DS9 s4e11 "Homefront"
"And she shat on a turtle!"
this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2025
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Next: Bashir and Garak talking Polari.
Much less familiar with that dialect, though parts of it are reminiscent of the droog speak in A Clockwork Orange.
"A Clockwork Orange", the novel, was published in 1962.
Polari: the language of gay oppression
Fifty years on from the decriminalisation of homosexuality, Professor Paul Baker and comedian Barry Cryer OBE explain the history of Polari, the language of gay men who were, mostly, working in the entertainment industry.
I never knew "taking the Mick(ey)" came from Cockney rhyming slang!
I thought the Gary was your shitter, as in “Up the Gary”.
As an English-type person I've only ever heard Gary as slang for shitter (as in bumhole, not toilet) but since the guy in question turned out to be a pedophile it's probably best to avoid that one completely these days...
Credit for actually using rhyming slang correctly.
I can't count the number of times I see characters saying shit like "'Aving a bath" or "Gotta get back to the ol' trouble and strife." The whole fucking point is that you say the part that doesn't rhyme, while using the whole phrase as a mnemonic for the thing that it rhymes with. It's a code language designed for discussing crimes. It's not meant to be easily intelligible. If you're saying the rhyming part it becomes much too easy to work out.
I used to work with a brit who sometimes said "having a bubble" for "having a laugh".
Well done!
I still have tab open trying to teach myself enough cockney rhyming slang to do a "We're the Cockney Borg" meme.
Here's what I used
Oi, that's a Bob Hope resource right there China plate!
(Might need to work on my conjugation a bit, but that helps with the vocabulary lol)
You only say the first word. So china, not china plate.
Sometimes they go through several layers; arse is bottle and glass, bottle becomes Aristotle, which is shortened to Aris (which sounds kinda like arse anyway). Which gives you, "careful swee'art, 'e always goes fo' the Aris'."
"I lent 'im me finest tweed but never again. He tore up me 'Arris."
Wouldn't the universal translator translate slang? I could see it standing down if people were already speaking the aame language, but Quark is probably speaking a Ferengi language, so the translator would be translating it to words that match the intended meaning
Lol .... this made me think of a dystopian universal translator in the Terran Universe
Where the translator takes anything negative you say or any protestation or any disagreement and just translates it all into plain language in a normal volume voice like 'I respectfully disagree' ... even as you are screaming and shouting
Even as they are carrying you away into the Agony Booth ... the translator just keeps speaking over your screaming and shouting ... 'I respectfully disagree'
Leave it to the Terrans to build censorship right in.
The universal translator is powered entirely by plot and absurdity. Hence why everything Quark says comes out in English, but anything said in Klingon is left untranslated. As for slang, again a definite "maybe" based on what's established in Darmok.
Basically, don't think about it too hard, none of it makes sense.
I’ve long held that the untranslated words are either the result of those words having entered into common universal vernacular that they don’t need to be translated OR they don’t have an equivalent English translation that’s not cumbersome. Like “targ” doesn’t need to be translated because a targ is a targ. Either everyone knows what that is or it would be super awkward for everyone to hear “dog-like possum creature thing with huge outward teeth,” every time a Klingon says the word “targ”
It is definitely a nonsense machine.
However, I'd argue that the meme-language in Darmok is not the same as slang. Slang is functionally the same as regular language, with words having particular meanings. The whole point of Darmok is that their language doesn't work like that.
It could probably translate some slang, but this type is context-basef, like Tamarian. We could assume a Federation translator would know that context, but who knows what knowledge was lost in the 21st century?
I might be misremembering, but I think the universal translator operates on a basis of reading "brain wave" ✨vibes✨ so it is more about intended meaning than disambiguation of denoted meaning by context, which is why I think it would pick the right word to translate even if the listener isn't familiar with the contextual nuances... The listener is never familiar with those linguistic nuances.
For Darmok to work you kinda just have to accept that there's something fundamental about word-denotative meaning based language and allegorical meaning. Of course it falls apart if you think to hard about the specifics 😂
Universal translator spontaneously catches fire
The translator:
The computer .... just before the ship wide system malfunction destabilizes the warp core ...
Oh. Dogs. Sure, I like dags. I like caravans more.
Bonus meme, with as few pixels as I can possibly get away with!
Crammed in a few more for ya.
No way, I want the lowest possible resolution!
W-w-wait, not like that!?!?
"...shat on a turtle!"