I might be misremembering, but I think the universal translator operates on a basis of reading “brain wave” ✨vibes✨ so it is more about intended meaning than disambiguation of denoted meaning by context, which is why I think it would pick the right word to translate even if the listener isn’t familiar with the contextual nuances… The listener is never familiar with those linguistic nuances.

For Darmok to work you kinda just have to accept that there’s something fundamental about word-denotative meaning based language and allegorical meaning. Of course it falls apart if you think to hard about the specifics 😂