Star Trek: 10 Episode Spoilers Hidden In The French Translation
8. Le Collectif (Unity)
In this season three episode of Star Trek: Voyager, Commander Chakotay and Ensign Marie Kaplan are charting the Nekrit Expanse when they detect a Federation signal. They land on a near-by planet and are attacked by a band of aliens. Kaplan is killed, but Chakotay is saved by a group of inhabitants with a few secrets to hide.
The translation of this episode title (quite simply, ‘The Collective’) would immediately scream ‘Les Borg’ to even the most casual French viewer. Given the cliff-hanger discovery of a Borg corpse at the end of the previous episode, Blood Fever, any viewer might have been able to anticipate a drone or two, but the original title does attempt to remain cryptic so as to avoid this.
On balance, the English-speaking viewer shouldn't have been tipped off to any (ex-)Borg presence before the end of Act One when Voyager stumbles across an abandoned Borg cube. Furthermore, it’s not until the end of Act Three that Chakotay finds out that his rescuers are (former) Borg drones wanting to form their own mini-collective called ‘the Cooperative’ (presumably without the groceries or funeral care).
The French title should, therefore, come with at least a yellow alert for spoilers. To translate ‘Unity’ directly into French as ‘(L’)unité’ would have admittedly been problematic. It would not have carried across the sense of ‘unity of purpose’ that is implied in the English and is key to the episode's plot. Still, the translation we got is definitely far from Borg perfection!