https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp219
In the season 1 episode Fight or Flight, Sato encounters some horrors she didn't expect on an away mission. She proves the linguist has a long way to go to be used to deep space exploration and its unpredictability:
Ensign Hoshi Sato: I'm a translator; I didn't come out here to see corpses hanging on hooks.
Dr. Phlox: It goes without saying that you're going to encounter the unexpected.
Ensign Hoshi Sato: Not corpses on hooks!
By the time season 3's Exile rolls around, Hoshi has become far more self-confident and capable on away missions. She escapes a potential forced companionship with an alien entity for 60 or 70 years by her own guile and determination, and it's alluded to even before she goes on the mission in this sequence:
Ensign Hoshi Sato: I think that falls under the goes-without-saying category, sir.
Captain Jonathan Archer: Did you bring a phase pistol?
Ensign Hoshi Sato: I'll keep it under my pillow.
Also in season 3, Sato shows off her incredible skills as a linguist in detecting someone's background based on dialect in the episode The Xindi:
Ensign Hoshi Sato: What do you think of our doctor, Sergeant? I imagine you don't run into many Denobulans in Duluth, Minnesota?
Sergeant Kemper: [... ] You must've gotten pretty deep into our records. I haven't lived in Duluth since junior high school.
Ensign Hoshi Sato: You may have left Duluth, but you've still got plenty of Duluth left in your inflections.
Sergeant Kemper: Excuse me?
Major Hayes: Ensign Sato's a linguist, Kemper. You give her enough time, she could probably tell you what street you grew up on.
Despite a relatively checkered background at the Academy, Sato proves to be one of the most loyal and reliable crew members of Archer's crew, as evidenced by this quote in Shockwave Part 1 from season 1:
Ensign Travis Mayweather: From what Commander Tucker tells me, people back home think that we're doing nothing out here but getting in trouble.
Ensign Hoshi Sato: Then it's our job to let the people back home know what really happened. Anyone tries to badmouth Captain Archer in front of me is gonna get an earful, in any language they want.
Although Sato does experience a character arc over the four seasons of this show, she feels like one of the least used and developed personalities in the ensemble main cast. Often she is just a face in the crowd, doing her communications bits and then moving on. Unfortunately, that makes her a relatively non-memorable character by Trek standards, which are admittedly high.
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