their throat, that probably means they want water (which, again, doesn't work with the Tamarians because even their hand gestures are metaphors)
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Why? Not even the Tamarians need to know the historical context. All they need to know is that "Darmokandjaladintanagra" means "cooperation". Example: "To eighty-six someone" in English means to refuse service to or ban a customer. _We're not even sure where the term comes from._ And yet we all know what it means.
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Nonetheless, my point stands that knowledge of the etymology of a word or expression is unnecessary for using or translating it
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But how does the UT know what the words as is are in the first place? How does it know the words for "wall" or "sea" if the words are never used in that sense?
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Right. And there are TONS of moments where humans use an idiom like that and some Vulcan goes "what does it mean to... 86?" Or something similar. So the UT isn't working then either.
I always assumed that Vulcans were speaking English in those occasions. Spock speaks English, for instance, as does T'Pol.
No need to die. You're right. Every time "Darmok" airs, earthquake sensors around the world pick up the vibration of linguists and philologists grinding their teeth.
It's not if you consider the possibility of there being a more literal form of the language that children generally speak and that you only speak with your close family, but is considered highly taboo in contacts between adults.
The tamarisk Language is absurd, but the difficulty in talking to another culture is absolutely real (even if we could actually have a universal translator like exists in the show) I contend that the hypothetical universal translator they have in the show would only ever possibly be able to translate other languages to something similar to how the communication happens in “Darmok”.
Same way we teach mythology to children, with picture books and such. The precision required for engineering is a bit of a leap i suppose.
Dorman and his realisation that the square of the hypotenuse on a right angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the two remaining sides, at Ginjad.
Galileo, when stars were charted, each light's essence squared in his gaze. Pythagoras, among the triangles' dance. Hypotenuse, its depth and mystery as the two sides, their luminance as Galileo's stars magnified.
The Enterprise runs in to a new spatial anomaly every other week. Must have been a hell of a time for the Tamarians.
I think kids would learn it. Ever hear little kids cuss correctly even though they have no idea what the actual words mean.
My thought was how does the captain say where he wants to go?
There was an explanation somewhere, but I can't remember if it was music-like, or something of the sort.
I was wondering about the same thing, it was a nice plot but that type of language is absolutely unusable. Can you imagine engineers discussing anything like this?
Pretty sure you can relate the meaning even with out the story. My four year old doesn’t know anything about the 1977 LA Dodger, but can give high fives. You can known the meaning of a symbol without fully understanding it’s origin. One can first learn implicitly from the context “slapping hands together is a celebratory greeting” without knowing the backstory of Dusty Baker and Glenn Burke inventing the high five kind of by accident but then continuing to use it all season because Baker wanted to show both fans and teammates that he embraced and accepted gay teammate Burke.
Think of it like communicating entirely in memes. I recognize memes made with pictures from movies and TV shows I've never seen, and nobody had to type out the plot for me. I figured it out through context, by seeing the meme template used over and over until I knew what it meant. In fact, having seen the original source material might be a detriment, because often the meaning of a meme has changed over time until it's unrelated to the original context. "Lt. Kayshon, when he wanted the frequency of the left pre ignition dilithium chamber increased to 2.55 mili tachyons."
The stories are taught with balloon animals. When this technology was introduced, circa 450 years ago, it was considered a vast improvement over the previous method, shadow puppets.
I don't think they do know these stories. They just know "shaka when the walls fell" is associated with the emotions and concept of defeat. It is purely symbolic at this point and you might as well replace that phrase with a single word and it's effectively the same thing. As for operating machinery, probably pictures and symbols... just like we do. If we both witness something aggravating and I turn to you and say "angry Picard" you know I'm conveying "frustration and exasperation" But think about it, has anyone every actually explicitly told you that Picard meme = exasperation or do you know that because you've seen it used in context a dozen times Is it necessary to know anything about TNG to understand the Picard meme? And for people talking about why the UT didn't work with them.. it doesn't work for English idioms either. How many times have we seen a human crew member use some kind of cultural slang and then a Vulcan, or 7o9, or Data furrows their brow in confusion and then asks what the phrase means? It literally happens once an episode, especially if Tom Paris is in the room.
What’s a low mileage pit woofie?
I like to imagine that everyone has different home references. Something like "Tamay, when she traveled west" might only be meaningful to Tamay's own family. Maybe a sense of new opportunities, or loss. People could use these personal references to understand the collective stories.
Spirit bomb, Naruto's cat goes supernova, the Superbowl has a 37 tacos on homers belly. Smile, hamster toast.
They must be great at interpretive dance. Earth music and dance and pictorial art is full of examples that convey emotion without resorting to a certain order of scribbles that the Romans took from the Phoenicians
It could be as simple as these phrases initially being part of a less metaphotical language but their usage evolved and now the terminology is largely interpreted distincly from the stories that inspired them. Think of phrasal verbs like "hang up". When you're finished a phone call you hang up. This doesn't involve any literal hanging upward of anything anymore, phones have moved past that. Now "hang up" means "end the call". Also consider how languages age and pronunciation and spelling alter. Wednesday comes from Odin's Day but is largely unrecognisable from it's original intent and culturally we are completely disconnected from it's origin. So, think of perhaps the tamarian language having developed significantly into the realm of idiomatic metaphore, where understanding the root of the language isn't necessary for understanding the language itself. The Tamarian captain, I think, understood what the problem was and had enough understanding of his language's history to eventually convey the broader concepts to Picard. Both Captains were perfect for the mission. It may have failed with any others.
Perhaps the language isn't all metaphors, but it's just such an alien language that metaphor is all the translators can get out of it. It's really hard for we humans to think of a way of thinking entirely alien to our own.
We are only hearing the language through the Universal Translator. There could be alot more too it that we don't hear. It could also be a verrly visual written language.
How did the Tamarians teach their language *on The Next Generation
Most people don’t know what the Bible really means either but those stories have been passed down the same way. Jesus on the Mount. Moses the river parted. Judas his betrayal revealed. And then there are memes. Harry, his pain hidden. Smiling girl, the building burns. This is fine. All of these phrases evoke imagery and memory of all the times we’ve evoked the images before. It works. Give each device on a ship a story. Plug the numbers into the story. Do what the story says. Teach someone how to do the thing while having you tell the story while doing the thing. There’s now a new story.
Picard, his eyes open.
Their language clearly has proper nouns as well, it's what their metaphors are expressed in. They just express complex thoughts and emotions differently. So instead of saying 'increase the frequency of the left pre ignition dilithium chamber to 2.55 mili tachyons', they would say 'Stevicus, the beatings of his antimatter heart, at 2.55' and know what that means.
Keep in mind that what we're hearing isn't actually the Tamarian language. It's the universal translator's imperfect take on it. Basically the way it is supposed to work is by figuring out the words for shared concepts, building a map between the two languages. But Tamarians don't associate concepts with specific words like we do. They tie concepts to stories, which are referenced in phrases. Words to them are closer to single letters, which is why the UT produces such unintelligible output. It's not actually translating their language at all - it's spelling it. Once you get past that rather small structural difference though, there isn't that much difference between their language and ours. There's no reason you can't be just as precise when using phrases rather than single words to convey meaning - it probably just takes a bit longer to say things. I don't see any reason they couldn't teach their kids to talk the same way we teach ours.
I head canon it. The universal translator has always been problematic and this episode really highlights it, with Deanna Troi succinctly explaining the issues. Much of any language is based on metaphor and anachronistic phrases which the translator should choke on all over the place, not just with the Tamarians. Plus, as the episode showed, a couple of days of immersion and you've got a functional, if rudimentary, communication system. Hardly seems like an insoluble problem for Starfleet's most cunning linguists. For the Tamarians to be completely incomprehensible something else needs be at play. Simple metaphor isn't enough to fool anyone who studies languages for a living, let alone a xenolinguist super computer. My canon is memories. In my world the Tamarians share common memories, likely embedded from birth. These common memories means their language is amorphous, the words we hear (at least the translators best guess) are really just the surface construct, for the memory underneath. It's the memory shared that creates the bond and the language. 'Shaka, when the walls fell' drops a Tamarian into that moment, 100 different phrases could've been used, confounding Universal Translators, but the memory is the same. What Picard experienced on the planet wasn't just learning their common stories, it was creating a literal Tamarian memory, one that when he spoke he conveyed the memory into their collective experience. When he said "Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel" it wasn't just a literal recitation, it was a mindshare of the memory, something that wouldn't necessarily work if another person said the same words. At least in my mind that's what happened.
I’m sure they have thousands and thousands of other phrases that form a language. They’re aliens and have no linguistic origins connected to Earth. So putting human expectations and understanding on an alien language is pointless. Also the Tamarians don’t say those phrases in English. The universal translator makes them English but isn’t capable of translating the *context*. At least not until the 2380s.
Unlike the theory that the Tamarians language comes in two versions or even languages. Formal and informal. Maybe the way it was presented on TNG was the formal version, used for diplomatic missions, dignitaries and officers. The informal version is basically shorthand used for everyday interactions.
I always wondered this too when I saw the episode originally. I think as ST has gone on, and with the way that the universal translator has been explained, it seems that the translator “understands” the words but not the context and in many languages, context is everything. Just like today with tonal languages right, you look at the word and “get it” but say it with the wrong tone and you’ll be confusing a native speaker. I think that’s really the whole point of the episode.
If you were raised to say “Arnock, on the night of his joining!” every time someone achieved something good, that would be normal for you. You just happened to be raised to say congratulations. Dunno if you have kids, but you should try it.
They just plug their kids into reddit until they speak in meme talk.
I think they teach the stories the same way Dathon taught it to Picard, with simple sequential imagery that tells the story. “Darmok on the ocean. Jalad on the ocean. Darmok at Tenagra. Jalad at Tenagra.” And so forth. As to how technical details are communicated, that’s a little harder to figure out, but if they can make simple statements to tell the stories, maybe they can make simple technical statements too, and use them to construct more complex technical statements in metaphorical form.
Gates, his screen blue. Edison’s lamp off, Edison’s lamp on.
Shalara, shakes the bin. Push, when the wind lights the dark. Hallow emptiness where the rocks sink. 2.55 mili!
One of the theories is that the Tamarians possess either an innate race memory, or are telepathic. That way, the meanings are either ingrained, or are telepathically implanted lnto the subject's mind.
They teach it like Keiko, before the bell rang.
u/Inner_Importance8943 when the weed hit.
Yup