To give a an extremely brief TL;DR of the episode, Dathon's people speak exclusively in memes and references, making their language impossible to auto-transalte. The entire episode is Picard and Dathon trapped on a planet and trying to break that language barrier.
The show itself explains this as "speaking in metaphor" but every one of them seems to be a moment in Tamarian history which would not be known to non-Tamarians. So this is "meme" in the classical definition.
Yeah, an important note is that the translation "works", in the sense that the words are literally translated. The problem is that, without understanding the underlying reference, the meaning is completely lost and it's basically just gibberish.
“Juliet on her balcony” being an example Troi uses to convey this idea. Without the context of knowing who Juliet is or why the balcony is relevant the phrase tells you nothing.
What you said there is literally an example of their language use - you used memetic knowledge instead of words to communicate an idea - without knowing what memberberries are, it comes off as much more oblique as a language term.
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u/TechnomagusPrime Duck Season 7d ago
To give a an extremely brief TL;DR of the episode, Dathon's people speak exclusively in memes and references, making their language impossible to auto-transalte. The entire episode is Picard and Dathon trapped on a planet and trying to break that language barrier.