Translator Microbes - Television Tropes & Idioms

alt title(s): Babel Fish

A special kind of Applied Phlebotinum that makes the characters in space travel shows all speak the same language. Must also be used when shows go to other countries and, strangely, everyone there is speaking unaccented English. A fascinating side effect is that not only does the listener hear the words in English, but the speakers' lips move to form the corresponding phonemes.

This is distinct from the phenomenon of alien/foreign characters appearing to speak English to each other when no English-speaking characters are around; see Translation Convention.

We must, of course, assume that said microbes work either by imparting the ability to speak a common language (in which case, the characters are using Translator Microbes, but the audience is really experiencing the Translation Convention) or that the microbes substantially alter the listener's perceptions, as otherwise, they would appear to be dubbed over like in a foreign film rather than merely speaking English. (A good example of this, sans aliens, occurs near the start of the 1980s Dune movie.) That said, given how closely lip movements will appear to match the words for a film which is dubbed very well, it is not inconceivable that a translation done by super-advanced science might be so good as to make the discontinuity between lip movements and voice difficult to notice. Also don't forget that your brain lies to you all the time - you are seeing what you are expecting to see, so when you aren't really concentrating on watching the lips moving, you probably won't notice, especially if the microbes suppressed your visual recognition in that way. Not that I have it backed up with serious research though (it works on my friends :)). Of course, there is a bit of Willing Suspension of Disbelief at work here, since it would be ridiculously hard from a production standpoint to film english-speaking actors and have them move their lips in a fake language, just to dub the same actors' voices in english at the end anyway.

This trope not only predates television, it predates most literature. One of the earliest known instances of it can be found in True History by Lucian of Samosata. Written in the 2nd century AD, this story includes adventures in outer space, where everybody speaks Greek (of course). An even earlier example is The Gift of Tongues given to the Apostles at Pentecost in The Acts of the Apostles. After the Holy Spirit comes to them, they address a large crowd drawn from many different nations, and everybody hears them speaking his own language. The members of the crowd are astonished that the people doing this are all Gallileans (normally assumed to be uneducated rustics).

Almost all Trapped In Another World stories will postulate that Translator Microbes are part of the magical nature of this other world. No justification is required or expected, although it's often good to have some kind of Hand Wave to point out that it's not "realistic."

A well-done page on this is here

Translator Microbes have a tendency to break down when faced with alien cuss words. It is rare for them to state that their transport is overloaded with Anguilliformes.

See also Aliens Speaking English. Compare Bilingual Dialogue. See also Polyglot, when a character can do this by training or super power.

Examples

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Anime and Manga

Comic Books & Strips

Film

In the movie The Last Starfighter, one of the first things that happens to the hero once he arrives at the Starfighter base is a small disk attached to his lapel that translates brain waves so he hears perfect English, even though that's what not being actually spoken.
Star Wars averts this in having C-3PO, a protocol droid fluent in over 6 million forms of communication, who interprets for the characters (especially for Jabba the Hutt in Return of the Jedi and for the main characters so they can speak with the Ewoks).
- Interestingly, in one re-release, Jabba's dialog in ROTJ was given subtitles too. It was eventually realized that this made C-3PO entirely superfluous, and it was dropped in later releases.
  - The difference of phrasing between the vicious gangster and the meek protocol droid is amusing, though. Sort of like Lost In Translation.
- Also most characters are bilingual or trilingual and able to understand each other, the reason that many speak their native language is that they are unable to speak galactic Basic. See Bilingual Dialogue.
Subverted in Star Trek VI where the crew of the Enterprise, trying to get past Klingon border guards in order to rescue Kirk and McCoy, don't use the universal translator because the Klingons would somehow be able to tell. The fact that the Klingons didn't notice the really slow and rough translations from Uhura as she thumbed her way through an English-Klingon dictionary must mean that the universal translator is pretty awful.
- Or that the Klingons manning the outpost were indeed VERY drunk.
  - Heh. Or the Klingons thought the crew was drunk.
  Uhura: "We art thy freighter... Ursva. Six weeks out of... Kronos... We art delivering food... things and... supplies to Rura Penthe..."
  - This troper votes for "All of the above".
  - The novelization reveals that the border guards actually let the Enterprise through out of pity, believing that the Ursva's captain was simply a particularly inept smuggler.
Similar to Star Wars, District 9 has aliens speaking their own language and humans speaking English, but both fully able to understand and communicate with one another.

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Literature

The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy uses the Babel Fish, though in this case the ridiculous nature of the translation device (inserted in the ear) probably means its use is satirical — like most things in H2G2. (See 'REAL LIFE' for the website of the same name.) The fish itself, of course, is named after the biblical Tower Of Babel myth.
- Allow This troper to explain: The babel fish, as it is known, Subsists entirely on sound waves. A side effect is that these sound waves are converted into brain waves, which are excreted by the fish, into your brain.
In The Dresden Files, a demon trying to tempt Harry into losing his soul provides translation as one of several favors it does for Harry. He knows he shouldn't keep relying on it, but...
The Pendragon Adventure begins with Bilingual Dialogue - Uncle Press and a Denduron native communicate while understanding each other perfectly. Once Bobby's Traveler nature kicks in, he gains the ability to read and understand the languages of all the other Territories. Presumably, it applies to acolytes too, since Mark and Courtney get messages from Spader, Aja and others that are somehow in English. Possibly they are translated by the rings used to send the messages between territories, given that when acolytes use them they are addressed to a specific person, not a territory in general. For some reason though, some languages seem like they must be the same as English. For example, in "The Pilgrims of Rayne," some people think a sign says "Rubity" when really it was worn down and originally said Rubic City. Since proper nouns presumably have no translation, and Rubic City is a combination of a proper noun and a common, translatable noun, this would only make sense in English.
In Animorphs, all Andalites in the military have translator chips implanted in their brains that can translate any language after a brief exposure to it. In addition, their "thought speak" can be understand by any sentient being, because it communicates concepts in addition to specific words.
- The ridiculously convenient nature of thought-speak is eventually [[Justified]] by a backstory novel where we learn the Ellimist took his extremely high-tech "communications system" with him when he took the form of a prehistoric Andalite; presumably the genes or literal Translator Microbes or whatever he was using got passed on to his descendants.
In Timeline, the time travelers had earpieces that translated for them. The problem was that only one of them actually knew how to talk in period and he was pretty shaky at it (he was a history buff/archeologist) so for the most part they could understand (reasonably, the translators weren't perfect) but not speak without sounding crazy.
Subverted in the Empire Of Man series. Although the majority of the translation is provided by toots (computers implanted in the user's brain), the toot still needs to have something with one or two degrees of relation to the language in use before it can start trying to translate. And even then, things aren't smooth - they find out in March To the Stars that the original language sample they've been working from all along has been stratigically edited to make all mentions of the locals' new religious habits incredibly euphemistic. Since the locals are now ritualistic cannibals and they're asking for Prince Roger's girlfriend as a sacrifice, Prince Roger is, understandably, Not Pleased to find this out. It doesn't end well for the locals. Additionally, since the native Mardukans lack toots entirely, they have to learn all languages and dialects the hard way.
The wizards in the Young Wizards series can use the Speech to make themselves understood by all beings (non-wizard listeners usually perceive it as being in their native tongue) and can understand every language. It's so effective that wizards can all speak to animals.
In Gregory Frost's novel Shadowbridge, the world is filled with incredibly long bridges, divided into spans. Each span has its own language, but visitors will magically find themselves fluent in it a few minutes after entering.
The Yuuzhan Vong from the Star Wars Expanded Universe had a Translator Worm as part of their biotechnology. The tyzowyrms, small worms who could be inserted in the ear to understand foreign languages. Somehow, it also allows them to speak unaccented Basic.
Heavily subverted in the Sector General series by James White. Translator packs are Walkman-sized devices that must be body-worn (typically on a lanyard around whatever anatomical landmark corresponds to the neck), only work for known languages, and can't translate vocal inflections, nonverbal communication, context cues or (amusingly) foul language. Basically, they're dumb terminals running the hospital mainframe's translation program, which isn't a whole lot better than a modern Web translator - and when the mainframe crashes, as in the Etlan "police action" (read: minor war) of Star Surgeon, chaos results.
John DeChancie's Castle Perilous is wrapped in a translator spell to serve its numerous interdimensional "guests".
The Shakugan no Shana novels mention an Unrestricted Spell that performs this task; presumably, everyone is just using that all the time.
Subverted in the Left Behind series. Though the Antagonist is the Anti-Christ and has the power of mass-hypnosis, he still speaks nearly every major language and will give speeches in all of them. Consecutively.
- Played straight with the Christian characters when preaching, though, in that the Holy Spirit makes it so that everyone hears the sermons in their own languages.
Averted in the My Teacher Is An Alien book series. The aliens have a universal translator that is implanted into the brain. Every species speaks its native language, and an individual hears the alien language with their ears, but the translator makes them aware of what it means. This implant is also capable of translating non-verbal communication as well, as some of the species don't have vocal cords. This trope is also applied directly, in that the aliens who are sent to Earth as teachers have a second implant that causes them to speak English.
Crowned Kreg series by Olga Larionova are Darker And Edgier Space Opera, so protagonists learned language of star-traveling Human Aliens via memory-writing device and used it normally in first book, but later (when frantic planet-hopping started) team laid their hands on magical translators. Those worked with any sentient creature using any form of spoken language, but frequently translated speech as strange or broken dialect and sometimes (on more unusual subject) as incomprehensibly weird puzzle, forcing user to ask partner in conversation to explain the same in other words and then try to put it all together.
Make Way For Dragons. The hero is one of the few people on Earth who can do magic (that's why he met the dragons). Despite his ever-increasing talents, when he finds he can talk to dogs (a dog), his other non-human friends just hear barking. Nobody converts to vegetarinism on the spot.
- It would be pretty strange to convert to vegetarianism on a dog's say-so.
Many Star Trek novels had the communication pins have translator devices.
In The Fantastic Flying Journey, Great-Uncle Perceval's grey powder provides the users with the ability to communicate fluently with animals.
Done in Tad Williams' Otherland novels, although justified in that computer technology has evolved to the point where simultaneous voice translation is a standard feature of the 'Net. There are cases where this fails due to linguistic nuances or a character speaking in a language that the translation software doesn't recognize.
Marion Zimmer Bradley disliked this trope and tried not to use it; when she resorted to it in Hunter of the Red Moon, the translator sometimes wouldn't convey cultural nuances or figures of speech.
Neal Asher's Polity novels include two different implants that serve this function: Augs (the standard brain implants wore by everyone) provided instantaneous translation of recognised languages, while the more advanced Gridlinks actually downloaded the language directly into the user's head, essentially making them native speakers of it.
In the third book of Piers Anthony's Xanth novels, the main character has the ability to talk to inanimate objects, and make them talk back. He uses this ability to make friends with a 8-foot tall giant spider, by telling a piece of spider's web to translate the spider's chittering for him. A spider web speaking spider-language of course makes perfect sense.
In the Dragonfall 5 sci-fi juveniles by Brian Earnshaw, there were twin alien animals that carried out this function. Played for laughs when they have a scientist travelling on the ship; he gets rather annoyed when they kept translating his Spock Speak, e.g. "Negative!" as "He means no."

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Live Action TV

Farscape is the Trope Namer, using Translator Microbes which are capable of translating seemingly everything except the cusswords.
- In several episodes, this is used as a plot point, as D'argo at one point starts a program in his ship that speaks in an archaic form of his own language. He can't understand it, and has to have the computer research the language and inject him with new microbes just so he can make out a few words.
- There are three known languages besides ancient Luxan that can't be translated by the microbes: Pilot, Diagnosan, and at least one dialect of Scarran.
Star Trek uses a Universal Translator. Amazingly, it works even if the Federation has never seen nor encountered the aliens or their language before (apparently, by analyzing its grammar and vocabulary).
- It was subverted in one Star Trek Deep Space Nine episode, where a new species comes to the station and their language is so different, that the universal translator has to spend about half of the episode to figure it out.
- Another DS9 episode had the Ferengi characters crash-landed in Earth's past and due to an unfortunately timed malfunction unable to speak or understand English for a brief period. Of course, their mouths still made English words.
- Likewise, Star Trek Enterprise had several instances where their more primitive universal translators needed some time and calibration (sometimes by a professional linguist) to figure out a new language.
- Also subverted in the Star Trek The Next Generation episode "Darmok", where despite translating the individual words, the resulting speech was still incomprehensible. The language was too steeped in cultural metaphors.
  - Which runs into crashing Fridge Logic - they have to have a conventional form of language that they just aren't using. Otherwise, how do they tell the stories those metaphors refer to?
- Fridge Logic kills most of Darmok, really. The universal translator shouldn't really care what the etymology of the word is — if their word for "betrayal" happens to be "That time Shumshok stabbed Drugah with his own knife at Rilford Falls", it'll just translate "That time Shumshok stabbed Drugah with his own knife at Rilford Falls" as "betrayal". That's how language works.
  - Never mind how a (limited) spacefaring race can rely on an entirely metaphorical language. Try explaining an internal combustion engine using nothing but metaphors from Greek mythology. Now consider that a warp core is probably a wee bit more complicated.
- Fridge Logic even makes you wonder about some of the main characters. If Chekov was having such a hard time saying vessels/wessels/victor/wictor, why didn't he just speak in his native Russian all the time? Unless of course he just grew up speaking broken English...
- Yes, an entire planet of Tropers.
- These examples suggest that, even if not everyone in the Trek Verse speaks English, most speak something similar to Earth languages.
- An episode of Star Trek Voyager hung a lampshade on the convention, by having a cryogenically frozen guy who could only speak Japanese marvel at how the Americans he was frozen with are somehow speaking Japanese, while the Americans equally marvel that he's speaking English. This turns into a brief debate about who's speaking what language, until Janeway interrupts to explain how the universal translator works.
- Another episode of Star Trek Voyager featured an alien whose language was so out-there (bordering on Black Speech) that the universal translator couldn't handle it, forcing Harry Kim to work on the problem for the better part of the episode.
- And it appeared before that in the Next Generation episode "The Ensigns of Command", with the Sheliak, a race of vaguely octopus-like non-humanoids whose minds are so alien that the the unversal translator couldn't find enough reference points to work with. The Sheliak had already learned English themselves in order to negotiate a border treaty with the Federation, but considered human language so imprecise that the treaty they insisted on stretches over several thousand pages.
- Oddly, it seems that the universal translator switches itself on and off when someone is speaking Klngon, probably to give the writers a chance to show off a real live alien langauge.
Doctor Who states that the TARDIS is psychic and provides translations directly into its passengers' minds.
- This bit of Lampshade Hanging was actually woven into the story in "The Christmas Invasion", where the TARDIS universal translator suffered a Phlebotinum Breakdown due to the Doctor being unconscious. The protagonists had to resort to a "mundane" translator to understand the Sycorax, and the moment they suddenly started speaking English, Rose realized that the Doctor had recovered.
- Subverted in "The Impossible Planet", where the language is so incredibly old that it's untranslatable.
- A plot point in "The Masque of Mandragora" when companion Sarah Jane is revealed to be Brain Washed when she questions why she understands medieval Italian.
- This is explored in "The Fires of Pompeii". When the Doctor tells his companion about the Translator Microbes effect, his companion wonders what happens when they speak what they think is Latin. It's implicitly translated back into ~~English~~ ~~Celtic~~ Welsh.
- The TARDIS also translates anything in a classical language (for example, the Classical Ood) into Latin.
- Two Words: German Daleks.
Stargate SG-1 uses Daniel Jackson, an expert linguist. The movie upon which the series is based hinges entirely on Jackson's lingusitic skills, both to interpret the "operating manual" of the Stargate and to communicate with the people on the other side. In the first season, his skills are used on and off to talk to natives, but this is quickly forgotten (since it would make for clumsy storytelling if everyone else had to use Jackson to translate). As the series progresses, his expertise is used primarily to access Imported Alien Phlebotinum, as the inhabitants of at least three galaxies appear to have mastered the language of the "Tau'ri" independently (see Aliens Speaking English).
- There are 4 languages in the galaxy once you leave earth: Wraith, Goa'ould, English and Ancient.
  - The Unas and Asgard also use their own languages (at least sometimes, at first).
  - The Wraith are telepathic, so at least they've got that excuse for knowing English. Why everyone else in the galaxy knows English is...questionable.
  - The Goa'ould have been taking earthling slaves for centuries, so presumably one of the hosts for the System Lords knows english and they figured it was the most pervasive language on the planet, the ancients lived on earth for a long time (not necessarily with english speaking people, but then they ascended and gained much of the knowledge of the universe and they did invent a translator.
One explanation (not shown on-screen, but offered by the show creators in one of the "behind the scenes" documentaries) is that the Stargates actually insert some sort of nanite into travelers that allows universal translation. You'd think that would show up on medical scans, though.
- The original released information for Stargate Atlantis months before the show premiered mentioned that translator devices were among the technology the team would find in Atlantis. This was never seen in the aired pilot, however.
Subverted in Babylon5. The aliens that speak English speak English. Some aliens describe English as the "Human trade language". Old aliens speak with thicker accents, because they learned English as adults. Also, all signs on the station are tri-lingual in English, Interlac (a standardised "common language" described as being less complex than most others) and Minbari.
An episode of the Australian 1980's science show Towards 2000 about translator software had a skit in which various international businessmen (all played by the host) tried to negotiate a deal but got stymied by the too-literal translation of what they were saying. Eventually the computer blows up when called upon to translate the most incomprehensible language in the world.

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Video Games

In The Longest Journey, April listens to somebody speaking Alltongue for a few minutes, and her brain appears to learn to "translate" the language, so she hears the speaker as if they were talking in plain English.
- This is a characteristic of Alltongue itself. Anyone who listens to it for a while will be able to understand it. Indeed, that's why it's called Alltongue.
Douglas Adams' Starship Titanic makes a passing reference to "autotranslators", but no further explanation is given. Possibly it has to do with the player's Personal Electronic Thing.
All the aliens in Super Robot Wars Original Generations use translation devices, though they are pointedly not perfect. When one guy tells the alien his name (which means 'Mysterious Gourment' in German) one of the alien commanders incredulously asks if his translator is broken. Also, in a fourth-wall breaking moment, another guy begins his normal battlespeech, which segues into an episode splash-screen. After this, the same alien commander just has to ask "... 'Chapter 30'? What the hell?"
- Arguably, that makes them working too perfectly. "Mysterious Gourmet" really is the English translation for that character's "name". The fact that it was able to translate a German phrase when they're most likely speaking Japanese or English shows that whoever made that really did their homework.
The video game Star Control 2: The Ur-Quan Masters is semi-famous for its amusing subversion of this trope, which also makes the race rather scary upon further viewing: the ship's computer is unable to fully translate the language of the Orz, leaving the player to puzzle out bizarre, vaguely Engrish-sounding sentences such as
"Hello to our *house*. Do you feel *better* yet?
If you are *campers* you will enjoy *the change*, but maybe not yet.
It is best if many happy Orz are coming to your *house*."
Averted in Descent: Freespace, where an alien race speaks in incomprehensible grunts overlapped by a speech synthetizer's monotone that is roughly half a second behind. In a game heavy with verisimilitude this turns out to work better than almost any kind of alien-spoken English would. Particularly since the obligatory Returning Destroyers (the Shivans) are the one inscrutable mystery race in scifi games to stay inscrutable, and never speak at all.
- The game's files on the Vasudan people teases the player by saying that these "incomprehensible grunts" are in fact a language more complex and sophisticated than any on Earth, to the point that even if humans could decipher individual words, it would probably still be incomprehensible.
- In Freespace 2, the NTF rebellion turned out to be a cover for the revival of a top-secret project to create a Shivan communications translator. Although the GTVA managed to obtain the technology just before the ship containing the prototype was destroyed, we never get to know what happened to the technology or the rogue Admiral who went on-board the Shivan transport. With the game's publisher bankrupt, and the space-sim genre practically dead, we never will know.
- Parodied in the Freespace 2 joke campaign Deus Ex Machina. As an NTF pilot, you are able to witness the top-secret ETAK translator device in action for the first time. Unfortunately, the translator outputs everything in L337-sp34k. It turns out the Shivans thought Terrans and Vasudans communicated via "h07 Pl4s|\/|4" (hot plasma). Apparently when the Shivans first appeared, they witnessed the Terran-Vasudan war, and they thought Terrans and Vasudans firing hot balls of plasma at each other was the two species communicating - which explains (sort of) why the Shivans appeared to be hostile even if they "C4|\/|3 1|\| p34C3" (came in peace) all along. Neither the device's operator nor Alpha 1 are able to decipher the translated l337 text, and if the player failed to plot an escape path, the Shivans will resort to using the "known way of communication".
Subverted in Albion. The player character spends some time taught the locals' language while recovering from a shuttle crash by his more lucky and longer conscious companion.
In Little Big Adventure II, you eventually pick up a translator device that allows you to understand the aliens.
Mass Effect offers up two explanations. The first is that there is speak a galactic trade language, in order to make politics and commerce easier. It sounds like English, but that's purely Translation Convention, as at the end a Prothean hologram is played, only the player (who got exposed to two Prothean beacons) can understand it. We hear as perfect English, albeit with static, but your party acts like it's incomprehensible gibberish.
- The second explanation plays this trope straight. Most will speak the galactic trade language, but there are those who can't or simply choose not to. For them, there is this trope, detailed in the downloadable content and in the second book. Translation synthesizers translate most foreign languages into whatever language the user programs it to. It uses the extranet to pull in any new dialects, and can be in almost any form, from jewelery to PDAs. In the book it is shown to malfuction at times, as it was never built to translate multiple languages all at the same time, and if a an alien is injured and/or insane, the translator has trouble translator the garbled speech.
  - Note that the languages have to be decoded by linguists before the machines will work, it is NOT a universal translator like from Star Trek.
In Tales Of Eternia (aka Tales of Destiny 2 in the US), Meredy and the Celestians speak the Melnics language, which can be understood by the Inferians only by wearing "Orz Earrings"; these use some sort of psychic Technobabble to send the actual desired words into the recipient's brain, and require the users to be on similar "psychic wavelengths". Interestingly, Meredy (or the psychic equivalent of her voice) speaks in pidgin English for the entire game; whereas when the Inferians actually reach Celestia, all the other Celestians speak with no accent at all, and the requirement of being on the same "wavelength" is, ironically, waived. None of this is ever explained.
Semi-averted in the Half-Life games. While the friendly aliens speak English, the Vortigaunts speak a very formal, ritualized form of English, and although the G-Man speaks perfect dialectical English, the rhythms tend to be subtly... wrong. You even come across two Vorts speaking in their native language; they apologise for their rudeness and promise to speak English for your benefit from then on. ("Unless we wish to say unflattering things about you." "Just so.")
In Star Ocean, advanced species have universal Translator devices (that when necessary can double as EXPLOSIVES). They understand the people who aren't yet inducted to the Pangalactic Federation/Terran Alliance because they've documented and recorded them behind the scenes (read: from orbit). As such, they can speak to anyone (there are no unknown groups in the galaxy) except the Aldians, who are already space-capable and wholesomely unfriendly until their entire species is blown up in Star Ocean: Till the End of Time.
Conquest Frontier Wars mentions a translator to begin with but ignores it later. The Calareons are smart enough to not need one but the Mantis occupationally speak in the wrong order (partially justified due the fact English is in the wrong order compared to several other languages)
While riding the Conveyor Belt O Doom on his way to being turned into one of the bad guys, the player character of Quake IV gets injected in the head, and a monitor overhead which had been displaying incomprehensible gibberish turns into English. Similarly, after that the overhead announcements and threats of the TheVirus Strogg become garbled English.
In Halo: Combat Evolved, the Grunts' speech is translated, but the Elites are mostly unintelligible. In the second game, the Elites are finally heard in English due to advanced UNSC translators. The Covenant, however, are also heard speaking English to each other when there are no humans around, which is obviously Translation Convention.
In Space Quest I, ridiculously awful janitor Roger Wilco can't naturally understand anyone. However, early in the game he gets an item literally called the Strange Gizmo. Turning it on (which requires a bit of inventive thinking) allows him to understand any alien speech. In Space Quest 2, he still carries the same device, only this time, it's called the Dialect Translator and cannot be turned off. It's only useful once in that game, while Space Quest 1 requires it to be on for the entire game.
- In the EGA original version of SQ 1, it was always called the Dialect Translator. TURN DIAL
In Iji, the protagonist's nanofield allows understanding and speaking in the language of both alien species. It's also parodied with an item that messes up the conversation and speech.
Averted in Ratchet And Clank. Intelligent organic species share a language, but robots have their own (although many speak organic language) and lesser organisms have individual languages, such as the Tyrrhanoid language which consists largely of farts, gurgles and belches.