Vocal translator, but you can breathe with it.

[Mouse]

Monkey's inability to speak English is a core design choice behind monkeys. The vocal translator sorta negated that and buffing the translator would basically remove any of the communication hindrances that are intrinsic to monkeys.

That said, the vocal translator was added because of a need; because monkeys sending PDA messages and writing on papers to communicate was not very engaging and most people just ignored them because those were very easy things to ignore.

My suggestion:
- Let monkey's be understood by humans if they speak a single word or phrase under, let's say, 10 characters. Interspaced with "Ook"s, "ah"s, and other monkey onomotopoeia.
- Add something that prevents monkeys from spamming those short words too fast, like a 0.5-1 second delay between each time their talk will be translated to English.
- Remove the vocal translator, or have the vocal translator increase the amount of characters that monkeys can translate to english. Like to 15 or 20 characters.

Dumb idea: add some sort of *sign command to let them communicate in sign language.  Monkeys, borgs, people with the deaf trait, and uh... mimes? would understand it naturally, but other people would need an interpreter or some sort.

Or just slightly loosen the rules on using custom emotes to say things for monkeys and let the other players decide whether or not they understand sign language.

Or move the vocal translator to the gloves slot and prevent them from speaking unless they have both hands existing and empty.  Like that one movie.

edit: a monkey that can communicate fine with anyone near them but can only chimper over the radio sounds funny to me