Talking With Aliens: A Universal Translator?

One of the problems facing any science fiction story or SETI style project is communication between humanity and an alien race. Even assuming the aliens use symbol-based communication, how do we learn their language when we have no cultural historical or cultural reference points? Most fiction gets round this problem by assuming some sort of Star Trek style "Universal Translator".

Such an interplanetary Rosetta Stone is way beyond our current technology however it might have just come one small step closer to reality.

The Telegraph reports that Dr John Elliott of Leeds Metropolitan University is working on a computer program to help analyse alien messages and work out their language. Elliot's theory is that any language must have a structure and it should be possible to decode some of that structure - for instance identifying verbs and adjectival phrases - even if we don't know the meaning of the "words". To assist in this pattern recognition Elliot is analysing the syntax of dozens of different human languages.

Elliot also suggests that we might be able to deduce something about the aliens' intelligence level from the complexity of their language. Personally I think we just need look at whether or not they know how to use apostrophes correctly.