The Problem with Universal Translators

("Sahara" is Arabic for "desert". "Gobi" is Mongolian for "desert", and "Kalahari" is Tswana for "desert")
— foone🏳️‍⚧️ (@Foone) July 19, 2018

I know a guy from the Gambia, which is a small country surrounded on three sides by Senegal. The Gambia consists of both sides of the Gambia River down to the Atlantic Ocean. I asked him what "Gambia" means. He said, "River." I couldn't help but laugh. @Foone once mused about these confounding names that just happen when translated into other languages as they would apply to a potential universal translator, the kind they use in the Star Trek Universe. Aliens would think us mad.

"Here we are in Chad, looking upon the mighty Lake Chad!"
"Ahh yes, the land of Lake, bordering the Lake Lake. Another fine human name. "
— foone🏳️‍⚧️ (@Foone) July 19, 2018

Thankfully, Bredon Hill in Worcestershire is actually a hill, since it'd be just silly to name anything other than a hill "Hill Hill Hill". pic.twitter.com/6qX8ppAutt
— foone🏳️‍⚧️ (@Foone) July 19, 2018

These are called tautological place names, and Wikipedia has a list of them. It's not exhaustive, because the Gambia is not included. There's a lot more to the discussion in the Twitter thread, much of it laugh-inducing. -via Geeks Are Sexy

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What bugged me about the universal translator was that it somehow also retroactively made every speaker's mouth move to match the receiver's language.

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There's also the fact that in shows like Star Trek people can talk in those other languages when they want (eg: say something in Klingon). So can the translator tell if you want it to translate it? Then every time someone doesn't want to admit something it should turn up in their native language? Or swears.. etc... very "plot convenient" functioning. Magic