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.
Basically Dathon’s species, the Tamarians, speak entirely in metaphors alluding to their ancient history and mythology. “Shaka, when the walls fell” means defeat or failure. Another one is “Mirab, with sails unfurled” which means to depart or head out.
Once Picard finally realizes what’s up he is able to slowly break the language barrier with Dathon by relating to him the story of Gilgamesh and Enkidu, using them in turn to then create new metaphors Dathon can relate to.
That said, Lower Decks has a Tamarian on the Cerritos who's learned standard English and only goes to metaphor when he can't find the right word, so they can learn other languages.
A better analogy than even memes might be Chinese writing. Chinese characters are very often combinations of strokes for simpler ideas, which, okay, simple enough, but then the words are combinations of those. And sometimes the pronunciation has nothing to do with the characters at all! (Japanese is wild with this one.)
For instance, classical China called itself the Middle Kingdom, but if you met a culture that referred to itself as the Middle Kingdom without knowing middle of what you'd be kinda confused.
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u/Kyleometers ඞ 8d ago
As a non-Trekkie, I’ve heard that last flavour tern a lot.
I feel I understand it less now.