Editing Universal translator (section)

==General==
As a rule, a universal translator is instantaneous, but if that language has never been recorded, there is sometimes a time delay until the translator can properly work out a translation, as is true of ''[[Star Trek]]''. The operation of these translators is often explained as using some form of telepathy by reading the brain patterns of the speaker(s) to determine what they are saying; some writers seek greater plausibility by instead having computer translation that requires collecting a database of the new language, often by listening to radio transmissions.

The existence of a universal translator tends to raise questions from a logical perspective, such as:
* The continued functioning of the translator even when no device is evident;
* Multiple speakers hear speech in one and only one language (so for example, for a [[Spanish language|Spanish]] speaker and a [[German language|German]] speaker listening to an [[Italian language|Italian]] speaker the Spanish speaker would only hear Spanish and neither the original Italian nor the translated German, while the German speaker would not hear any Spanish nor Italian but only German);
* Characters' mouths move in sync with the translated words and not the original language;
* The ability for the translator to function in real-time even for languages with different word order (such as a phrase ''the horse standing in front of the barn'' would end up in [[Japanese language|Japanese]] as 納屋の前に立っている馬, lit. ''barn-in-front-at-standing-horse''; however, there is no delay for the Japanese listener even when the English speaker has yet to mention the barn).

Nonetheless, it removes the need for cumbersome and potentially extensive subtitles, and it eliminates the rather unlikely supposition that every other race in the galaxy has gone to the trouble of learning English.