Talk:Federation Standard

Hmm.. interesting... I had always assumed that Federation Standard was just a codified pidgin of various languages and that what was seen on television or in books had to be translated for our benefit. I had not heard of linguacode before (or did and forgot about it). It sounds like linguacode is based on multiple languages and it designed to be a language that all species can speak, or at least wrap their minds around its grammar structure. Is this correct? Just trying to make sure I understand the concepts correctly, and not quite sure if Talk pages are intended for this sort of thing.. : ) --RogueGypsy47 10:45, 2 August 2006 (CDT)

Where else would we talk about this? This is the perfect place. Every RPG I've played (Star Trek-wise) assumes that the language spoken throughout the Federation is a common language. We'd be pretty arrogant to think that a) English took over as the only language on Earth, and everybody spoke it, and b) then it took over the entire Federation, hundreds of species, billions of beings, and they all thought it was fine. RIGHT! We watch a Television show in our native language so we can understand it. That doesn't necessarily transfer to a "realistic" Trek universe. So the answer is to have a common language, one that each species can learn, but doesn't make their native tongue obsolete. The question is never brought up in the shows, 'cos they use the Universal Translators in their communicators, and everyone hears what they need to. But to be "realistic", there should be a common, non-English, Federation language. Standard is a pretty boring name, but kind of accurate. Now, the write up is "blah" but I tried to make it slightly technically plausible. They talked about linguacode on ENT, and it made sense that it could be part of a "universal standard" language, so I through that in. -Varaan 15:31, 2 August 2006 (CDT)

Mmm.. *nods* Yeah, I do like the effort put into making it slightly more plausible. On another note, I've always wondered about aliens that talk in Star Trek. Not the actors, no.. They have to talk English or what-have-you, but the actual aliens using a Universal Translater... I mean, with a translator, you would be hearing the person's native language, plus one that you can understand, but it makes diplomatic sense for some aliens to just speak another language. Thus, most people in Starfleet actually speak Standard (as it's a requirement for attending the Academy, and likely for enlisted folks, too) to each other and don't need their universal translators (UT). One imagines that most aliens who have lots of contact with other species do the same thing, as well, just speaking a common language.

My question, then, focusses a little around one DS9 episode where Bashir is meeting with a number of other, similarly intelligent, people. Jack watches a recording playback and has it switch to "native language mode", in which Weyoun suddenly starts talking in Vorta where he had been speaking Federation Standard before (obviously translated for our purposes, at least). So, if the UT functions like I think it does (two streams of words, and the listener only focuses on one of them), then Jack should have been able to just listen to the recording to hear the Vorta language stream just fine. On a similar note, do the Star Trek TV shows just eliminate the native language stream from a UT conversation to make it easier on us viewers? This seems the most obvious explanantion... *kinda rambles a little* I think that I'm trying to figure out what my character should really be hearing when listening to somebody talk via UT, as it might make a bit of a difference here and there... --RogueGypsy47 17:48, 2 August 2006 (CDT)

Your "television removes the native track" analogy would seem perfect. Star Trek tv has it wrong. A perfect example of what you SHOULD be hearing would be if you watched the David Lynch version of Dune (from 1984). Remember the scenes where the spacing guild comes to talk to the Emperor? And the guys in the black suits use teh old fashioned microphone-thingie to translate, but you hear BOTH tracks (their native AND the translated)? THAT is what it SHOULD be like in Star Trek. The UT couldn't absorb all the sound waves of the native language. Plus...why don't their lips move different (like kung-fu movies) if they're talking a different language? -Varaan 18:39, 2 August 2006 (CDT)