A translated utopia: Embodied communication, media ideologies, and Star Trek's Universal Translator

Abstract

This paper uses Star Trek's “Universal Translator” (UT) as a point of departure for considering the imagined future of mediated linguistic interactions and of contact across difference. Although such a technology does not exist, taking its potentialities seriously as folkloric devices allows for an exploration of ideologies relating to translation and mediated communication. The UT represents the hypothetical ultimate achievement of a Euro-Western ideal of easy and clear interaction, in which direct brain-to-brain contact is possible and speaker intent can be manifested clearly and reliably to a listener, regardless of language differences. A mind–body duality is inherent to this possibility, and by rendering the translator/interpreter in a disembodied, mostly invisible form, the UT imagines the irrelevance of the body to the communicative process. Within both the narrative itself and fan responses to the UT, however, attempts to think about how it would have to work bring about contradictions, and in particular, the consistent resurgence of embodiment as a central semiotic component of communication. Using the mythical UT, I examine the ideological implications that an imagined techno-utopian future has for contemporary understandings of language and the body, including in themes of gender, race, modality, and labor.