Of course, the universal translator deals with simpler versions of this every week. The premise is that the translator can deal with simpler symbolic translation of words from direct context, but can't deal with the deeper metaphore-based communications. For a popular mass media show, that's a pretty subtle idea. If you're going to quibble about that, you shouldn't bother watching anything on TV - none of it stands up to really deep digging, because they're trying to tell entertaining stories to normal people in 44 minutes (or 22 minutes), not publish defensible scientific thesis. :-)
This... It's always fun to ponder and speculate on how something could be possible in a world of TV show X, or even criticize them, but sometimes I think people take these things way too seriously - like letting relatively minor issues (really, they are minor now matter how big they feel to some - it is just entertainment after all) spoil the whole episode for them.