Weird question about the "tongues" spell?

[Yqatuba]

If, say, someone under the effects of the spell tries talking to someone who doesn't speak a language (let's just say Elven) very well does the spell "translate" their speech into what they are TRYING to say? Or does it translate it literally? Even if what they're saying makes no sense?

[avr]

You understand them, including their dialect. You may not even realise that in proper Elvish the actual words they used suggested that their hovercraft was full of eels IMO.

[Joey Cote]

I would think that in a situation where the person was babbling, say due to insanity, the tongue spell would simply translate the words but not provide any clarity because the tongue spell doesn't read minds, it just translates language.

I don't think it would give additional clarity in a situation with a really low intelligence or an extremely inarticulate person trying to explain something either.

[MrCharisma]

CULTURAL ADAPTATION (it even mentions Tongues)

[Ferka]

I’m with avr on this one. You speak and understand Billy Bob the Dwarf’s pidgin elvish just fine, and can speak it back. Anyone who only understands real Elvish will probably have no idea what you are talking about.

[Scott Wilhelm]

I think you should play with it. some up with reasons for the Tongues Spell to work weirdly, and have fun with your party.

I had an idea kind of like this but with the True Seeing Spell. I was thinking of surprising the party by making True Seeing have you see some things things too truely sometimes. In my campaign, for instance, while under the effect of True Seeing, you can't read. All you can see is a rectangular prism of low height made of some kind of fine fibers and stained with many blotches of dark-colored chemicals: you can't see it as a page, writing, or language. If you look in a mirror, you will not be able to see a reflection.

[Yqatuba]

Scott Wilhelm wrote:

I think you should play with it. some up with reasons for the Tongues Spell to work weirdly, and have fun with your party.

I had an idea kind of like this but with the True Seeing Spell. I was thinking of surprising the party by making True Seeing have you see some things things too truely sometimes. In my campaign, for instance, while under the effect of True Seeing, you can't read. All you can see is a rectangular prism of low height made of some kind of fine fibers and stained with many blotches of dark-colored chemicals: you can't see it as a page, writing, or language. If you look in a mirror, you will not be able to see a reflection.

Reminds me of something I read somewhere where someone said X-ray vision would only be worth having if you can ALSO turn it off and be able to see the outside of objects as well.

[Bjørn Røyrvik]

Welcome to the wonderful world of magic not making sense once you think about it for half a second.

Considering the immense variety of euphemisms, metaphors (living and dead), similes, stock phrases, sayings, quotes, etc. that make up any given language, you can either assume that Tongues will allow you to understand what people are trying to say without much trouble, or have it be nearly useless.

On 'literal translations'
Literal translation is almost useless as a guideline because all translation is also interpretation. There are few, if any, words that have a 1:1 correspondence in any two languages. How does the translation spell work if the source language does not require some grammatical element that the target has?
E.g. translating from language A where nouns do no require stated gender or number to language B where they are? "[someone] did something" in A cannot be translated literally to B without adding information that the original lacked. Does the spell add this information? Does if fail to translate those bits, leaving gaps in the translation? Do you get an error message and the whole thing is left untranslated?
What do you do with words and meanings for which there are no real equivalents. take Japanese with its convoluted register for politeness. you may well argue that no matter which of the 1st person singular pronouns is used in Japanese, an English translation would end up with 'I', but what happens if it goes the other way?

Let's look at metaphorical speech. Take the euphemism 'to pass away' which as far as I can tell, is exclusively used for 'to die' and nothing else. If this phrase only has a single meaning in actual use, should Tongues translate it as anything but /die/? And if so, at what point does a literal translation go from a possibly nonsensical meaning in the target language to getting an accurate translation of meaning?
How about dead metaphors? mouths of rivers, heads of corporations, legs of chairs, feet of hills and mountains; these are technically metaphors, yet these are the only ways we have to refer to the objects they denote: shouldn't a translation take this into account if trying to convey the sentence 'the head of the tribe fell into the mouth of the river that runs past the foot of the mountain'?

What about homonyms? If the meaning of a sentence can vary depending on which meaning of a particular sound combination is intended, how does a 'literal' translation spell manage this? Does it have to see it written down? Would that help?

TLDR:
'literal translation' makes more headaches than it solves and the quickest and easiest solution, if not most linguistically pleasing, is that actual meaning is generally conveyed.

[Senko]

This spell grants the creature touched the ability to speak and understand the language of any intelligent creature, whether it is a racial tongue or a regional dialect.

So it applies for pretty much any language but it only translates that language from one to another it does not impart meaning. Which by my defination makes it function as a translator X said Y not as an interpreator X MEANT Y.

Billy Bob the dwarf say's in Darven "Kartaak magra sek ma doon" and tounges translates that to "The chicken's in the coop and the moon is high." Clear, precies and apparently gibberish unless you know that phrase is a common phrase in the slang of upper cavern Dwarfs to mean "I'm off work lets hit the pub" a rather rude phrase because it references surface things like the moon. No if you added the cultural adaption spell you'd understand the meaning because you are (a) getting the language translated by tounges and then (b) interpreted by cultural adaption for meaning.

It will translate language concepts e.g. "sit on the female chair" or shift grammar around to mesh but it wont deal with slang, madness or the like.

Generally it'll be fine as long as you avoid slang or colloqialisms which is I imagine how common works its largely useless for true poetry or creative concepts in the opinion of most races being pared down to clear objective terms. Hmmm on thinking about it I should perhaps adjust it in my games for tounges to translate X to common and back but not X to Y. I shall think on this.