Translator Collar

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Russell: Cool! What do these do, boy? (Russell starts to fiddle with a dial on Dug's collar) Dug: Hey would you cuerdo con tigo I use that collar watashi wa hanashi ma to talk with. I would be happy if you stop. —Up

A home-grown variety of translation device that can turn your trusty pet into a Talking Animal. Given their Amplified Animal Aptitude, this is usually a good thing.

Comes in three types:

1. Completely external: A suit or device is in close proximity to the subject.
2. Completely internal: A device is implanted or permanently attached to the subject.
3. Mixed: The phlebotinum that interprets the subject is separated in some way from the phlebotinum that talks for the subject and thus can be external and/or internal.

Compare Universal Translator and contrast Uplifted Animal. See also Translator Microbes

Examples of Translator Collar include:

Anime & Manga

• The Powered Armor used by Poipoider and other porpoises in Mars Daybreak translate their language as well as letting them walk on land.
• Sakamoto's Handkerchief / Bandana / Collar in Nichijou.

Comic Books

• Brute Force: the protagonist.
• WE 3: the protagonist.
• In All Fall Down, Phylum—trapped in the form of a chimpanzee—receives one in the mail from an anonymous donor, giving him back his voice. It's booby-trapped to give corrupting advice to Pronto from the lips of his best friend.

Film

• Inspector Gadget 2, the sequel to the live-action Inspector Gadget movie, featured a collar that translates dog language to English, which they put on Brain.
• In the movie adaption of Congo as in the book, Amy the gorilla had been taught sign-language. Unlike the book however, the movie gave her a robotic glove that would translate her signing into audible speech to make things easier on the audience.
• In the Disney live-action movie The Cat from Outer Space, the title character had a collar that could read his brainwaves and translate his thoughts into human speech (among many other remarkable capabilities).

Literature

• Some short story concerned an ape who was implanted with a device that sent out radio waves. As I recall, some measure of relief came from having the speaker set up with an off switch, probably playing off Koko the Gorilla.
• Rats Bats and Vats by Eric Flint and Dave Freer played with this trope. The anthropomorphic rats were genetically engineered to be bipedal. However, their minds were uplifted with alien microchip technology and they needed an implant to speak to humans.
• In the 1981 book Megalodon by Robin Brown, the protagonist scientist has developed the Janus device, a computer/vocoder/translator which enables him to teach two dolphins (nicknamed Doris and Macho) and a killer whale (Morgan) a rudimentary language (their own language is sophisticated enough to communicate three-dimensional sonar images—it's converting that into language simple enough to be translated that's the problem).

Live Action Television

• In SeaQuest DSV, Darwin the dolphin is able to communicate with his human crewmates using a device that Lucas built. However, due to the abstract nature of a dolphin's thought processes, his communications aren't always clear.
  • In one episode, a rogue overhears Darwin "talk" and assumes the dolphin really can communicate in English. He captures Darwin when he goes out for a swim and tries to persuade him to reveal where the center of the universe is. When he is later allowed to talk to Darwin using the device, the dolphin tells him that the center of the universe is "inside [him]".

Newspaper Comics

• Parodied in a panel of The Far Side involving an inventor who created a device for translating dogs' barking, which he carried around with him. As he walked down the street, all he heard was "HEY!" "HEY!" "HEY!" "HEY!" "HEY!" "HEY!" "HEY!"

Webcomics

• The otherworlders of Miamaska are an example of #3, explained briefly here.

Western Animation

• The dog collars in Up also come with different language settings and a screen with tra-SQUIRREL! tracking information.
• Steve the monkey in Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs involves a sweatband and a Speak'n'Spell.
• Jimmy Neutron has a device that lets him talk to fish.
• A scientist on Scooby Doo, Where Are You! (episode "Scooby's Night with a Frozen Fright") also had a device that let him talk to fish. The fish looked at Scooby and said, "Scooby Doo! Scooby Doo!"
  • He actually developed it to work on dolphins since dolphins actually posses a language. It just also worked on fish, probably because of Rule of Funny.
• Parodied on The Wild Thornberrys. A bratty kid shows Eliza (who can actually talk to animals) a device which can attract animals and demonstrates it on Darwin. After he leaves, Darwin asks Eliza what the device was and why it was talking about apple pie.
• Related: In an episode of The Simpsons, Unkie Herb invented a Baby Translator, which transformed Maggie's "goo-goo-gaa-gaa" into phrases that the parents could understand like "Burp me," "Oh, dear, I seem to have soiled myself," etc.
• Danny Phantom has one where Jack tries to build a ghost-to-human translator. However, as the ghosts in the series can speak English (or other human languages) anyway, all it accomplishes is giving Jack yet another hint that his son is part-ghost, which of course he completely ignores.

I am a ghost. Fear me.

• In Dexter's Laboratory, Dexter once invented a pill that allowed a dog to talk, only to find that it didn't make much more sense in English; a double subversion because when the dog's owner comes to pick him up, his human English sounds like the dog's translated dog-language.
• Futurama had an episode where Professor Farnsworth's latest project involved a hat that would give monkeys human intellect and the ability to speak. Played for Laughs, of course.
• The Phineas and Ferb episode "Interview With A Platypus" had Phineas and Ferb work on a Perry Translator, that turned out to work on all animals, which they then used to tell pet owners what their pets want.
  • And it eventually turned out Perry's "rrrrr!" didn't really mean anything.
• In an episode of My Friends Tigger and Pooh, Rabbit invents a device to translate what Buster's saying, which doesn't work. (Yes, Rabbit's a talking rabbit. Yes, he says dogs can't really talk. Just go with it.)
• Brain also gets a translating collar when he makes a return appearance in Inspector Gadget and the Gadgetinis; in the earlier series he could only bark and mime.
• In one episode of Adventure Time, Lady Rainicorn gets one but is causes her to talk like an old man.
• In Dogstar episode Pedigree, Lincoln Clark creates a 'voice-box' for dog-scent sniffer-cat Boombah. They quickly discover that Boombah has nothing interesting to say, and that Simone has been lying about being able to talk to the cat.

Truth in Television

• The BowLingual, if it works.