DNA Mad Scientist

[1812lives]

I bought the entire series (starburst edition) on eBay and haven't seen much of season 4 yet but decided to start from the begining again and loaned out season 4 to a friend.

Anyway I came to the DNA Mad Scientist episode and got to thinking. The mad scientist could find no record of Earth in order to send John home. In fact no one he comes accross has ever heard of humans or Earth. If there are no records of humans then how do the translator Microbes know how to interpret what John says? Is it that his language is similar enough to perhaps a some type of sabation language or other language that it's able to work. Much like there are a lot of related languages on Earth that are close enough to get the general drift. Or is it that the Translator Microbes sort of learn how to translate a new language by processing it till it finds a way to make sense of it?

[Jakester1042]

If you think about it, it is not so much how does Crichton know what everyone else is saying. The quandary is how does everyone else know what he is saying.

Let’s say the translator microbes know all of the languages of all of the species they have come into contract with. Let’s also say, that as part of the translation, they are really doing two tasks, they translates but they also learns how each species thinks and processes those thoughts into speech. The reason why I say they would probably have this capability is that they are in Crichton’s head, at the brain stem. They aren't hearing anything that Crichton is saying. They are processing what Crichton wishes to say.

When you talk, you are verbalizing what you are thinking in your head. The spoken language is really an imperfect medium for trying to share those thoughts with people around you. You think about it, and them formulate those thoughts into words that others can understand.

Now, have you ever wanted to tell someone something but couldn’t find the right words for it? And yet ... you knew exactly what you were thinking about - you just couldn’t put it in words.

This is where the thought and speech process breaks down. However, if the translator microbes understood both thoughts and the language, they would be able to translate things much more effectively, since they would know what the person was trying to say by the thoughts that they were thinking.

So you put these microbes into Crichton’s head, with a store of all the known languages and how those species think and how those species turn those thoughts into words. This would allow the microbes to cross reference both Crichton’s thoughts and the words he would use to put those thoughts into words, and compare this process against that of maybe a thousand other species. They would probably be able to quickly learn a cross-reference pattern and be able to translate what others were telling Crichton.

However, Crichton’s microbes have the advantage of being able to watch as his brain processes both thoughts and speech. They learn how he thinks. The microbes in D-Argo, Aeryn and the others, would be missing this vital piece of information. Their microbes would receive only a string of sounds in an unfamilar language with different emotional inflections and not have the deeper understanding of what he was thinking. They might be able to find a speech pattern in their data base that was similar, but in the end, they would have to learn by trial and error.

So Crichton would probably be able to understand them, but they probably wouldn’t be able to understand him until their microbes got up to speed.

Of course, there is the possibility that the microbes actually communicate with each other in some manner and what ever the one group learns, they all learn.

Maybe is better to leave this portion of the tech aspect alone and just take it for grant it that it works without trying to figure out how it works.

[1812lives]

Maybe is better to leave this portion of the tech aspect alone and just take it for grant it that it works without trying to figure out how it works.

Probably the best course of action. Just found it interesting though that having never encountered a "human" before yet still understanding the words he used. There were phrases they didn't get because they were either figures of speach, slang terms, or pop culture references that no one would understand and he has to either stop and explain or he decides that it's not worth it. Another way to look at it is that possibly the DNA mad scientist's records are incomplete and are merely the 12 million species he's actually encountered. Perhaps the translator microbes have encountered as many as 24 million species. I do agree though it's one of those things that we just accept that it works and move on.

[sny]

If there are no records of humans then how do the translator Microbes know how to interpret what John says?

To avoid spoiling you if you haven't seen Peacekeeper Wars, let's just say there's something of an explanation made there as to why Sebaceans and humans not only look similar, but are close enough that the translator microbes could cope.

Is it that his language is similar enough to perhaps a some type of sabation language or other language that it's able to work.

You're more or less on track with that theory. Though I also understood the microbes as working more by "mind reading" than by "hearing".

[dadon316]

but as (now a pro!!) sci-fi writer i knowyou have to let some things like that just happen and smile as the reader or watcher explains it to themelves - its fun!

[maul2]

Think about it this way. Would you rather hear a bunch of garbled mess for the entire series and read subtitles. I didn't think so.

Thats the main problem with most sci-fi. ow to meet aliens but still able to have them speak english. Thats where things like translator microbes and universal translators come in. Most of it you just have to go "It works" and leave it at that. most of the time you just drive yourself crazy, (I know I have...Several times) LOL. But you just have to take it at face value.