At least Dr Who (UK TV) explains it by saying the tardis translates and Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy it's the Babble fish. Sorry I don't watch Star Trek religeously, prefer Next Gen and Voyager, so maybe I missed the explanation.
2006-07-06 11:29:08 · 23 answers · asked by weanie_troosers 2 in Entertainment & Music ➔ Television
it's because it's TV and they can do anything they want. They were probably also too cheap to put in captioning to "translate" what the aliens would be saying
2006-07-06 11:32:56 · answer #1 · answered by Lily Iris 7 · 6⤊ 13⤋
Star Trek makes use of a device called the Universal Translator which is basically an advanced computer program that can quickly pick out phrases, syntax and other such useful things & then build a language translation to convert the speech to the listeners language. For all of the previously encountered races within the Star Trek Galaxy the translation algorythms are obviously already known.
Their are some episodes however where the Universal Translator struggles (at first at least) due to language formations that use different base roots etc... & so the device can sometimes take time to work out a newly encountered language as it requires enough material to work with to make the translations.
In the series Enterprise the universal translator isn't available in the advanced form seen in later series and so they have Hochie - a language expert who has to work out the translation protocalls for them.
2006-07-07 02:36:28 · answer #2 · answered by Crash 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
They dont, they have universal translators in thier communicator badges....havent you ever seen the episode of Voyager where Chakotay meets the "sky spirits" that influenced his ancestors, and he had taken off his uniform and couldnt communicate because he didnt have his communicator badge??... There have also been several other episodes where this kind of thing happens including the episode where they cant understand the ferengis. What I want to know is how they can hear what people are saying in another language and not understand them like when the klingons talk in english but then say something in klingon but it comes out as thier language.
2006-07-12 11:30:46 · answer #3 · answered by Kelly + Eternal Universal Energy 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Star Treks aliens speak with an American accent because of the Universal Translators... (In Undiscovered Country, the UT was taken away and so Kirk and McCoy couldn't understand the aliens)
For more information, see Enterprise... ;)
2006-07-06 19:03:50 · answer #4 · answered by Forlorn Hope 7 · 2⤊ 0⤋
In the original series of star trek it was never talked about. the aliens just spoke English because it was easier, each episode lasted about thirty minutes and most of it would have been spent trying to figure out how to talk to the other race.
it was addressed in later series and some of the films that everyone carries a universal translator that has been programmed with thousands of languages and has some artificial intelligence so it can work on translating new ones based on what it already knows.
The device translates any speech you hear into English and any you speak into the alien language.
the most series star trek series: Star Trek Enterprise introduces the universal translators inventor Hoshi Sato. a language expert who programs the translator with a dozen or so languages that she had to originally work out how to translate on her own.
2006-07-06 18:47:48 · answer #5 · answered by englishwitch2005 3 · 2⤊ 0⤋
The alien's do not actually speak english, the star trek crew use's a universal translator they wear as a badge to understand what the aliens are saying.
2006-07-06 18:37:21 · answer #6 · answered by michael o 2 · 2⤊ 0⤋
Probably the same way as the Heisenberg Compensator. That is a gadget that somehow deals with a physical law known as the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which renders transporters impossible. Someone on the show was asked how the Heisenberg Compensator worked. He said "very well".
2006-07-06 18:34:34 · answer #7 · answered by wild_eep 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
They have a device that translates the language so the aliens hear them in their language and Enterprise/Voyager hear them in English. I prefer Voyager. Captain Janeway was the best Captain of them all.
2006-07-07 04:11:05 · answer #8 · answered by MissBehave 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Yeah, they have a (poorly explained) universal translator... there was one episode where Quark and the other Ferengi get sent back to the Roswell Airforce base (I think) and the translator wouldn't work so they conveniently couldn't understand each other... It's REALLY sad I know this stuff
2006-07-06 18:48:30 · answer #9 · answered by snake_girl85 5 · 1⤊ 0⤋
I notice they mainly have American accents too, spooky isn't it, I suppose they couldn't get many foreign (to America) Actors in.
I always thought the computer did it automatically, I'm sure there was one alien that didn't speak English, but maybe that was a different Sci-Fi.
2006-07-06 19:06:03 · answer #10 · answered by Mummy of 2 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Actually everyone on the Enterprise is supplied with an instant brainwave interpreter device. To them it sounds English, whatever the original language.
2006-07-06 18:34:11 · answer #11 · answered by opossumd 4 · 1⤊ 0⤋