star trek tamarian language

Shaka, When the Walls Fell

In one fascinating episode, Star Trek: The Next Generation traced the limits of human communication as we know it—and suggested a new, truer way of talking about the universe.

On stardate 45047.2, Jean-Luc Picard leads the crew of the Enterprise in pursuit of a transmission beacon from the El-Adrel system, where a Tamarian vessel has been broadcasting a mathematical signal for weeks. The aliens, also known as the Children of Tama, are an apparently peaceable and technologically advanced race with which the Federation nevertheless has failed to forge diplomatic relations. The obstacle, as Commander Data puts it: “Communication was not possible.”

Picard exudes optimism as his starship courses through subspace. “In my experience, communication is a matter of patience, imagination,” he beams to his senior staff. “I would like to believe that these are qualities which we have in sufficient measure.” But after hailing the alien ship upon arrival, contact with Children of Tama proves more difficult than Picard imagined:

DATHON, the Tamarian captain: Rai and Jiri at Lungha. Rai of Lowani. Lowani under two moons. Jiri of Umbaya. Umbaya of crossed roads. At Lungha. Lungha, her sky gray. (no response from Enterprise, looks at First Officer in frustration) (slowly, deliberately) Rai and Jiri. At Lungha.

In the Star Trek universe, a “universal translator” automatically interprets between any alien language instantly and fluently. Unlike today’s machine-translation methods, the universal translator requires no previous experience with another language in order to make sense of it. Such is the case with Tamarian, at least on the surface, as the Enterprise crew is able to comprehend the basic syntax and semantics of Tamarian utterances. “The Tamarian seems to be stating the proper names of individuals and locations,” offers Data, stating the obvious. But Picard quickly sums up the problem, “Yes, but what does it all mean?”

Picard’s reply to the Tamarians sounds especially staid to the viewer’s ears after having heard the aliens’ exotic prose: “Would you be prepared to consider the creation of a mutual nonaggression pact between our two peoples? Possibly leading to a trade agreement and cultural interchange. Does this sound like a reasonable course of action to you?” His questions cause the Tamarians as much befuddlement as their litany of names and places does the Federation crew. The Tamarian first officer offers the only honest reaction of the lot, a scornful scoff, but he is quickly silenced by his captain:

FIRST OFFICER (laughing): Kadir beneath Mo Moteh. DATHON: The river Temarc. The officers immediately stop their laughter—as if ordered to. DATHON (continuing; for emphasis): In winter. DATHON: Darmok.             The First Officer looks very concerned—objects. FIRST OFFICER: Darmok? Rai and Jiri at Lungha. DATHON (shrugs): Shaka. When the walls fell … FIRST OFFICER: Zima at Anzo. Zima and Bakor. DATHON (firm) Darkmok at Tanagra. FIRST OFFICER: Shaka! (indicating situation) Mirab, his sails unfurled. DATHON: Darmok.

At this point, the Tamarian ship transports its captain, Dathon, along with Picard down to the surface of El-Adrel IV. Dathon has brought along two Tamarian daggers; the bridge scene suggests they carry some ceremonial significance. The Enterprise attempts to retrieve Picard, but the Tamarians have already created a particle-scattering field in the planet’s ionosphere, making teleportation impossible.

On the surface, Dathon tosses one of the daggers to Picard, who misunderstands, thinking he’s being incited to fight. Meanwhile, First Officer Riker makes the same error up in orbit. He attempts to contact his Tamarian counterpart only to be reminded: “Darmok at Tanagra.” “Your action could be interpreted as an act of war,” enjoins Riker. His counterpart laments to his colleagues, “Kiteo, his eyes closed,” before responding to Riker, “Chenza, at court. The court of silence.” He closes the channel.

As night falls on the surface, Picard fails to make a fire while Dathon lounges comfortably around his roaring blaze. Dathon throws Picard a torch, incanting, “Temba.” After first misunderstanding that Temba might mean fire , Dathon clarifies, “Temba, his arms wide.” And Picard begins to fit the pieces together, “Temba is a person. His arms wide … because he’s … he’s holding them apart. In, in … generosity. In giving. In taking. Thank you.”

As morning breaks, Dathon rouses Picard. “Darmok! Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra,” he entreats, but Picard still doesn’t know what to make of it. An ominous roar is heard from afar, and Picard finally accepts the weapon Dathon had been offering earlier. Picard wants to run (Dathon interprets this gesture with a phrase we’ve already heard, “Mirab, with sails unfurled”) but Dathon shakes his head. “Shaka, when the walls fell.” Picard makes another tentative discovery, “Shaka. You said that before. When I was trying to build a fire. Is that a failure? An inability to do something?”

As the unseen creature nears, Dathon attempts to take control of the situation.

DATHON: Uzani, his army at Lashmir.
 PICARD: At Lashmir? Was it like this at Lashmir? A similar situation to the one we’re facing here? DATHON: Uzani, his army with fists open. PICARD: A strategy? With fists open? DATHON: His army, with fists closed. PICARD: With fists closed. An army, with fists open, to lure the enemy … with fists closed, to attack? That’s how you communicate, isn’t it? By citing example, by metaphor! (demonstrates that he understands) Uzani’s army, with fists open. DATHON: Sokath! His eyes uncovered!

The two proceed with this plan, but just as Picard is about to distract the monster so that Dathon can attack, the Enterprise executes an attempt to retrieve their captain, having found a way to disrupt the ionospheric interference temporarily. Absent Picard’s foil, the strategy fails and the creature pounces upon Dathon, badly injuring him. The transporter effort fails anyway, and Picard rematerializes on the planet’s surface. He runs to Dathon who struggles in pain, “Shaka,” he begins, and this time Picard completes the thought, “when the walls fell.”

While Riker and Laforge attempt to find a way to disrupt the Tamarian polarity coil responsible for the particle beam, Counselor Troi and Commander Data make some progress unpacking Tamarian communications:

RIKER: I’d prefer to find a peaceful solution. If we can talk our way out of this—so much the better. TROI: Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. RIKER: What have you found? TROI: The Tamarian ego structure does not seem to allow what we normally think of as self-identity. Their ability to abstract is highly unusual. They seem to communicate through narrative imagery—by reference to the individuals and places which appear in their mytho-historical accounts. TROI: It’s as if I were to say to you “Juliet. On her balcony.” BEVERLY: An image of romance. TROI: Exactly. Image is everything to the Tamarians.

As their conversation continues, Troi, Crusher, and Data observe that even with this new structural understanding, without a knowledge of the mythical origins of the figures that compose the Tamarian language they have little hope of understanding the sense of their speech. But on the planet’s surface, Picard has the good fortune of a firsthand account that fills in some of the blanks.

PICARD: Our situation is similar to theirs. I understand that. But I need to know more, you must tell me more, about Darmok and Jalad. Tell me, you used the words Temba, his arms wide when you gave me the knife and the fire. Could that mean give ?
 (makes arm motions) Temba ? His arms wide. Darmok. Give me more about Darmok. DATHON: Darmok. On the ocean. PICARD: Darmok on the ocean. A metaphor, for being alone, isolated. Darmok, on the ocean. DATHON: (cries out in pain)
 PICARD: Are you alright? DATHON: (waves him off) Kiazi’s children. Their faces wet. Ughhh. PICARD: Temba, his arms open. Give me more about Darmok on the ocean. DATHON: Tanagra, on the ocean. Darmok at Tanagra. PICARD: At Tanagra. A country? Tanagra on the ocean, an island! Temba, his arms wide. DATHON: Jalad on the ocean. Jalad at Tanagra. PICARD: Jalad at Tanagra. He went to the same island as Darmok. Darmok and Jalad, at Tanagra. DATHON: The beast at Tanagra.
 PICARD: The beast? There was a creature at Tanagra? Darmok and Jalad, the beast at Tanagra. They arrive separately, they struggled together against a common foe, the beast at Tanagra, Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra. DATHON: Darmok and Jalad on the ocean. PICARD: They left together. Darmok and Jalad on the ocean. DATHON: The ocean. (then, in pain as Picard comes closer) Zinda! His face black, his eyes red! (then, shooing Picard away) Kalimash, at Bahar. PICARD: You hoped that something like this would happen, didn’t you? You knew there was a dangerous creature on this planet and you knew, from the Tale of Darmok, that a danger shared, might sometimes bring two people together. Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra. You and me, here, at El-Adrel.

As Dathon succumbs to his injuries, Picard returns the favor by recounting the earthly tale of Gilgamesh and Enkidu, doing his best to frame their similar tale in Tamarian syntax, “Gilgamesh and Enkidu. At Uruk.” As Dathon breathes his last, the Enterprise crew finally retrieves Picard, although they had to attack the Tamarian ship to do so, which has retaliated in force. As red alert sounds, Picard enters the bridge and consummates his new linguistic expertise. It’s a scene no fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation will soon forget.

PICARD (as he moves): Hail the Tamarian vessel. WORF (touches controls): Aye, Captain. TAMARIAN FIRST OFFICER: Zinda! His face black. His eyes red— PICARD: —Temarc! The river Temarc. In winter. FIRST OFFICER: Darmok? PICARD: … and Jalad. At Tanagra. Darmok and Jalad on the ocean. FIRST OFFICER (to others, amazed): Sokath! His eyes open! PICARD (continuing): The beast of Tanagra. Uzani. His army. (shaking his head) Shaka, when the walls fell.             The aliens again face Picard. Picard takes the small             book—the Tamarian captain’s “diary”—and holds             it out in his hand.             The Tamarian First Officer glances at one of his             officers, who touches a console. The book is             immediately DEMATERIALIZED, MATERIALIZING next to the             alien First Officer. He picks it up, showing it to             Picard. FIRST OFFICER: Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel. FIRST OFFICER: Mirab. With sails unfurled.             Picard extends the Tamarian dagger toward the First             Officer, offering it back to him. PICARD: Temba. His arms open. FIRST OFFICER: Temba at rest. PICARD (almost to himself): Thank you …

Shaka, when the walls fell is a likeness of failure for the Children of Tama. It’s also not a bad alternative title for the “Darmok” episode, for the Federation never really grasps Tamarian communication, despite their declared success in making contact with the race and forging a path to future relations.

Picard calls it metaphor , and Troi calls it image . For the Federation crew, the Tamarians cite examples that guide their understanding of and approach to the various problems they encounter on a day-to-day basis: as Picard puts it, by citing “a situation similar to this one.” Science fiction often plays with alternate methods of linguistic understanding, and this is familiar territory: The alien is incomprehensible, but in a way that can be overcome through reason and technology.

But there’s a problem: Metaphor and image are not accurate descriptions of the Tamarian language’s logic. A metaphor takes one thing as a symbol for something else: Juliet’s balcony acts as a figure for romance, Darmok and Jalad as a figure for communion through shared struggle. Even though Troi means image as a synonym for metaphor when she says “Image is everything for the Tamarians,” she also implies vanity in Tamarian speech. From the perspective of her declarative speech, the Tamarians are putting on pretenses, covering over a fundamental thing with a decorative one.

The Federation’s desire to see Tamarian speech as a process of copying one form into another is a uniquely earthly one, even when sieved through Star Trek ’s historical futurism. As Troi and her crewmates see it, Tamarian verbalisms depict the world through images and figures, which distort their “real” referents. Troi and Picard can’t help but interpret Tamarian through their (and our) cultural obsession with mimicry: Metaphorical language operates not by signification, but as poetry, by transforming the real in a symbolic mirror.

But for the Tamarians, something far weirder is going on, precisely because their language is not a curiosity for them as it is for the Federation (and for us television viewers). Calling Tamarian language “metaphor” preserves our familiar denotative speech methods and sets the more curious Tamarian moves off against them. But if we take the show’s science-fictional aspirations seriously and to their logical conclusion, then the Children of Tama possess no method of denotative communication whatsoever. Their language simply prevents them from distinguishing between an object or event and what we would call its figurative representation.

Allegory might have been a better term for explaining Tamarian. While metaphor represents one subject as similar to another object, allegory replaces one with another entirely. Allegory’s veiled language is powerful, because allegories effectively freeze time, making a historical or fictional scenario immortal. Allegory is what makes it possible for us to continue to derive lessons from the Old and New Testaments, week after week, homily after homily.

The 20th-century literary critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin lamented this property of Baroque allegory in particular, suggesting that it swaps out historical myth for present-day concerns. As Benjamin puts it, “Evil as such exists only in allegory … and means something other than it is. It means in fact precisely the nonexistence of what it presents. The absolute vices, as exemplified by tyrants and intriguers are allegories. They are not real.” When we talk about evil in the allegorical sense—the serpent of the Garden of Eden, or Sauron’s eye in Mordor—we do so as a replacement for addressing the more ambiguous, palpable instances of evildoing in the present. For Benjamin, the allegorist rejects the world in order to embrace allegory, and in so doing it strips art of politics.

But the Tamarians’ version of allegory, if that’s indeed the right name for it, cuts both ways. On the one hand, it fetishizes myth in the manner of allegory, but on the other hand it musters that myth in the interest of serious sociopolitical action, as evidenced by Dathon’s willingness literally to die in the name of myth. So Benjamin’s concerns about the abandonment of the present don’t seem to apply to the Tamarian situation, offering further doubt that allegory is the best way to describe their communication process.

Despite the episode’s popularity, the Star Trek fan community (being a science-fiction fan community, after all) has issued numerous gripes about “Darmok.” The most interesting of these is a general disbelief in the technological prowess of the Tamarians. How could a race that thinks in allegory ever accomplish faster-than-light space travel? Just imagine the day-to-day work of designing, constructing, or maintaining a complicated machine like a starship. The Tamarians seem to be incapable of saying something like, “Hey Bob, can you hand me the three-quarter-inch socket wrench.” Given this inability to discourse pragmatically, why should we suspend disbelief in the first place?

Yet, if we take the episode at its word, not only is the Tamarians’ technology on parity with that of the Federation, but it might even be more advanced. The Tamarians were able to scramble transport signals across El-Adrel IV’s ionosphere, and their ship was clearly capable of destroying the Enterprise at the end of the episode had Picard not restored diplomatic relations just in time.

But what if the Tamarians abstract worldview is precisely what facilitates advanced technological and social practice, rather than limiting it? Watching the episode carefully, the “Darmok” approach appears to be an afterthought, a new idea that strikes Dathon as he realizes the planned diplomatic approach, Rai and Jiri at Lungha, would gain no purchase with the Federation. Likewise, the first officer’s objections to Darmok are both earnest and unrehearsed—he knows exactly what Dathon is talking about, and he doesn’t like it. But once the captain has asserted his authority (“The river Temarc, in winter”), no further instruction was necessary. The crew transports the two captains to the surface, erects the particle field in the planet’s ionosphere, and fends off the eventual Enterprise retaliation.

The skeptic might point out that these omissions in the teleplay are necessary given the compressed structure of the 45-minute television episode, and that just because we don’t see further instructions take place doesn’t mean they haven’t done. It’s equally possible that the Tamarians had already gone over the Darmok approach during their weeks-long orbit above El-Adrel IV, and that the first officer’s objections are rehearsals of an earlier argument that goes unseen during the action depicted on screen.

Given an absence of evidence either way, why not choose the more aggressive interpretation: Everything that takes place on the bridge of the Tamarian vessel during the episode is encapsulated into the single move, “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra.” So dense and rich is Tamarian speech that these five words are sufficient to direct a whole crew to carry out an entire stratagem over two days’ time, and not by following a script, but by embracing it as a guiding abstraction.

As Troi explained, the Tamarians’ possess a sophisticated aptitude for abstraction. This capacity responds to fans’ skepticism at the Tamarian’s technological prowess. The Children of Tama would not be delayed by their inability to speak directly because they seem to have no need whatsoever for explicit, low-level discourse like instructions and requests. They’d just not bother talking about the socket wrench, instead proceeding to the actual work of building or maintaining the vessel.

By contrast, consider how the Enterprise engineering crew attempts to overcome the Tamarian particle interference field in their attempt to retrieve Picard from the surface of El-Adrel IV:

GEORDI: Matrix levels. LEFLER: Annular convergence holding at four three nine point two oh five. Confinement resolution at point five two seven. GEORDI: That isn’t gonna do it. Increase thermal input coefficient to 150 percent. LEFLER (working console): Increasing now … … GEORDI: Shunt the overload to the phase transition sequencers in transporter one. LEFLER: Yes, sir.

While the episode doesn’t provide a Tamarian mythical equivalent, we can speculate on how the Tamarians would handle a similar situation. While I suppose the explicit directive to adjust thermal input by a specified amount might be rendered allegorically (some Tamarian speech is narrower than others), it’s equally likely that the entire exchange would be unnecessary, subsumed into some larger operation, say, “Baby Jessica, in her well.” The rest is just details.

While his declaration that they speak and think in metaphor is most memorable, Picard offers another account of Tamarian during his encounter on the surface. Before encountering the beast, Dathon makes the recommendation, “Uzani. His army. With fist open.” Picard reacts, “A strategy? With fist open …”

“Strategy” is perhaps the best metaphor of all for the Tamarian phenomenon the Federation misnames metaphor. A strategy is a plan of action, an approach or even, at the most abstract, a logic. Such a name reveals what’s lacking in both metaphor and allegory alike as accounts for Tamarian culture. To be truly allegorical, Tamarian speech would have to represent something other than what it says. But for the Children of Tama, there is nothing left over in each speech act. The logic of Darmok or Shaka or Uzani is not depicted as image , but invoked or instantiated as logic in specific situations. In some cases, apparently, this invocation takes place with limited transformation, such as in the application of Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra depicted in the episode’s main plotline. In other cases, those logics are used in situations with more play, as when Dathon reassures Picard after the former’s injury, “Kiazi’s children. Their faces wet.”

Here we might distinguish between the invocation of a particular logic and the simulation of a creature, thing, or idea by replicating its image. The simulation of life in art often concerns the reproduction of surfaces: in painting, the appearance of form, perspective, or the rendition of light; in literature the appearance of character or event; in photography and cinema the rendition of the world as it appears through optical element and upon emulsion or sensor; in theater the rendition of the behavior of a character or situation.

While all these examples “simulate” to various extents, they do so by a process of rendering . For example, the writer might simulate a convincing verbal intercourse by producing a credibility that allows the reader to take it as reality. Likewise, the actor might render a visible behavior or intonation that is suggestive of a particular emotion, event, or history that the theatrical or cinematic viewer takes as evidence for some unseen motivation.

A logic is also a behavior, but it is a behavior unlike the behavior of the literary or theatrical character, for whom behaving involves producing an outward sign of some deeper but abstracted motivation, understanding, or desire. By contrast logics are pure behaviors. They are abstract and intangible and yet also real.

If we pretend that “Shaka, when the walls fell” is a signifier, then its signified is not the fictional mythological character Shaka, nor the myth that contains whatever calamity caused the walls to fall, but the logic by which the situation itself came about. Tamarian language isn’t really language at all, but machinery.

Because we don’t know very much about Tamarian history and culture, it’s hard to say much about how their conceptual machinery works. But we do have an earthly metaphor by which we might understand it: computation .

When we think about the kind of representation that computers enact, we typically commit our own Shaka, when the walls fell error. Computational media are generally seen as an extension or acceleration of existing mimetic methods. Take computer graphics as an example. We see computer images as extensions of photographic or filmic representation. In both Hollywood digital video effects (which are offline rendered to achieve high resolution and detail) and in computer games (which are real-time rendered to facilitate player interaction), a variety of algorithms produce two-dimensional depictions of three-dimensional scenes that, at their best, reach a level of credibility that can be mistaken for reality.

This take on computational representation sees the computer as a new method for producing appearances , the images that fascinate the Enterprise crew in “Darmok,” and that fascinate us by means of their broadcast as television. But we err in taking visual appearance as a primary replacement for reality.

In CG films, we don’t notice this problem—computer images just become yet more frames of film. But in computer games, realism is always more than just a visual affair. In a 3-D game, movement through a real-time rendered world can produce a sense of place, not just an image. Yet, the thoughtful player will quickly find an enormous chasm between visual realism and other sorts of realism in computer games. For example, the appearance and sensation of being in Grand Theft Auto ’s Liberty City initially suggests enormous verisimilitude, until the player attempts to enter a building that turns out just to be a Potemkin stand-up, or to interact with a non-player character whose verbal and physical actions amount to a few repeatable lines of stock dialog and a pathfinding algorithm that helps steer her around the player’s avatar.

So, while we think that computer graphics represent the world “as it appears,” instead they mimic the logics of visual verisimilitude themselves more than they do the logics of the real world. The method of producing 3-D computer graphics known as ray tracing works by carrying out linear perspective painting in reverse, rendering light from back to front and hiding areas where that light will not meet the position of the virtual camera due to obstacles. Ray-tracing algorithms produce the rationale of Renaissance perspective, to exact mathematical specification. Computation doesn’t represent the world so much as logics from the world, just like the Tamarian language doesn’t reproduce the figures so much as the processes of its cultural history.

Take SimCity as a parallel example. There have been many editions of this city-construction-and-management-simulation game, but all of them share the same features: tools to zone and construct infrastructure in a physical environment, including roads and rail; housing, commercial, and industrial sectors; electrical and other infrastructure; and services like police and fire, along with taxation, advising, and management tools to run the city on an ongoing basis. Playing the game involves a combination of construction and operation, a dynamic that led its creator Will Wright to compare the experience to gardening.

What city does SimCity represent? Not New York or London or Valenciennes or Albany, for re-creating particular cities proves difficult in the game. Nor does the game simulate the role of mayor (even if its interfaces and paratexts sometimes refer to the player as a mayor), because no mayor has the arbitrary power to create and destroy as the SimCity player does. Nor is it the Platonic ideal of a “city,” because some types of cities are more and less feasible within the SimCity simulation. New urbanist mixed development is impossible, social welfare-style taxation policy is impossible, and rail-based mass transit always leads to faster growth than road-and-freeway automobile transit. In this sense, even though large SimCity cities may “look like” credible urban environments, they don’t bear much resemblance to any actual city. Dense, modernist cities demand mixed-use development and increased infrastructure and services; sprawling middle-American metroplexes rely on slow, historical growth in suburbs that draw commercial activity away from and then back to city centers; neither type of city is possible in the game.

If it mimics anything, SimCity characterizes a particular logic of urban planning, one that most closely resembles the urban dynamics model of Jay Forrester, an inspiration Wright has himself acknowledged. Urban dynamics emerged out of Forrester’s post-war research at MIT in system dynamics, an approach to the interactions between industrial systems and social systems in large organizations. Originally a project integrating management and engineering, by the late 1960s Forrester had the accident of sharing an office with former Boston mayor John Collins.

As a result of this encounter, in 1969 Forrester published Urban Dynamics , a controversial account of urban policy that took the form of a model that Forrester and his students also implemented in computational form. (One example of its controversy: While low-income housing might seem to offer succor to the poor, Forrester’s model suggests that such development creates a poverty trap that stagnates an urban district, forcing it deeper into poverty rather than leading it toward prosperity.) While Forrester’s computational design goals entailed prediction intended to drive policy, Wright’s adaptation of Forrester’s urban dynamics was mostly a matter of convenience: It offered a formal logic for urban behavior that could be abstracted and implemented in the form of a creative work.

Unlike a painting or an actor’s performance, the game does not re-create outward appearances (crime, high rises, property values, and so forth), but the logics that then produce those appearances. Rather than translating logics into descriptions or depictions, computational representation like that of SimCity translates logics into logics . It embodies a particular take on how cities work through a computer program that makes them work that way. In my book Persuasive Games I call this technique “procedural rhetoric”—the use of computational processes to depict worldly processes.

“Darmok” gives us one vision of a future in which procedural rhetoric takes precedence over verbal and visual rhetoric, indeed in which the logic of logics subsume the logics of description, appearances, and even of narrative—that preeminent form that even Troi mistakes as paramount to the Children of Tama. The Tamarian’s media ecosystem is the opposite of ours, one in which behaviors are taken as primary, and descriptions as secondary, almost incidental. The Children of Tama are less interesting as aliens than they are as counterfactual versions of us, if we preferred logic over image or description.

At the end of “Darmok,” Riker finds Captain Picard sitting in his ready room, reading from an ancient book rather than off a tablet. “Greek, sir?” Riker asks. “The Homeric Hymns,” Picard responds, one of the root metaphors of our own culture. “For the next time we encounter the Tamarians …” suggests the first officer. To which his captain replies, “More familiarity with our own mythology might help us relate to theirs.” A charming sentiment, and a move that always works for Star Trek —the juxtaposition of classical antiquity and science-fictional futurism. But Picard gets it wrong one last time. To represent the world as systems of interdependent logics we need not elevate those logics to the level of myth, nor focus on the logics of our myths. Instead, we would have to meditate on the logics in everything , to see the world as one built of weird, rusty machines whose gears squeal as they grind against one another, rather than as stories into which we might write ourselves as possible characters.

It’s an understandable mistake, but one that rings louder when heard from the vantage point of the 24th century. For even then, stories and images take center stage, and logics and processes wait in the wings as curiosities, accessories. Perhaps one day we will learn this lesson of the Tamarians: that understanding how the world works is a more promising approach to intervention within it than mere description or depiction. Until then, well: Shaka, when the walls fell.

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The Tamarians (or Children of Tama/Tamar ) are a humanoid race first encountered by the Federation in the 23rd century . They are native to the planet Sigma Tama IV .

• 2 Known individuals
• 3.1 Known examples
• 4.1 References
• 4.2 Connections

History [ ]

Tamarians became warp-capable in 2050 . ( ST reference : Star Charts )

The Federation encountered the Tamarians seven times prior to 2368 , but were never able to break the language barrier. In that year , Tamarian Captain Dathon beamed himself and Starfleet Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise -D to the surface of planet El-Adrel IV , in hopes that a shared conflict would lead to mutual understanding and friendship. During this encounter, it was determined that the Tamarians communicated exclusively through cultural metaphors. Though Dathon was killed on the planet, the contact marked the opening of communication between the two cultures. ( TNG episode : " Darmok ")

The progress made in relations with the Tamarians following this breakthrough was considered one of the noteworthy accomplishments of Federation President Jaresh-Inyo and his administration. ( ST novel : Articles of the Federation )

Roxana Novac was a linguist assigned to the Federation's Tamarian liaison office, and did much work in understanding the Tamarians' language. ( SCE eBook : War Stories, Book 1 )

It was later learned that the Tamarians have a second language, used for conveying precise engineering concepts such as numbers, equations and instructions, thus explaining how Tamarians can effectively operate starships. This second language is very musical and sounds almost like singing. ( TNG short story : " Friends With the Sparrows ")

In 2381 , the Tamarian Doctor Sharak was assigned to the USS Voyager as chief medical officer for its return mission to the Delta Quadrant . Kayshon became the first Tamarian to join to Starfleet and was assigned as the USS Cerritos ' chief of security. ( VOY novel : Unworthy ; LD episode : " Kayshon, His Eyes Open ")

Known individuals [ ]

Tamarian language [ ].

The Tamarian language made use of references about people surrounding the mythology and history of the Tamarians. The Tamarians would speak entirely by allegory. Despite difficulty in translating their language, Captain Picard was able to figure out how to communicate with the Tamarians. Eventually, the Federation's universal translator would be able to translate the Tamarian language, though it would still have trouble in the 2380s . ( TNG episode : " Darmok "; LD episode : " Kayshon, His Eyes Open ")

Known examples [ ]

• "Arnock at the race of Natara" – running
• "Bazminti when he pulled back the veil" - an undercover operation
• "The beast at Tanagra" – a problem to be overcome
• "Children of Tama" – Tamarian
• "Chenza at court, the court of silence" – not listening
• "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra" – cooperation
• "Darmok and Jalad on the ocean" – new friendship and understanding gained through a shared challenge
• "Darmok on the ocean" – Loneliness, isolation
• "Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel" – successful first contact between two alien cultures, or to work toward a common goal
• "Kadir beneath Mo Moteh" [1] – failure or inability to communicate or understand; derisive in connotation
• "Kailash, when it rises" – a necessary loss or sacrifice
• "Karno in the forest with Mira" – overeating or weight gain
• "Kiazi's children, their faces wet" – downplaying the severity of a perceived injury
• "Kimarnt, her head cloudy?" – offering an intoxicating beverage
• "Kira at Bashi" – to tell a story
• "Kiteo, his eyes closed" – refusal to understand
• "Mirab, with sails unfurled" – signifying departure/engines to full/fleeing; depending on tone, could mean "Prepare to withdraw" or "We have to get out of here!"
• "Rai and Jiri at Lungha. Rai of Lowani. Lowani under two moons. Jiri of Ubaya. Ubaya of crossroads, at Lungha. Lungha, her sky gray" – greeting between two different cultures/races
• "Rapunki, when he joined the Seven" – greeting, expressing honor at joining a new group
• "The river Temarc in winter" – to cease an action, especially speaking; often used as an imperative
• "Shaka, when the walls fell" – failure
• "Sokath, his eyes uncovered/opened" – understanding/realization
• "Temba, at rest" – declining a gift. A gracious response signifying that the gift is unnecessary, or should rightfully be kept by the other person.
• "Temba, his arms wide/open" – signifying a gift
• "Unzak and Vhila as children?" – meaning unknown, perhaps related to language learning or making a connection with other cultures
• "Uzani, his army with fists closed" – to close rank and attack after luring the enemy
• "Uzani, his army with fists open" – to lure the enemy towards you by spreading your forces
• "Zima at Anzo" "Zima and Bakor" – danger/hostility arising from miscommunication/misunderstanding.
• "Zinda, his face black, his eyes red" – anger or conflict, also can indicate pain, possible indication of inability to survive (either self, or other party)
• "Zinda, his eyes red" [1] – expressing pain or dismay

Appendices [ ]

References [ ].

• ↑ 1.0 1.1 LD video game : The Badgey Directive .

Connections [ ]

• Tamarian article at Memory Alpha , the wiki for canon Star Trek .
• Tamarian (language) article at Memory Alpha , the wiki for canon Star Trek .
• 1 Lamarr class
• 2 Wesley Crusher
• 3 Ferengi Rules of Acquisition

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Star trek’s tamarians in tng & lower decks explained.

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7 Aliens Introduced In Star Trek: TNG Season 1 (& Who Was Important)

Captain picard’s 10 best star trek tng episodes, ranked, star trek reveals the future for worf's son alexander, & it's the perfect character change.

• The Tamarians, a fascinating species introduced in Star Trek: The Next Generation's "Darmok," speak almost entirely in metaphors that rely on cultural knowledge and mythology.
• In the episode, Captain Picard and the Tamarian captain Dathon struggle to understand each other until Picard realizes the Tamarian language is metaphorical.
• In Star Trek: Lower Decks, Lt. Kayshon becomes the first Tamarian to serve in Starfleet, wearing his ceremonial dagger and occasionally slipping Tamarian metaphors through the universal translator.

Introduced in Star Trek: The Next Generation, the Tamarians are a fascinating Star Trek species that returned to the franchise in Star Trek: Lower Decks . In TNG season 5, episode 2, "Darmok," Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) and the USS Enterprise-D rendevous with a Tamarian ship. When both species fail to understand one another, both Captain Picard and the Tamarian captain named Dathon (Paul Winfield) are beamed down to the planet below and must learn how to communicate. Prior to this encounter, the Federation had established first contact with the Tamarians, but a language barrier prevented any further formal relationship.

While the Universal Translator used by Starfleet ships can translate the individual words the Tamarians use, they speak almost entirely in metaphors that rely on extensive knowledge of their culture and mythology. Aside from their complicated language, the Tamarians also have several unique rituals and ways of communicating with other species. After Picard's encounter with Dathon and his crew, no other Tamarians appeared in Star Trek until Lt. Kayshon (Carl Tart) joined the cast of Star Trek: Lower Decks in season 2. Although Starfleet and the Federation have learned more about the Tamarians since TNG , they remain a somewhat mysterious species.

Star Trek: The Next Generation may have had a rocky first season, but it still introduced several fascinating and important new aliens.

Tamarians In Star Trek: The Next Generation’s “Darmok”

Tng's "darmok" is classic and quintessential star trek..

In Star Trek: The Next Generation 's "Darmok," Captains Picard and Dathan find themselves stranded and, as they struggle to comprehend one another, they grow frustrated at themselves and each other. Because Dathan offers him a knife, Picard first believes that the Tamarian captain wishes to fight him. This, however, proves to be false as Dathan later helps Picard by providing him with much-needed fire. As Dathan continues to repeat the phrase, "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra," Picard eventually realizes that the Tamarians speak in metaphor. Since Picard has no context for any Tamarian historical figures or events, he cannot understand the metaphors Dathon uses.

Captain Jean-Luc Picard anchored every episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, but some episodes let him take more of a spotlight.

When a dangerous creature on the planet attacks Picard and Dathan, they work together to fend it off. Picard later realizes that the Tamarians sent Dathan and Picard to the planet to reenact what happened with Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra. The two were brought together by being forced to stand against a common enemy. Unfortunately, as the Enterprise crew attempts to beam Picard back to the ship, the creature mortally wounds Dathan. Although the episode ends in tragedy, Picard learns enough to communicate with the Tamarian ship and end the encounter on a hopeful note.

Picard's encounter with Dathan and Dathan's later sacrifice eventually become the Tamarian phrase, "Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel," meaning to work towards a common goal.

Tamrarians In Star Trek: Lower Decks

Lower decks has brought back several lesser-known star trek species..

Star Trek: Lower Decks season 2 , episode 2, "Kayshon, With His Eyes Open," introduces Lt. Kayshon, the first Tamarian to serve in Starfleet. Kayshon briefly becomes head of security on the USS Cerritos when Lt. Shaxs (Fred Tatasciore) is killed. After Shaxs is resurrected, Kayshon continues working in the security department, although his exact role remains unclear. As Starfleet uniforms allow for some cultural additions, Kayshon continues to wear his ceremonial dagger in a sash on his chest. Since the time of TNG season 5, the universal translators have apparently been updated with the Tamarian language, although Tamarian metaphors occasionally slip through.

On his first away mission with the Lower Deckers, Kayshon finds himself turned into a puppet by a stray energy beam, but Dr. T'Ana (Gillian Vigman) is able to restore him. Although Kayshon remains a secondary and sometimes background character, he appears in 18 episodes of Star Trek: Lower Decks . Kayshon has played a role in many of the adventures of the Cerritos and his role will hopefully only continue to grow. Since their introduction in Star Trek: The Next Generation , the Tamarians have become one of Star Trek 's most unique and interesting new species, and much of their culture remains open to be explored.

Star Trek: The Next Generation & Star Trek: Lower Decks are available to stream on Paramount+.

Tamarian Language

Captain Dathon, a typical Tamarian.

The Tamarian Language is the language of the spacefaring species known as the "Children of Tama", or Tamarians, the dominant species of the planet Sigma Tama IV.

• 1 Structure
• 2 Known phrases
• 3 Recent Developments
• 4 New Phrases

Structure [ ]

Tamarian language is unique amongst the languages of the Beta Quadrant in that it makes use of the unusual brain structure of the Tamarians. They find that the easiest way to understand concepts is by allusion and metaphor; by contrast, direct languages such as those common elsewhere in the Galaxy appear difficult for the Tarmarian brain to comprehend.

Their language was first understood by Captain Jean-Luc Picard and crew members of the Starship USS Enterprise in 2368.

Although a small number of diplomats and linguists have become proficient in communicating with the Tamarians and whilst formal diplomatic relations are now in place, relatively little of their language is currently understood by non-Tamarians. The structure of Tamarian language makes it almost impossible for a Universal Translator to translate; the words of the language are easily rendered into Federation Standard, but without knowing the Mytho-Historical incidents to which phrases allude, the actual words are comparatively little use. Small amounts of the language can become clear to individuals by usage and context, however.

Known phrases [ ]

◾ "Children of Tama" - Tamarian

◾ "Darmok on the ocean" - loneliness, isolation

◾ "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra" - cooperation

◾ "Darmok and Jalad on the ocean" - new friendship and understanding gained through a shared challenge

◾ "The beast at Tanagra" - a problem to be overcome

◾ "Kadir beneath Mo Moteh" - failure to communicate/understand

◾ "Zima at Anzo" "Zima and Bakor" - danger/hostility arising from miscommunication/misunderstanding.

◾ "Kiteo, his eyes closed" - refusal to understand

◾ "Kiazi's children, their faces wet" - do not cry

◾ "Temba, his arms wide/open" - signifying a gift

◾ "Temba, at rest" - when a gift being offered is declined

◾ "Mirab, with sails unfurled" - signifying departure/engines to full/fleeing

◾ "Shaka, when the walls fell" - failure

◾ "Sokath, his eyes uncovered/opened" - understanding/realization

◾ "Kailash, when it rises" - a necessary loss or sacrifice

◾ "The river Temarc in winter" - be quiet/silence

◾ "Zinda, his face black, his eyes red" - anger or conflict, also can indicate pain or discomfort, possible indication of inability to survive (either self, or other party)

◾ "Rai and Jiri at Lungha. Rai of Lowani. Lowani under two moons. Jiri of Ubaya. Ubaya of crossroads, at Lungha. Lungha, her sky gray" - greeting between two different cultures/races

◾ "Uzani, his army with fists open" - to lure the enemy towards you by spreading your forces

◾ "Uzani, his army with fists closed" - to close rank and attack after luring the enemy

◾ "Chenza at court, the court of silence" - not listening

◾ "Kira at Bashi" - to tell a story

◾ "Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel" - successful first contact between two alien cultures, or to work toward a common goal

Recent Developments [ ]

In his second contact with the Tamarians, Admiral Picard presented the Tamarian ambassador to the Federation with copies of two of his favourite books - namely, the King James Bible and the Complete works of William Shakespeare. This was thought to be a symbolic gesture, with there being little or no expectation that the Tamarians would be able to read them. However, in recent years Tamarians encountering the Federation have made increasing use of metaphors from both of these works. It is surmised that this is an indication that both were understood more quickly than anticipated, and have become popular amongst Starship crews and diplomats. Occasionally metaphors from the history of the Federation are also encountered.

New Phrases [ ]

Since the crew of the Tamworth have been in contact with the Tamarians, the following phrases have become known:

• "Gideon's army at the river" - A selection, especially of a team of people
• "The Sun and the moon in their daily courses" - To take turns
• "Storil, as the Moon darkened!" - Look over there/Pay attention!
• "Garish, observing the ant." - This is interesting
• "Tergo, in the hail of arrows!" (Said with urgency) - Look out/Beware!
• "Surak and Satask at Shakar" - Parting
• "Dick Whittington and his cat" - Success from nowhere/ sheer luck
• "George Orwell at the bus shelter, his wounds untended" - Disillusionment
• "Romeo, at the Capulet Ball" - Something appears out of place
• 1 Tamarian Language
• 2 USS Tamworth
• 3 Samalander

• Cast & crew
• User reviews
• Episode aired Sep 28, 1991

Picard must learn to communicate with a race that speaks in metaphor under a difficult set of circumstances. Picard must learn to communicate with a race that speaks in metaphor under a difficult set of circumstances. Picard must learn to communicate with a race that speaks in metaphor under a difficult set of circumstances.

• Winrich Kolbe
• Gene Roddenberry
• Joe Menosky
• Philip LaZebnik
• Patrick Stewart
• Jonathan Frakes
• LeVar Burton
• 38 User reviews
• 11 Critic reviews

• Captain Jean-Luc Picard

• Commander William Thomas 'Will' Riker

• Lieutenant Commander Geordi La Forge

• Lieutenant Worf

• Dr. Beverly Crusher

• Counselor Deanna Troi

• Lieutenant Commander Data
• Tamarian First Officer

• Chief Miles O'Brien

• Capt. Dathon

• Ensign Robin Lefler

• Enterprise Computer

• Ensign Gates
• (uncredited)
• Ensign Kellogg

• Operations Division Officer
• Enterprise-D Ensign
• Tamarian Officer
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

Did you know

• Trivia Tenagra Observatories, an internet-based network of telescopes sharing information on stellar phenomena, took its name from this episode. The Tenagra project links observatories located in Arizona, USA, Perth, W. Australia and Oslo, Norway.
• Goofs When the Enterprise fires on the Tamarian vessel, the phasers are fired from photon torpedo launch bays, not from the phaser banks on the saucer section. It is admitted to be a post-production mistake in the Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion. Rick Berman said the producers received hundreds of letters from fans pointing it out. This was corrected for the Blu-Ray disc release by replacing the shot with a close up of the phaser array from "The Best of Both Worlds".

Captain Jean-Luc Picard : Gilgamesh, a king. Gilgamesh, a king. At Uruk. He tormented his subjects. He made them angry. They cried out aloud, "Send us a companion for our king! Spare us from his madness!" Enkidu, a wild man... from the forest, entered the city. They fought in the temple. They fought in the streets. Gilgamesh defeated Enkidu. They became great friends. Gilgamesh and Enkidu at Uruk.

Captain Dathon : [faintly] At Uruk.

Captain Jean-Luc Picard : The... the new friends went out into the desert together, where the Great Bull of Heaven was killing men by the hundreds. Enkidu caught the Bull by the tail. Gilgamesh struck him with his sword.

Captain Dathon : [laughing] Gilgamesh.

Captain Jean-Luc Picard : They were... victorious. But... Enkidu fell to the ground, struck down by the gods. And Gilgamesh... wept bitter tears, saying, "He who was my companion, through adventure and hardship, is gone forever."

• Connections Featured in The Chronic Rift: Organized Religion in Science Fiction (1992)
• Soundtracks Star Trek: The Next Generation Main Title Composed by Jerry Goldsmith and Alexander Courage

User reviews 38

• Jan 24, 2019
• September 28, 1991 (United States)
• Official site
• Bronson Canyon, Griffith Park - 4730 Crystal Springs Drive, Los Angeles, California, USA (Eladrel planet surface)
• Paramount Television
• See more company credits at IMDbPro

Technical specs

• Runtime 46 minutes
• Dolby Digital

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A Beginner's Guide to Speaking Tamarian

“ Phrubub, when he knows the cheese ” ~ André Breton

Have you been rejected by the Über-nerds at Star Trek Conventions? Don't worry!

Too stupid to learn Klingon ? Relax!

Why? Because absolutely anyone can learn Tamarian!

In fact, the less intellectual and more pop-culture obsessed you are, the easier it is!

Tamarian is the language spoken by Dathon of the Children of Tamar , and first heard in the episode "Darmok" [1] from the fifth season of Star Trek: The Next Generation . Unlike traditional earth speech, it relies on metaphor and allegory to communicate meaning.

This confounded Starfleet for years, despite the long existence of the Universal Translator , which can somehow resolve all sorts of obscure clicks and bloobs into recognizable English speech , yet was somehow unable to cross-reference the completely obvious proper nouns with the names stored in its own cultural databases .

Now, for the first time, you too can learn to speak an alien tongue by expressing earth allegories using Tamarian syntax. Just review the Tamarian phrases given as examples, then create your own phrases using Earth references.

Tamarian [ edit | edit source ]

North american english [ edit | edit source ], examples in everyday conversation [ edit | edit source ].

Tips for Success [ edit | edit source ]

Tamarian is a thriving language. While Klingon is crawling at a Gagh's pace, and normal English is adding a few bits of slang per year, Anglicized Tamarian vocabulary is growing as fast as the media can report it. To stay abreast:

• Stay immersed in the current literature ( People , OK! ), television journalism ( TMZ , E! ), and online resources ( Stupid Celebrities , etc.) to keep your cultural knowledge current .
• Take at a Tamarian language course at a respected uni- ... at a university that offers a course in the subject.
• And remember, Tamarians love classic methaphors, but even they hate used-up memes. For best results, make reference to well-known celebrities and their notable behaviours and activities, but avoid overutilized references like O.J. Simpson , ' Michael Jackson or (most importantly) Chuck Norris . Failure to do so may result in the listener breaking off the conversation and leaving ( "Kiteo, his eyes closed." ) or attacking you unexpectedly ( "Uzani, his army at Lashmir." }

Reference [ edit | edit source ]

• ↑ Darmok and Gilgamesh - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukMNfTnI5M8

See Also [ edit | edit source ]

• André Bretonizms
• Things That Make You Go Hmmm

Navigation menu

Darmok (episode)

• 1.2 Act One
• 1.3 Act Two
• 1.4 Act Three
• 1.5 Act Four
• 1.6 Act Five
• 2 Log entries
• 3 Memorable quotes
• 4.1 Production history
• 4.2 Story and script
• 4.3 Production
• 4.4 Cast and characters
• 4.5 Continuity
• 4.6 Reception
• 4.7 Merchandising
• 4.8 Video and DVD releases
• 5.1 Starring
• 5.2 Also starring
• 5.3 Guest stars
• 5.4 Co-stars
• 5.5 Uncredited co-stars
• 5.6 Stunt double
• 5.7 Stand-ins and photo doubles
• 5.8.1 Children of Tama language references
• 5.9 External links

Summary [ ]

The USS Enterprise -D is on a mission to attempt to establish communications between the Federation and the Tamarians after several previous attempts by the Federation over the last century had failed. The Tamarians had arrived at the planet nearly three weeks prior and began transmitting a signal towards Federation space . Upon arrival, the Enterprise and the Tamarian vessel make a rendezvous in orbit of El-Adrel IV . The two parties try to communicate but, like the occasions before, neither party can comprehend what the other party is saying. Captain Dathon disarms his first officer of a knife -like weapon and repeats, “ Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra .” Suddenly both he and Captain Picard are transported off of their ships to the surface of El-Adrel IV. Data finds that the Tamarian vessel projected a scattering field in the ionosphere of the planet, preventing both the Enterprise and themselves from using their transporters .

On the planet, Picard watches the Tamarian captain approach. He suddenly holds up two knives.

Act One [ ]

" Sensors show that Captain Picard and the Tamarian are in apparent good health, approximately twenty meters from each other. "

Lieutenant Commander Data also finds that the scattering field is blocking communications. However, sensors can still penetrate the scattering field, allowing either party to monitor Picard's and Dathon's locations. Lieutenant Worf suggests it might be a contest between champions. Seeing that they are in good health, Riker attempts to communicate with the Tamarian first officer, with no success. He has Worf prepare a shuttlecraft to get the captain, betting the Tamarian ship won't fire on it, as blocking transporters and firing on vessels are two totally different things, Riker reasons.

On the surface of El-Adrel IV, Picard and Dathon once again try to communicate, as Dathon passes one of the two knives to Picard, repeating " Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra ." Picard assumes that Dathon wants to engage in combat and refuses to take his knife. Frustrated, Dathon says " Shaka, when the walls fell " but Picard cannot understand the terms that Dathon is using and both men become frustrated with their failure.

As nightfall approaches, Picard is still stuck on the planet's surface. He tries to make a fire but cannot. Dathon then does something akin to prayer and goes to sleep, taking one of his knives out for protection. However, he cannot sleep knowing that Picard will go through the night cold. Dathon takes a branch from his fire and throws it to Picard. He says " Temba, his arms wide. " While Picard does not understand what or who Temba is, he understands that Dathon is trying to help him, and thanks him for the fire.

Act Two [ ]

Worf takes the shuttle Magellan with Ensign Kellogg to the surface of El-Adrel IV to rescue Captain Picard. As they begin to descend, the Tamarian vessel fires upon the shuttle and disables the starboard nacelle , destroying the shuttle's thrusters and forcing it to return to the Enterprise . Data reports that the Tamarian's phaser beam was precisely attenuated for that effect. " Nice shooting, " Riker says.

In the observation lounge , Riker has Data and Counselor Troi analyze the log of the communication between themselves and the Tamarians and consult the ship's computer with the words and names mentioned and find several commonalities. Data and Troi deduce that the Tamarian language is entirely based on metaphors derived from their own experience and mythology , making their language extremely difficult for a non-Tamarian to understand because without knowing the people or things in the metaphor, the metaphor is impossible to comprehend. Lieutenant Commander La Forge and Ensign Lefler then attempt to modify the transporters to transport Captain Picard through the dampening field.

The following morning, on the planet's surface, Picard and Dathon are still no better off in their attempts to communicate with one another. Picard wakes up to find Dathon missing. He examines his things, finding what looks like a captain's log, then he returns, shouting at him. Picard notices that Dathon repeatedly uses the phrase " Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra ", but he does not understand who or what they were. Dathon is still insistent in giving Picard one of the knives, but again Picard refuses.

Act Three [ ]

Picard and Dathon hear a loud roar in the distance and rocks fall from the cliffs behind the two men. Picard realizes that Dathon and he are not alone on the planet's surface. As the creature approaches Picard and Dathon, Picard realizes that Dathon is not offering him the knife to fight him, but to arm him against the creature, and accepts the weapon. When Dathon speaks again, referring to what sounds like a battle plan, Picard suddenly understands that the Tamarians communicate by citing example – by metaphor. Dathon utters a phrase that sounds like he was relieved that Picard finally understands him

Meanwhile, Worf detects a highly localized EM disturbance in fairly close proximity to Picard and Dathon, which is rapidly approaching them. La Forge, Lefler, and Chief O'Brien are almost ready to attempt to beam Captain Picard back aboard the Enterprise . Riker orders them to try early, but La Forge isn't hopeful. They make preparations for Transporter room 1 where O'Brien is ready.

The creature attacks Dathon and Picard wounds it, but the creature strikes Picard, ripping his shirt. Dathon makes a return attack and draws the creature. Just then, O'Brien makes the attempt to transport Picard while the creature is striking Dathon. Picard is furious with being transported as it immobilized him, leaving him unable to help the Tamarian captain. The transport ultimately fails, and Picard is left on the planet as the creature moves away from Dathon. Picard holds him as they say " Shaka, when the walls fell. "

Act Four [ ]

The Tamarians lower the scattering field to a deeper level of the planet's ionosphere, making transport impossible and forcing the crew to devise a new way to bring the captain back to the Enterprise . Riker has La Forge work on a way to disable the field generator on the Tamarian ship. The Enterprise 's sensors show that Dathon's life signs are fluctuating and they know that the Tamarians know this also, but, surprisingly, no action is taken by the Tamarians to save their captain. Troi and Data explain the difficulty with their language, that it is based on narrative imagery. One must know the context as well as the words of the language.

Back on El-Adrel IV, Picard sits down next to a dying Dathon near the fire and asks him about Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra. It seems that Darmok and Jalad were two legendary travelers, strangers who faced and defeated a common enemy on the island of Tanagra. Picard realizes that Dathon knew of the creature on El-Adrel IV and brought them both here so that they could re-enact the events between Darmok, Jalad, and "the Beast" at Tanagra. Dathon's hope was that by facing a common enemy, the two sides could learn to understand one another and bring the two species closer together. Now that Picard understands how the Tamarians communicate, Dathon wants to hear one of his stories. Picard, at first, tells Dathon that he is not much of a storyteller and that he probably would not understand it anyway. Despite this, Picard begins to recite an old story from Earth , very similar to that of Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra, about Gilgamesh and Enkidu at Uruk , and how two enemies became friends through hardship. Dathon appears impressed and amused by Picard's story. Dathon dies during the night, but not in vain, as he has become the first Tamarian to successfully establish communications between his people and the Federation.

Act Five [ ]

Back on the Enterprise , La Forge and his staff have developed a way to disable the Tamarians' scattering field – by firing a highly focused single phaser beam aimed at the generator on the Tamarian vessel. Commander Riker gives the order to fire on the Tamarian vessel. The shot disables the generator, allowing Chief O'Brien to beam Captain Picard aboard just as the creature is about to attack him again. The Tamarians return fire, severely damaging the Enterprise and crippling the ship's warp drive . As Picard returns to the bridge , he orders hailing frequencies to be opened with the Tamarian vessel. The Tamarians reply angrily but they quickly calm down when Picard addresses them in their metaphors. He explains that although the mission was a success as far as establishing communications between the two peoples is concerned, Dathon gave his life to accomplish it. Picard holds up Dathon's journal, and the Tamarians beam it into the first officer's hand, after which he pronounces that this successful contact will henceforth be known as the story of "Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel". Picard offers the knife to the Tamarian officer, but the Tamarian insists that Picard keep it.

Later, Picard is reading the Homeric Hymns in his ready room when Riker stops by with the damage reports for Picard to review. He notices the book and Picard explains that maybe more familiarity with their own mythology may help them relate to the Tamarians. Picard also notes to Riker that Dathon sacrificed his life in hope of communication, and wonders if he would have been willing to do the same. Riker leaves, and Picard picks up the knife and looks out of the ready room window into space while repeating the gestures he saw the Tamarians engage in upon learning of their captain's death, paying his own silent tribute to his fallen comrade.

Log entries [ ]

• Captain's log, USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D), 2368
• First officer's log, USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D)

Memorable quotes [ ]

" Darmok and Jalad… at Tanagra. "

" Picard and Dathon… at El-Adrel. "

" In my experience, communication is a matter of patience, imagination. I would like to believe that these are qualities that we have in sufficient measure. "

" Shaka, when the walls fell. "

" I have encountered 1,754 non-Human races during my tenure in Starfleet. "

" Temba, his arms wide! "

" That's how you communicate, isn't it? By citing example… by metaphor! Uzani's army… with fists open… " " Sokath, his eyes uncovered! " (meant as a metaphor to comprehension)

" Imagery is everything to the Tamarians. It embodies their emotional states, their very thought processes. It's how they communicate and it's how they think. "

" Our situation is analogous to knowing the grammar of a language, but none of the vocabulary. "

" Darmok, and Jalad… on the ocean. " " Darmok and Jalad… they left together . "

" Temba, his arms wide. " " I'll go along with that. "

" Gilgamesh, a king. Gilgamesh, a king. At Uruk. He tormented his subjects. He made them angry. They cried out aloud, "Send us a companion for our king! Spare us from his madness!" Enkidu, a wild man… from the forest, entered the city. They fought in the temple. They fought in the streets. Gilgamesh defeated Enkidu. They became great friends. Gilgamesh and Enkidu at Uruk. " " At Uruk… " " The… the new friends went out into the desert together, where the Great Bull of Heaven was killing men by the hundreds. Enkidu caught the Bull by the tail. Gilgamesh struck him with his sword. " " (laughing) Gilgamesh… " " They were… victorious. But… Enkidu fell to the ground, struck down by the gods. And Gilgamesh… wept bitter tears, saying, "He who was my companion, through adventure and hardship, is gone forever. "

" Temarc! The river Temarc in winter! " " Darmok…? " " …and Jalad at Tanagra. Darmok and Jalad… on the ocean. " " Sokath, his eyes open! " " The beast at Tanagra. Uzani, his army. Shaka, when the walls fell. "

" Temba, his arms open. " " Temba, at rest. " " Thank you. "

" New friends, Captain? " " I can't say, Number One… but at least they're not new enemies. "

(Sees Picard's book) " Greek, sir. " " Oh… the Homeric Hymns . One of the root metaphors of our own culture. " " For the next time we encounter the Tamarians? " " More familiarity with our own mythology might help us to relate to theirs. The Tamarian was willing to risk all of us just for the hope of communication…, connection. Now the door is open between our peoples. That commitment meant more to him than his own life. Thank you, Number One. "

" Picard of the Federation. Of the Starship Enterprise . Of the planet Earth! "

Background information [ ]

Production history [ ].

• Story outline by Philip LaZebnik (along with a one-page introductory memo) sent from Michael Piller to Rick Berman (also forwarded to Gene Roddenberry ): 11 December 1989 [1]
• In a two-page memo, Piller suggests Joe Menosky try to tackle this episode's story: 28 August 1990 [2]
• Menosky replies with three-page memo to Piller: 4 September 1990 [3]
• Final draft script: 8 July 1991 [4]
• Filmed: 18 July 1991 – 26 July 1991
• Additional filming at Bronson Canyon : 5 August 1991
• Creature scenes filmed: 8 August 1991
• Second unit footage filmed: 26 August 1991
• Additional second unit shots filmed: 28 August 1991
• Premiere airdate: 30 September 1991
• First UK airdate: 28 December 1994

Story and script [ ]

The location map for the two-day location shoot at Bronson Canyon

• This episode had the longest gestation period of any episode during Michael Piller 's tenure, taking around two years to make it to the screen. Rick Berman hated the premise, but Piller thought it was interesting and was determined to make it work, so he finally gave it to Joe Menosky . ( Captains' Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages , p. 228)
• Menosky recalled that Philip LaZebnik 's story involved members of an away team who in turn each met a mysterious alien boy drawing in the dirt. The boy greeted each of the team with the single word "Darmok?" Regardless of the response, the crewmember was catapulted into orbit in a strange cocoon. At the end, Picard realized that "Darmok" meant "play" and sat down in the dirt with the child. Menosky felt this was too similar to the "Bridge of Death" scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail and didn't work in the context of the show. However, he did like the word "Darmok". ( Star Trek: The Next Generation 365 , p. 219)
• After being assigned to rewrite the script, Menosky struggled for several days with no results. He recalled, " So when Michael reconvened the staff to talk about it, I truly thought that I might be fired. But Michael was really excited. He'd just seen Dances with Wolves and was completely blown away by the scene with Kevin Costner 's character and the Native American warrior around the campfire, who don't speak a word of each other's language, but finally make themselves understood. Michael announced, 'That's it: one man, one alien, alone on a planet, around a fire. They don't know each other's languages, they struggle to overcome their differences, and finally break through to communication. And maybe there's a big monster.' " ( Star Trek: The Next Generation 365 , p. 219)
• Menosky then wrote Piller a memo, outlining themes of language, communication and mythology, which greatly impressed Piller. ( Star Trek: The Next Generation 365 , p. 219; Captains' Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages , p. 228) A copy of this memo is available here .
• In devising the Tamarian language , Menosky was inspired by three sources: the work of psychologist James Hillman (who had emphasized "all is metaphor"), the quote "Every word is a poem" from translator and poet John Ciardi , and the dense historical metaphors present in Chinese poetry and philosophical works such as the I Ching . ( Star Trek: The Next Generation 365 , p. 220)
• The story about Gilgamesh and Enkidu is from one of the world's earliest known literary works, a Babylonian poem entitled the Epic of Gilgamesh (said to have been dated from around 2150 BC-2000 BC). The story of Gilgamesh and Enkidu at Uruk is itself a metaphor for the situation of Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel: two people, initially combatants, come together to become friends and fight a common foe, a battle in which one of them is struck down and the other mourns his loss. ( Mission Overview: Year Five , TNG Season 5 DVD special features) According to Menosky this similarity was a combination of "writer's luck" and inevitability. ( Star Trek: The Next Generation 365 , p. 220)

Production [ ]

• "Darmok" was filmed between Thursday 18 July 1991 and Friday 26 July 1991 , on Paramount Stage 8 , 9 , and 16 , as well as on location at Bronson Canyon . An additional day was Thursday 8 August 1991 , on which the blue screen unit filmed the creature scenes with stuntman Rex Pierson on Paramount Stage 9. Second unit for this episode filmed on Monday 26 August 1991 , on Paramount Stage 9 and 16. When the following episode " Ensign Ro " returned to location at Bronson Canyon on Monday 5 August 1991 , another sequence was filmed for "Darmok", involving Rex Pierson and photo doubles Ron Large and Lanier Edwards . Photo double Dana Vitatoe filmed additional second unit shots on Wednesday 28 August 1991 , on Paramount Stage 9.

Cast and characters [ ]

• Patrick Stewart deemed this episode as worthy of winning awards. He stated this was " because it was a brilliantly written episode based on the myth of Gilgamesh and with one of our most distinguished guest stars, Paul Winfield . " ( Mission Overview: Year Five , TNG Season 5 DVD special features) Winfield was previously seen in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan as the ill-fated Captain Clark Terrell .
• The call sheet dated 18 July 1991 featured an "uncast actress" in the role of Lt. Larson . In the final episode, this role became Robin Lefler , who was played by Ashley Judd .

Continuity [ ]

• This is the first episode which introduces a new captain's uniform : a gray undershirt with an open red jacket. The uniform was designed by Robert Blackman to make Captain Picard stand out from the rest of his crew, at the suggestion of actor Patrick Stewart . [5] Although the jacket has a black yoke like the standard uniforms, the yoke is made of a material that looks like leather and has a quilted pattern. Also, the red portion of the jacket is made from a material that looks like suede. In further episodes, the yoke is replaced with the same material of the rest of the jacket.
• This episode marks the first appearance of the Type 6 shuttlecraft .
• This episode marks the first appearance of Ensign Robin Lefler , who later played an important part in discovering the Ktarian game conspiracy with Wesley Crusher in the episode " The Game ".
• This is also the first appearance of Data's redesigned quarters. The previous set used for Data's room was modified to serve as Kirk and Spock 's quarters in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country and was demolished after filming was complete. ( Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (Special Edition) text commentary )
• This episode is also notable as it is the only time a phaser beam is emitted from the main photon torpedo tube. It is admitted to be a post-production mistake in the Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion , 2nd ed., p. 177. This was corrected for the remastered version by replacing the shot with a close-up of the phaser array from " The Best of Both Worlds ". The original shot does appear on the Blu-Ray in the trailer for "Darmok".

Reception [ ]

• Michael Piller remarked, " I just think 'Darmok' is the prototype of what Star Trek should be. It dealt with a very challenging premise and many of our best shows are scripts that have been around a long time… He created a whole language for that episode and it's just astonishing. The episode worked on every level; it had the philosophy dealing with language and what it does for us, two great acting performances, it had a monster and a space battle – it had everything. " ( Captains' Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages , p. 228)
• Director Winrich Kolbe commented that he had mixed feelings on the episode. " Storywise, it was a hell of a story. It was almost flawless. It tangled a very interesting subject and a very complicated subject as well, and I think it did it well. " However, he felt somewhat constrained in how he could film the planet scenes with the monster. Furthermore, he noted the difficulty in directing scenes in an alien language. " Can you imagine not speaking Russian and… having to write an article in Russian? It makes it kind of difficult. Even though I had a translation of the dialogue, it wasn't quite there and for me it was like directing a Russian movie without speaking the language, but you work your way through it. So that was an additional challenge. The episode seems to have struck a chord. It's a show we can all be proud of. " ( Captains' Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages , p. 228)
• Despite his initial resistance to the idea, Berman later named "Darmok" as one of his all-time favorite episodes. ( Captains' Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages ) Shortly prior to its initial airing, he commented, " It's a wonderful two-person piece […] It's going to be a terrific episode. " ( Star Trek: The Official Fan Club Magazine  issue 82 , p. 6)
• Patrick Stewart referred to the episode during the funeral service of Gene Roddenberry , who died less than a month after the episode aired. Stewart noted that the cast had just appeared in an episode dealing with the roots of mythology and metaphor. Joe Menosky recalled, " He used it as a way to validate and praise Gene's creation . That moment might have been the proudest I've ever been about anything I've written for Star Trek . " ( Star Trek: The Next Generation 365 , p. 219)
• This episode has been used by linguistics teachers to aid in students' understanding of how languages work and evolve. ("Mission Overview: Year Five", TNG Season 5 DVD special feature; [6] )
• Doctor Who writer and producer Russell T Davies liked the billing blurb for this episode so much that he deliberately didn't watch it, later saying, " I love the idea so much, I'd rather think about it. Forever. " Nearly twenty years after the episode first aired, Davies wrote a Doctor Who episode with a premise that he reckoned was similar to this one . ( SFX , issue #200, p. 140)
• A mission report for this episode, by John Sayers, was published in The Official Star Trek: The Next Generation Magazine  issue 18 , pp. 12-15.

Merchandising [ ]

• A scene of "Darmok" between Dathon and Picard replaced with cats is featured in Jenny Parks ' 2018 book Star Trek: The Next Generation Cats . [7]

Video and DVD releases [ ]

• Original UK VHS release (two-episode tapes, CIC Video ): Volume 51, September 1992
• As part of the UK VHS collection Star Trek: The Next Generation - 10th Anniversary Collector's Edition under the "Picard" section, 29 September 1997
• UK re-release (three-episode tapes, Paramount Home Entertainment ): Volume 5.1, 24 June 2002
• As part of the TNG Season 5 DVD collection
• As part of both Region 1 and 2 releases of the Star Trek: The Next Generation - Jean-Luc Picard Collection
• As part of the Star Trek: Fan Collective - Captain's Log collection

Links and references [ ]

Starring [ ].

• Patrick Stewart as Capt. Jean-Luc Picard
• Jonathan Frakes as Cmdr. William Riker

Also starring [ ]

• LeVar Burton as Lt. Cmdr. Geordi La Forge
• Michael Dorn as Lt. Worf
• Gates McFadden as Dr. Beverly Crusher
• Marina Sirtis as Counselor Deanna Troi
• Brent Spiner as Lt. Commander Data

Guest stars [ ]

• Richard Allen as Tamarian first officer
• Colm Meaney as Miles O'Brien
• Paul Winfield as Dathon

Co-stars [ ]

• Ashley Judd as Ensign Lefler
• Majel Barrett as Computer Voice

Uncredited co-stars [ ]

• Cameron as Kellogg
• Tracee Lee Cocco as Jae
• Gerard David, Jr. as operations division ensign
• Jeremy Doyle as operations ensign
• Norman Hunte as Tamarian bridge officer
• Michael Moorehead as science division ensign
• Teri Noel as Tamarian tactical officer
• Rex Pierson as El-Adrel IV entity
• Keith Rayve as command division ensign
• Joycelyn Robinson as Gates

Stunt double [ ]

• Gerard Williams as stunt double for Paul Winfield

Stand-ins and photo doubles [ ]

• David Keith Anderson – stand-in for LeVar Burton
• Lanier Edwards – photo double for Paul Winfield
• Ron Large – photo double for Patrick Stewart
• Nora Leonhardt – stand-in for Marina Sirtis
• Tim McCormack – stand-in for Brent Spiner , Colm Meaney and Patrick Stewart
• Lorine Mendell – stand-in for Gates McFadden
• Greg Poole – stand-in for Richard Allen , Paul Winfield and Michael Dorn
• Bill E. Rogers – photo double for Paul Winfield
• Richard Sarstedt – stand-in for Jonathan Frakes
• Dennis Tracy – stand-in for Patrick Stewart
• Dana Vitatoe – photo double for Brent Spiner
• James Washington – stand-in for Michael Dorn and Paul Winfield
• Unknown actress – stand-in for Ashley Judd

References [ ]

47 ; 2268 ; " a matter of "; ability ; act of war ; adventure ; aft ; alien ; " all right "; amplification pathway ; analogous ; angry ; annular confinement beam ( confinement beam ); annular convergence ; answer ; arm ; army ; assumption ; " at a loss "; " at the very least "; atmospheric ionization scan ; balcony ; beast ; bioscan ; black ; bluff ; border ; bull ; captain's log ; challenge ritual ; chance ; children ; Children of Tama (aka Tamarians ); choice ; city ; colony ; " come on "; communication ; communications channel ; companion ; computer ; concentration ; confidence ; confinement resolution ; contest ; continent ; country ; " course of action "; court ; creature ; cross reference ; cultural interchange ; D region ; dagger ; damage ; damage report ; danger ; database ; day ; death ; density ; desert ; door ; E region ; Earth ; " educated guess "; ego ; El-Adrel IV ; El-Adrel sector ; El-Adrel system ; electromagnetic disturbance ; electron ; EM carrier ; emotional dynamic ; emotional state ; emperor ; enemy ( foe ); energy output ; Enkidu ; evasive maneuvers ; experience ; eye ; face ; failure ; Federation ; Federation space ; fire ; fist ; " for all we know "; " for instance "; " for what's it worth "; forest ; friend ; frozen dessert ; Gallos II ; generosity ; Gilgamesh ; " go ahead "; god ; grammar ; gray ; Great Bull of Heaven ; Greek language ; ground ; hail ; " hello "; Homeric Hymns ; hour ; hundred ; hunter ; hyperionization ; image ; imagination ; impression ; impulse ; individual ( person ); intention ; ionosphere ( upper atmosphere ); island ; Jalad ; Kanda IV ; kilometer ; king ; knife ; Lerishi IV ; lifeform ; lifesign ; life support linguistic database ; location ; madness ; Magellan ; Malindi VII ; mathematical progression ; maximum range ; meaning ; meeting ; metaphor ; meter ; minute ; motivation ; mytho-historical ; mythology ; nacelle ; name ; narrative ( story ); narrative imagery ; navigational ; NBT ; nonaggression pact ; noun ; Number one ; ocean ; " of course not "; offline ; onboard system ; " out of the question "; overload ; particle beam emitter ; particle scattering field ; particle sustaining beam ( particle beam ); patience ; percent ; phase sequencer ; phase transition sequencer ( phase sequencer ); phaser ; phaser pulse ; place ; plasma reactor ; polarity coil generator ; polaron ; positron ; power surge ; prefire chamber ; proper noun ( proper name ); propulsion ; quality ; race ; Razna V ; red ; red alert ; resonance frequency ; risk ; river ; road ; romance ; Romeo and Juliet ; ruling family ; rumor ; sacrifice ; search index ; security team ; self-identity ; Seventh Dynasty ; Shantil III ; Shiku Maru , SS ; shunt ; Sigma Tama IV ; silence ; Silvestri, A. ; sky ; sleep ; solution ; " sort of "; space ; spacecraft identification file ; " stand by "; starboard ; Starfleet ; status ; storyteller ; strategy ; street ; subject ; subspace carrier ; subspace signal ; surface ; sword ; tail ; tale ; Tamarian deep space cruiser ; Tamarian language ; Tamarian vessel 08 ; tear ; temple ; term ; territory ; thermal input coefficient ; thought process ; thruster ; time index ; " tipped our hand "; " too much "; trade agreement ; transporter ; transporter beam ; Transporter Room 1 ; transporter signal ; understanding ; universal translator ; Uruk ; variable induction field ; vocabulary ; warp drive ; warrior ; week ; " what the hell "; " who the hell "; wild man ; winter ; year

Children of Tama language references [ ]

Anzo ; Bahar ; Bakor ; Bashi ; Callimas ; Chenza ; Darmok ; Darmok (colony); Darmok (emperor); Darmok (food); Darmok (hunter); Jiri ; Kadir ; Kailash ; Kanza ; Kiazi ; Kira ; Kiteo ; Kituay ; Lashmir ; Lowani ; Lungha ; Mirab ; Mo Moteh ; Rai ; Shaka ; Sokath ; Tanagra ; Tanagra (beverage); Tanagra (island); Tanagra (ruling family); Temarc ; Temba ; Ubaya ; Uzani ; Zima ; Zinda

External links [ ]

• " Darmok " at Memory Beta , the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
• " Darmok " at Wikipedia
• " Darmok " at MissionLogPodcast.com
• "Darmok" script  at Star Trek Minutiae
• " Darmok " at the Internet Movie Database
• 1 Daniels (Crewman)
• 2 Star Trek: Prodigy
• 3 James B. Sikking

Carl Tart Reveals How He Brought Tamarians Back To Star Trek - Exclusive Interview

"Star Trek: Lower Decks" is a series made for people who have obsessively watched every "Star Trek" show, read every tie-in novel, and at least considered owning all the many (often highly questionable) action figures. The show is, simply put, a feast's worth of Easter eggs. In some cases, "Lower Decks" has blown past simple references and worked to reinvent previously discarded races. Much like " Deep Space Nine " turned the oft-mocked Ferengi into complex, three-dimensional figures, "Lower Decks" did something with another "The Next Generation" foe, the Packleds .

The Packleds went from one-off dimwits to a genuine threat against the Federation in "Lower Decks" Season 1. With Season 2, the show is bringing back a beloved alien race which only appeared in one episode. The Tamarians' only appearance up until now was the "TNG" episode "Darmok," during which Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) is beamed down to a planet to fight a beast with a Tamarian captain in order to learn the Tamarian language and build a lasting peace.

Now, 20 years later, "Lowe Decks" has finally introduced Kayshon, the first Tamarian member of Starfleet. Looper sat down with Carl Tart, the actor who voices Kayshon, to find out how much research goes in to playing a Tamarian.

How Cart Tart became Kayshon

In a week, it's going to be the 20th anniversary of when the episode "Darmok" from "Star Trek: The Next Generation" first aired.

Up until this moment, that's the only time that the Tamarians have ever appeared. How did you come in to play Kayshon and bring this race back?

Well, I have some friends who are writers for the show that recommended me to be this. I guess they felt that I could carry on this character. And so I sent in an audition tape and they liked it. I definitely watched that episode to get some inspiration and to see how it's supposed to be done, and I hope I'm doing a good job.

Was this an introduction of "Star Trek" for you? Had you known a lot about the show prior to this?

This is the most I've been a part of it, definitely. Growing up, I watched "The Next Generation" a little bit, and my stepdad was a big fan of "Deep Space Nine." So I'd watch that every now and then — if I came out into the living room when he was watching it, I'd see some of it, but I didn't grow up watching it that much.

Learning the Tamarian language

What did the "Lower Decks" team tell you when they said, "Hey, we want to bring this race back"? What was the pitch to you?

The pitch to me was "Watch this episode and see if you can do this." And I was like "Cool." And then I saw it was Paul Winfield, and Paul Winfield's such a great actor. And so I was like "Yeah, I'm in. Like, if you'll have me, I'm in."

The Tamarian language is surprisingly robust. There's more to it than most people probably realize. Did you prepare? Did you learn what some of those phrases meant? I know you're a writer and an improvisational performer, too. Have you had a chance to sort of have an impact on the language?

No, I'm not even going to say that. That's all the writing. I definitely had to study quite a bit. And during the recording sessions, we had to drill certain words and certain things to make sure I got it correct, because [fans are] serious about it. So I didn't want to mess anything up. But yeah, that was interesting to just kind of — when I first received the scripts and received what I was going to be saying — I was like "Oh, okay, it's going to be hard for me to practice this," but the writers are so cool and they're so immersed into it and they know how it goes. They helped me a ton.

What Kayshon's language means for Star Trek and in real life

It doesn't actually seem like the universal translator does much to change what Kayshon is saying, because he repeatedly corrects himself. The Tamarian language is memetic and poetic, so the listener has to know the references to understand what's really being said. So the thing that I got off of it, and I'm curious to see if you also felt this, is that Kayshon kind of has to code switch for work.

Yeah. Yeah. There's a little bit of that going on. He's trying to fit in, and that happens when you're different in a space. So yeah. He has to fit in. He's trying to fit in, he's doing his best, but he is who he is. And I think what's so cool is that the people are so nice that, even though they're sometimes like "That was weird," they're really cool to him.

It's interesting that they're trying to speak the language.

And in some of the upcoming episodes they don't always succeed, which also, again, feels very true to life.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Definitely.

Who Carl Tart learned from while working on Lower Decks

Understanding that the work process is a little bit extra because of COVID, you said you've been building relationships with some of the other actors. Who have you been taking cues from, getting to know the show better as you figure out Kayshon?

Well, Tawny [Newsom] is already a friend of mine. She's already a good friend. She's another improvisor and actor and stuff. And then Ben Rodgers, who's one of the writers and who's also been on the show, and Chris Kula, another guy that I know. He's helped me probably the most because he's in every recording session with me. Kula is another UCB guy.

In his very first appearance, Kayshon very off the cuff says the phrase, "Shaka when the walls fell." Which is a pretty dire thing to say. He's saying it just because a lady turned him down. Will he also get to say it for real? Are we going to get some dramatic stuff for Kayshon by the time the season ends?

Oh, I don't know. I don't know. You got to watch. I legit don't know.

Working on Brooklyn Nine-Nine and the show's ending

"Brooklyn Nine-Nine" recently ended. You were a story editor for a little while, and you've worked with Craig Robinson on some stuff in the past, too. What that was it like working on that show? Did you have any thoughts about the circumstances that brought it to an end after its eighth season?

I really enjoyed my time there. I have so many friends that worked there with me. It's a real family affair over there, and I was happy to be a part of it. Everybody in the cast is truly the nicest person ever. And the show that I'm working on right now is actually, I'm on a new series called "Grand Crew" that'll be out early next year — I'm an actor on it. I'm out of the writer's room, but it's from the producers, from the makers of "Brooklyn Nine-Nine." Phil Augusta Jackson, who was in the room at "Brooklyn," is a good friend of mine. And Melissa Fumero directed the episode we just shot. 

I think "Brooklyn," it's complicated, but it also ... those folks over there are so cool and nice that I'm happy they got to accomplish something. It's hard to get a show on the air for eight years in today's TV landscape, especially a single-camera show. Multi-cams do a little bit better, but eight seasons, it was revived at NBC. And that was my first season working there, the first NBC season. So kudos to them, man. They're all dope. Stephanie [Beatriz] is super dope. Melissa's super dope, Terry [Crews], like, everybody's dope.

The person Carl Tart wants to join Lower Decks isn't who you'd expect

Can you tell us anything about "Grand Crew"?

Yeah. It's just like a friend comedy with some real-life friends of mine and some new friends that I've made. It stars Nicole Byer and Echo Kellum and myself and Justin Cunningham and Aaron Jennings and Gracie Mercedes, and we all kick it at this wine bar, and hijinx and comedy ensue.

Of the people you've worked with that haven't had a chance to come into "Lower Decks" already, who would you like to see at least make an appearance?

I want Shaq to be on the show.

You want Shaq to be on the show, not you doing a Shaq impression, but just the actual Shaq to just come on and do it?

What would he play?

I don't know. But I just want him there. Maybe he plays somebody in my race.

New episodes of "Star Trek: Lower Decks" stream Thursdays on Paramount+.

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Published Nov 20, 2013

One Trek Mind: Deciphering "Darmok"

Arguments about what is the best Star Trek episode can get heated and go on late into the night - I should know, I've been there. Moreover, I can be easily swayed. “ The City on the Edge of Forever ?” “ The Inner Light ?” “ Mirror Mirror ?” “ Yesterday's Enterprise ?” Yes, yes, yes! They're all the best episode. But when it comes time to discuss what is the most profound episode, I think I have a clear pick.

“ Darmok ,” from The Next Generation 's fifth season, edges out some of the competition (like TOS' fiercely pacifist “ Day of the Dove ” or “ A Taste of Armageddon ”) with its odd specificity. In other words, a message about the futility of war isn't something you'll only get from Trek . But “Darmok”'s story about a group or an individual so determined to communicate with others that they are willing to sacrifice themselves to make that contact – that's something more unusual, even if it isn't any less universal.

“Darmok,” of course, is the episode where a Tamarian (also known as the Children of Tama) named Dathon realizes that great risks must be taken if his people are ever going to reach outside their own clan. Because of their unique fashion of speech which used metaphoric descriptions based on their own mythology, the universal translator is unable to make the usual connections. We'll eventually realize that “Shaka, when the walls fell” means “failure,” but with no reference to Shaka (or his wall-falling misfortune) the UT program is unable to do so.

But Dathon perseveres. Lucky for him he's going head-to-head with Captain Picard, a man with an almost fanatical devotion to understanding and learning. It reaches its climax when Picard, our most cultured of all Captains, engaged in conversation with a man who can't really understand him, but yearns for that outreach. He tells him a story – the first story – the Epic of Gilgamesh. Perfectly, the tale of Gilgamesh mirrors the current life-or-death struggles of our two poet-warriors on the dangerous planet of El-Adrel.

But this is even luckier for us. This is just the sort of thing Patrick Stewart can sink his teeth into in ways other actors wouldn't dare. His recounting of Gilgamesh's tale is some of his most basso profundo moments in all of TNG , but that ain't nothing compared to the big finale when Picard runs to the bridge, olive branch extended, to face forward and intone the now meaningful words “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra” and “Darmok and Jalad on the ocean.”

Yet there's one annoying thing about “Darmok.” If the Tamarians only speak in these metaphors, how did they ever learn the words that later came to be used in the phrases? How did they know that walls fell around Shaka if they need a phrase to symbolize the word “wall?” Or, at the finish, when Dathon's first officer concludes “Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel,” how did they know the planet was called El-Ardel?

There are a few possible answers. The first one, as always, is “shut up!” (More so than usual, the choice to just suspend disbelief offers great pleasure – the cathartic final beat should swell up emotion in just about anyone, as success at communication is a very basic human trait.) The other suggestion I've heard is that the Tamarians speak with partial telepathy, and the verbal aspect is merely flourish – like an emotional tint that comes from inflection. Or it could just be that the instigating words are somehow just lost in the mists of time.

We do get a very quick peek at Dathon's log and its strange notation that appears to have graphs as well as glyphs. They look neat, but no amount of scrutiny will ever make them mean anything. Repeat viewings of “Darmok,” however, will give you a few key Tamarian phrases you can keep in your back pocket. Among them:

“Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra.” This most famous phrase (which appears on some hilarious T-shirts) means, basically, “working together.”

“Darmok and Jalad on the ocean.” Building on the last one, this is when two strangers, or foes, work together against a threat and succeed.

“The beast at Tanagra.” This is the foe that Darmok and Jalad fought, but has grown to represent any problem that needs to be solved. The lack of communication between Dathon and Picard is a “beast at Tanagra” of its own.

“Temba, his arms open.” This means “take or use this.” A gift.

“Temba, at rest.” When a gift has been rebuffed.

“Zinda, his face black, his eyes red.” Hearing this means bad news. Something one says when in great pain or very angry.

“Kiazi's children, their faces wet.” This also means pain, but also sadness or frustration. It may also mean “oh, leave me alone!”

“Shaka, when the walls fell.” Failure. I've decided to start saying this when anything doesn't go my way. Works just as well as “oy vey.”

“Mirab, with sails unfurled.” This means travel or departure.

“Uzani, his army with fists open.” A tactical move to lure your enemy closer by spreading out.

“Uzani, his army with fists closed.” A tactical move to close-in on an enemy after luring him in.

“The river Temarc, in winter.” Be quiet. Possibly based on “freeze,” as in “freeze your thoughts/mouth.”

“Sokath, his eyes open.” To translate this to TOS, this means “We Reach!”

I've left a few out. Frankly, I'm not sure I've nailed them all yet. However, my favorite one is “Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel.” It doesn't just mean two strangers come and make a connection. That's what “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra” and “Darmok and Jalad on the ocean” mean. No, this one is something totally new. This one means “first contact.”

Did your first viewing of “Darmok” blow your mind like it did mine? If so, leave your metaphorical description below.

__________________

Jordan Hoffman is a writer, critic and lapsed filmmaker living in New York City. His work can also be seen on Film.com , ScreenCrush and Badass Digest . On his BLOG , Jordan has reviewed all 727 Trek episodes and films, most of the comics and some of the novels.

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The Tamarians or Children of Tama are an alien race, first encountered by the Federation in the 23rd century.

Tamarians stand at roughly the same size as an average Human and their body shape is similar to that of many humanoid species found in the Milky Way Galaxy, apart from some minor differences. Tamarian hands and fingers are Human-like but their thumbs are elongated and have a sucker-like tip at the end.

The Tamarian head also differs from the Human counterpart. Tamarians possess two long slitted nostrils and have no visible auricles, but instead have two small holes located on the sides of the head, a little higher than the Human ear. A large ridge runs from the top of their nose to the back of the head and several more bony ridges or flaps of skin can be observed on the sides of the skull. Apart from typical sexual dimorphisms observed in many humanoid species, female Tamarians feature the same characteristics.

Tamarian skin is colored light brown with several darker red markings, especially on the head. The species seems to be completely hairless and their blood is white, which shines through in some small arteries of the head.

• 1 History and politics
• 3.1 Background

History and politics [ edit ]

Although the species was encountered a total of seven times in the hundred years after first contact, formal relations were unable to be established, due to the complexity and provincial nature of the Tamarian language – which is entirely composed of metaphors derived from their collective experience and mythology. The origins and context of several of the terms and persons referenced suggest that the Tamarian homeworld is Shantil III .

In 2368, a Tamarian ship sent a general hail towards Federation space, a standard mathematical progression interpreted as a request for communication. The USS Enterprise-D was dispatched to El-Adrel IV to establish contact. While there, the Tamarian captain Dathon beamed himself and Enterprise captain Jean-Luc Picard to the planet's surface, in an attempt to establish a dialog through the idea of "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra" – the idea of cooperation against an enemy leading to mutual understanding and friendship. To prevent any interference, the Tamarian ship established a particle scattering field in El-Adrel's ionosphere, preventing transporters on either ship from functioning, and fired attenuated energy weapons on an Enterprise shuttlecraft dispatched to retrieve Picard. Unfortunately, Dathon was killed by the creature inhabiting the planet, but not before Picard was able to gain an understanding of the Tamarian language, and communicate with the Tamarian ship, which was engaged in combat with the Enterprise as a result of the misunderstanding over Picard's "capture". Dathon's sacrifice was remembered as a new "word" in the Tamarian language: "Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel".

Culture [ edit ]

The Tamarian written language Apart from their unique language, Tamarians follow several rituals and some characteristic gestures have been observed.

Before sleeping, Dathon performed a ritual on El-Adrel IV. He removed five ceremonial objects from the right side of his uniform. He then threw those objects to the ground gazing at the pattern the objects formed on the ground and repeated the ritual. After each new pattern, he touched his forehead.

After finishing the ritual, he took the five objects and placed them on the ground forming a circle around his sleeping spot. Again, he touched his forehead after placing each of them on the ground. The next morning, when Captain Picard explored his camp, he found two of the objects still on the ground, Dathon had reattached the other three to his uniform.

After hearing the news of their captain's death, the two Tamarian bridge officers took their dagger out of the sheath, touched the blade and then touched their forehead in mourning or remembrance of their captain. Captain Picard did the same with the knife that was given to him by Dathon after he had returned to the Enterprise-D and found a quiet moment in his ready room to remember Dathon.

The Tamarian written language consists of thin horizontal and vertical lines with small letters written in the spaces between the lines. The lines meet at right angles in the hand written form of the language but in an angle of circa 70 degrees on computer interfaces. Tamarians still use paper, colored bright green, to write down notes. Dathon took a small book, perhaps a captain's log, down to El-Adrel IV in a leather pouch. His other officers didn't carry such a book.

Tamarian language [ edit ]

The Tamarian language was the spoken language of the Tamarians. Federation Universal Translators , although they successfully translate the words, present the syntax as almost nonsensical, because the Tamarians speak entirely by metaphor, referencing mythological and historical people and events from their culture. Thus, instead of asking for cooperation, they would use a phrase such as "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra", because their culture's stories include a tale of two Tamarians, Darmok and Jalad, who fought a common foe together on an island called Tanagra. The problem with communicating in this fashion is that without knowing the meaning of the reference, the metaphor remains utterly obscure. (TNG: "Darmok")

Some examples of the Tamarian language:

• "Darmok on the ocean" - loneliness, isolation
• "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra" - cooperation
• "The beast at Tanagra" - an obstacle to be overcome
• "Kadir beneath Mo Moteh" - failure to communicate/understand
• "Kiteo, his eyes closed" - refusal to understand
• "Temba, his arms wide/open" - signifying a gift
• "Temba, at rest" - when a gift being offered is declined
• "Mirab, with sails unfurled" - signifying departure/engines to full/fleeing
• "Shaka, when the walls fell" - failure
• "Sokath, his eyes uncovered/opened" - understanding/realization
• "The river Temarc in winter" - be quiet/silence
• "Zinda, his face black, his eyes red" - anger or conflict, also can indicate pain or discomfort
• "Rai and Jiri at Lungha. Rai of Luwani, Luwani under two moons. Giri, or Ubaya. Ubaya of crossroads, at Lungha. Lungha, her sky gray" - greeting between two different cultures/races
• "Uzani, his army with fists open" - to lure the enemy away
• "Uzani, with fists closed" - to attack
• "Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel" - to work toward a common goal

These phrases and idioms are often attenuated in conversation - "Shaka, when the walls fell" has been heard shortened to "Shaka"; others follow a similar pattern.

In one scene where Picard attempts to treat a wounded Dathon, the Tamarian says "Kiazi's children, their faces wet". It is unclear what Dathon means by this, although (since Dathon is trying to shoo Picard away from caring for his injuries at the time) it may allude to children crying for no reason; the Tamarian may be saying that Picard should not worry or feel sad.

Background [ edit ]

A language based on metaphors pre-supposes that the stories behind the metaphors are known and understood in the first place, which means they must at some point themselves be told (or possibly communicated in some other way, e.g. through pictures).

Military [ edit ]

The dominant colors used by the Tamarians as evidenced by their starships, uniforms and interfaces are shades of green and red. The engines of their starship glow red and their weapon's beam is green. Consoles on the bridge of their ships are colored mostly red and walls are green. Tamarian computer interfaces are transparent but the writing is blue and green.

Tamarian uniforms do not show much variety. All uniforms consist of several layers of olive green fabric and dark green leather. Several small colorful applications and stripes are only visible when viewing the uniform from a close distance. The full uniform consists of the trousers and tunic, long dark green leather boots and a double shoulder-strap connected to a belt, both made from leather as well. A sheath for a dagger is fastened to the front of the two leather straps and a small pouch for a book, possibly the Captain's log, is attached to the left side of the belt.

A decorative pattern can be seen on the sides of the sleeves. Several small ornaments made from thin metal pieces and small colorful stones are attached to the front right side of the uniform. Dathon carried five such pieces; his first officer wore three.

Every Tamarian carries a dagger. The weapon has a green handle with a smaller yellow inset and the silver blade has one smooth and one serrated edge. (TNG: "Darmok")

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Star Trek: The Next Generation - "Darmok": Explanation of Tamarian Language Video

Watch this short clip from the hit TV show Star Trek: Next Generation . It's from an episode called "Darmok", in which the crew of the Enterprise encounters an alien race, the Tamarians. Then choose the most appropriate answer for each of the following questions. But first, here's the set-up: The ship's universal translator translates the aliens' speech into English, but the two races still cannot communicate. That failure to make meaning with one another may lead to war.

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P icard understanding Darmok: A Dataset and Model for Metaphor-Rich Translation in a Constructed Language

Peter A. Jansen , Jordan Boyd-Graber

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[Picard understanding Darmok: A Dataset and Model for Metaphor-Rich Translation in a Constructed Language](https://aclanthology.org/2022.flp-1.5) (Jansen & Boyd-Graber, Fig-Lang 2022)

• Picard understanding Darmok: A Dataset and Model for Metaphor-Rich Translation in a Constructed Language (Jansen & Boyd-Graber, Fig-Lang 2022)
• Peter A. Jansen and Jordan Boyd-Graber. 2022. Picard understanding Darmok: A Dataset and Model for Metaphor-Rich Translation in a Constructed Language . In Proceedings of the 3rd Workshop on Figurative Language Processing (FLP) , pages 34–38, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (Hybrid). Association for Computational Linguistics.

Picard understanding Darmok: A Dataset and Model for Metaphor-Rich Translation in a Constructed Language

Tamarian, a fictional language introduced in the Star Trek episode Darmok , communicates meaning through utterances of metaphorical references, such as “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra” instead of “We should work together.” This work assembles a Tamarian-English dictionary of utterances from the original episode and several follow-on novels, and uses this to construct a parallel corpus of 456 English-Tamarian utterances. A machine translation system based on a large language model (T5) is trained using this parallel corpus, and is shown to produce an accuracy of 76% when translating from English to Tamarian on known utterances. 1 1 1 Data and code available at: https://github.com/cognitiveailab/darmok

1 Introduction

Science fiction and fantasy literature has long created constructed languages for their characters, from Elvish in Lord of the Rings and Klingon in Star Trek to Heptapod in Arrival   Cheyne ( 2008 ) . These languages often have many of the same syntactic or semantic features as human languages, and some (such as Klingon) have been developed to a level where full dictionaries Okrand ( 1992 ) and online translators are available. 2 2 2 https://www.translate.com/klingon-english

An unconventional language was proposed in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation called “Darmok” , where a race of aliens called the Tamarians speak a language that is communicated exclusively through metaphors. Instead of direct reference (e.g. “I want to give this to you” ), Tamarians speak in metaphorical references grounded in stories (e.g. “Temba, his arms wide” ) that (like symbols) have learned associations with their true meaning meaning. In the Darmok story, the unusual nature of the language poses a challenge for both the automated translation systems and the characters in the story to learn. The creator of the language, Joe Mendowsky was inspired by the difficulty of translating across cultures  Block and Erdmann ( 2012 ) , and Tamarian has since been the subject of repeated informal study Bogost ( 2014 ) in the 30 years since the episode aired.

This work investigates the feasibility of translating this artificial metaphor-rich language via our new parallel corpus of English-Tamarian phrases (Figure  1 ). Our machine translation system based on a large language model (Raffel et al., 2020 , T5) has 76% accuracy in translating English phrases to Tamarian metaphorical utterances. This suggests automatically translating metaphor-grounded languages may be feasible, though we discuss several pragmatic challenges in representing complex expressions and generating a parallel corpus preventing scaling the approach.

2 English-Tamarian Parallel Corpus

Comparatively few Tamarian utterances have been authored, effectively limiting the size and scope of the effort. To maximize the number of available utterances, all utterances from the original broadcast episode, as well as those in three licensed novels featuring a Tamarian main character were used Beyer ( 2012 , 2014 , 2015 ) . Approximately twenty utterances are provided in the Darmok episode, while an additional forty-eight are used in the novels, for a total of sixty-eight utterances.

Tamarian-to-English dictionary:

To create a parallel English-Tamarian corpus, first a Tamarian-to-English dictionary that captures the inferred meaning of each Tamarian utterance was required. The meanings of the twenty broadcast utterances was ascertained from a Reddit thread with extensive discussion of the topic. 3 3 3 https://www.reddit.com/r/DaystromInstitute/comments/4ggwo5/the_tamarian_language_an_analysis/ The meanings of the remaining forty-eight utterances was inferred as best as possible from the surrounding context of where they appeared in their respective novels.

Tamarian-English Parallel Corpus:

Training a machine translation system requires a parallel corpus, where utterances of one language are paired with utterances of a second language, where the utterances in both languages have the same meaning. Tamarian utterances abstractly refer to specific types of situations that could be applicable to many circumstances. Thus, for each Tamarian utterance a set of  k 𝑘 k English examples were manually authored, with ten examples authored for thirty-nine utterances, and five examples authored for eleven utterances. Eighteen Tamarian utterances were not included in the parallel corpus as they have relatively narrow meanings, and generating a large number of parallel examples for them in English proved challenging. The final parallel corpus contains fifty Tamarian utterances, paired with 456 parallel English utterances (Table  1 ).

3 Translation Model

Here, English-to-Tamarian is modeled as a sequence-to-sequence (seq2seq) learning task, using English utterances as the source sentence, and a single Tamarian translation of that English utterance as the target sentence.

Modeling used T5 Raffel et al. ( 2020 ) , a large pre-trained multi-task language model. T5 includes pre-training for a variety of tasks, including question answering, summarization, and translation. Several model sizes were explored, including T5-small (66M parameters), T5-base (220M parameters) and T5-large (220M parameters). The model prompt took the form of:

translate English to Tamarian: { src }

where { src } is the English source sentence to translate (e.g. “She offered it to them” ). The model then generated a corresponding target sequence corresponding to the Tamarian translation of the source sentence (e.g. “Temba. His arms wide.” ). The model was implemented using the Huggingface Transformers library Wolf et al. ( 2020 ) .

Dataset splits:

Due to small dataset, we use 5-fold crossvalidation: with 60% of data used for training, 20% for development, and 20% for test. For utterances with ten examples, this corresponds to six train, two development, and two test samples per run, while for utterances with five examples, this corresponds to three train, one development, and one test sample per run.

Evaluation Metrics:

Translation performance was evaluated using sacreBLEU   Post ( 2018 ) , a metric that measures translation performance using n 𝑛 n -grams, while taking partial matches into account. Here, because only fifty Tamarian utterances are available, and their surface presentation is generally constant, we also consider evaluating translation as an N 𝑁 N -class classification task where a given English input sentence can be classified as one of fifty Tamarian utterances.

Models were trained until performance (BLEU) asymptoted on the development set, at thirty epochs. The best performing model achieves a translation accuracy of 76% on the unseen test set, which corresponds to translating approximately three out of four English utterances from the corpus correctly into Tamarian (Table  2 ).

5 Discussion

As a constructed language for a fictional universe, Tamarian is a low resource language with fewer than one hundred known utterances. What might it take to grow Tamarian (or a metaphorically-grounded Tamarian-like language) into a more complete artificial language similar to Klingon? This section attempts to address the challenges of scaling beyond this work in the context of two central difficulties: growing the parallel corpus of metaphors, and challenges associated with the semantics of translating complex ideas in Tamarian.

5.1 Growing the Parallel Corpus

Growing the vocabulary of metaphors in Tamarian presents a unique challenge for constructed languages. Where human languages typically expresses base-level semantics at the level of the morpheme or word, Tamarian’s most atomic construction is a single metaphor, making approaches that start with translating a dictionary challenging to adapt. One approach to growing Tamarian would be to continue the current manual approach, identifying a set of atomic events that convey common situations (such as eating, giving, taking, or helping ), and authoring utterances grounded in an expanded Tamarian mythology—for example, “Timba, his stomach rumbling” to convey the notion of hunger. The prerequisite for having an exhaustive list of possible event schemas to translate would likely make this approach challenging to scale.

Automatic Generation:

An alternate approach was suggested by Picard in Darmok – to use the existing body of human literature (such as the Epic of Gilgamesh ) to build a Tamarian-like language grounded in metaphors inferred from classic literature. Picard suggests that “Gilgamesh and Enkidu at Uruk” might be an utterance to represent a central component of the story – two people who were first in conflict coming together in friendship. Such an automatic approach to building a Tamarian-like language is in principle feasible, potentially making use of recent successes in automatic summarization to extract key elements of a story in templated form (e.g. { PersonX } and { PersonY } at { Location }) to generate novel utterances. One of the challenges with this approach is that narratives often contain many events, specified both at a low-level (e.g. Enkidu entering the city of Uruk) and high-level (e.g. Gilgamesh and Enkidu eventually forming a friendship in spite of their differences), and identifying only a single idea to be represented by the utterance would be difficult.

5.2 The Challenge of Translating Fine-grained Semantics

It has been hypothesized that Tamarian may not be well suited to expressing fine-grained semantics, and would present challenges for translating utterances such as “Hand me the blue screw driver on the left“ Bogost ( 2014 ) . While the few observed multi-utterance exchanges of Tamarian have (so far) typically conveyed steps in a story, we present three hypotheses for how fine-grained semantics might be achieved, with examples shown in Table  3 : {enumerate*}

Gesture/Context hypothesis: The spoken Tamarian language may ground ambiguity through gestures or other situated contextual cues, as the Tamarian captain does when he utters “Temba, his arms wide” (take) and gestures to a weapon.

Specificity hypothesis: Though impractical, the Tamarian language may have many utterances to refer to very specific situations.

Modifier hypothesis: Unobserved classes of utterances may serve as modifiers, providing additional clarification to an utterance. There is partial observation of both the gesture/context and modifier hypotheses provided in the original Darmok episode, and we believe the modifier hypothesis likely provides a mechanism for composing larger units of meaning akin to a generative grammar.

The more fundamental challenge of extending Tamarian is that every sentence must be connected to an underlying mythology: if you want to translate a sentence you must first create a universe  Sagan et al. ( 1983 ) . While we can invent Tamarian sounding proper nouns, a more fundamental challenge is to build a world where there are characters who would have or invent a screwdriver, a character who could successfully use it, a character who would use it incorrectly, and perhaps someone else who could address when you’ve accidentally stripped the head of the screwdriver.

Thus, the challenge is not just creating enough examples but also building the cultural cannon to support those examples. While this is a unique linguistic challenge for Tamarian, it follows the course of other constructed languages: Quenya was developed alongside the backstory of Middle Earth  Lewis ( 1995 ) and the creator of the Klingon language also ensured that the Klingon mythology was recorded in the Klingon language  Schönfeld et al. ( 2011 ) . Tamarian foregrounds this challenge of obtaining enough cultural context to translate  Keesing ( 1985 ); Maitland ( 2017 ) .

6 Related Work: (Computational) Linguistics for Constructed Languages

The elephant in the room is whether it is worthwhile to study constructed languages at all. This section seeks to answer that question with a resounding yes by discussing the other insights that have come from scholarly investigations of constructed languages.

Tamarian is from the Star Trek Universe, so it is instructive to spend a little time first with the oldest Star Trek language, Klingon. Klingon is often used in nlp education because it has features that are rare in natural languages but it is incredibly regular: a morphological analyzer can get 100% accuracy but still have fascinating properties like affixes for honorifics, completion, and tense  Wicentowski ( 2004 ) . Likewise, because Klingon is by construction meant to feel literally alien, its ovs structure can also upend students’ part of speech tagging expectations  Boyd-Graber ( 2014 ) .

But Klingon is not just a fun exercise for programmers and linguists; the creation of parallel data (as discussed above for Tamarian) also explores the interplay between culture and translation. For the translation of Hamlet into Klingon, cultural adaptation  Peskov et al. ( 2021 ) is also needed: for example, Fortinbras becomes “the most insuborinate head of the House of Duras”  Kazimierczak ( 2010 ) . The art of translation often relies on metaphor  Veale ( 2016 ) and cultural knowledge  Vinay and Darbelnet ( 1995 ) , and just as exploring Klingon can reveal limitations of our understanding of affix morphology and ovs word order, Tamarian can help illuminate the limitations of metaphor in communication.

All extant constructed languages are low resource languages, which typically pose challenges for machine translation  Haddow et al. ( 2021 ) . Like how Klingon can emphasize particular aspects of a language (word order, morphology), Tamarian helps focus attention on the role of mythology, inter-personal relationships, and multiword expressions for translation.

7 Conclusion

This paper is an initial English–Tamarian translation model. This task is difficult because it not only maps words to words but also maps metaphor to typical translation phrases. While Tamarian is a constructed language, it shows large language models’ ability and limitations for metaphor.

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