Challenge #01770-D309: One Aggravating Evening on a Space Station

Everyone’s translators break down at the worst possible moment. -- TheDragonsFlame

Someone had sabotaged the Universal Translator. Someone for whom the peace negotiations meant only trouble. Unfortunately, there were plenty of parties who could fit that particular motive.

The negotiations room on Deep Space Nine had become a tower of Babel. Bajoran, Cardassian, several Terran dialects, Ferengi and Vulcan and Breen. All at once. Dax knew Vulcan, Ferengi, and all of the Terran tongues, but there was only one other person on the station who had learned the rest. Odo. Simply because the technology to implant his shapeshifting body with the Universal Translator had not existed for most of his life. He'd picked up languages the hard way - by being plunged into them at random and expected to take up the slack all by himself.

He certainly shocked the hell out of the Grand Nagus by politely requesting that he keep his curses and vices to himself, as such behaviour was the opposite of good business. It got more than a little ridiculous over that, and required the re-invention of the Talking Stick, lest the room remain a chaos of babble, people yelling, and nobody understanding each other.

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