Do You Think We Have No Emotions?

[Sarek, Vulcan Ambassador to Earth, had become close friends with Amanda Greyson during her work adding his language to the then-fledgling Universal Translator Project.]

…There came a time when the day seemed somehow incomplete if she had not called him and asked him about something, or told him what she was doing. There came a time when it seemed odd not to have dinner together at least one day of the weekend, if not both. There came a time when it seemed quite normal that he should visit her at her house, and have dinner with her, and stay late, talking about everything in the world. The worlds. Now there were truly more than one, and he felt as if he was living both of them. The word lists had started the process: it was the word lists that finally put the finishing touch to it.

“You have mistranslated this,” he said, sitting on her couch and tapping the printout. “I thought we had discussed this. Do you mean to tell me that this revision of the list went to the committee?”

She frowned at him. “I told you it was going to. What’s the problem?”

“This word.” He pointed at arie’mnu. “It does not mean elimination of emotion. That is not what we do, by and large.”

“But all the earlier—”

“If you will pay attention to all the earlier translations, you will perpetuate their mistakes! Nor, what is this, down here, nor is it ‘suppression.’ Control is wrong as well. Mastery, it is mastery. There is a difference!”

She shrugged and sighed. “It’s going to be hard to get it changed now. It’s just one word, we can catch it in the next translation—

“And leave everyone who hears the word for the next ten years thinking that we have no emotions? Do you think we have no emotions?”

“Do you have emotions?” she said, arching her eyebrows at him. He was being teased, and he knew it.

And instantly he knew something else, as well.

“You will have to judge,” he said…and drew her close.

And showed her that he did.

And found that she did, too.

— Spock’s World, Chapter 7

Author’s emphases.