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Letter: Dear Stargate SG-1, why do all the aliens speak English? Christopher Judge: Oh crap, they found out about that. — Sci Fi Channel Stargate SG-1 special
To make things easier, everyone speaks English.
— A short story about humans meeting aliens. In Portuguese.
As unlikely as it may seem, most alien species can speak English — or Japanese, or French, or whatever the language of the show's producers and intended demographic is. This has the added advantage that the characters can sometimes lapse into their native tongue when the script demands.
Sometimes disguised via Translator Microbes or the Translation Convention. This raises even more questions, because even if the alien language was translated, the translation would be unlikely to sync up with the mouth movements of the alien. This problem is usually ignored for simplicity. If you want to keep things lively, using a Bilingual Dialogue with alienese as the foreign language is always cool. If you want your aliens to be scary, have them instead speak in the Black Speech.
This can also show up with hackers being able to access any (human or alien) computer system, or computers decoding any (audio, video, or text) signal from any source with a simple "On screen" from the captain. Presumably there is a galactic standard for shipboard computers, or our heroes managed to record an alien signal from when they weren't about to be destroyed by them, and engineer a translation program. (Conversely, we've been broadcasting educational children's programmes via radio for decades.)
This is an Acceptable Break From Reality, because not knowing what the aliens are saying would be quite uninteresting, and having the show's cast spend the first half of every episode learning how to say 'hello' in the Alien Language of the Week seriously undercuts the story.
If the words are understandable but the grammar rules are not, then it's a Strange Syntax Speaker.
See Eternal English for the time travel equivalent.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Although Lum and Ten from UruseiYatsura speak sensible Japanese, the rest of their family never learns it, their home speech translated as mah-jongg tiles.
- Actually Lum's father also speaks Japanese, and Rei once mannages to fit an entire sentence into his empty skull. But there's also one episode where Lum gets hit in the head with a baseball and forgets Japanese for the rest of the episode.
- For some reason, intergalactic demons from Dragonball Z seem to speak impeccable English (or any dubbed language), although at times, various aliens speak their native tongue, such as Freeza, though it makes you wonder why they choose to speak said dubbed language in the first place.
- It should be noted that, in the dub at least, Frieza mentions "the common tongue" when a Namek pretends he can only speak his own language. No clue whether that's in the original version.
- In Axis Powers Hetalia, America's alien friend Tony speaks English. ("Fucking limey!")
- Even in Japanese. Tony somehow speaks better English than anglo countries do!
- Which perhaps is more of positive reflection upon Tony's actor compared to the rest of them, than it is a negative one upon the characters themselves.
- The Human Aliens in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha speak Japanese. Their computers speak English (or German). Think about that for a second.
- In Vandread, this is half played straight as every population speaks (or telepathically thinks) in the same language, but the Mejerran pirates can't read Tarak computer panels.
- Which is strange considering that all planets are colonies of Earth, and Mejer and Tarak are the female and male halves of a single colonial fleet that got separated, just a few generations ago.
- There might be a weak justification for this, but isn't it odd that everyone in the Tenchi Muyo setting speaks and reads Japanese well?
- They're not technically aliens, but given that the official language of the One Piece world is apparently English, everyone who lives there speaks REALLY good Japanese...
- Villans in Sailor Moon are often Aliens. The hell tree arc, the Death Busters and Shadow Galactica are all full of them. Are are the Villeins of all 3 Movies. Aside from a single gag during the Hell Tree Arc, none of them show any signs of speaking anything but perfect Japanese. The Musicals also have new Alien characters though this may be to Media limitations (You can'thave subtitles in a live show)
Comic Books
Film
- Coneheads pepper their speach with both English and Remulakian. However, the English has no slang and sounds like it was read straight from a book.
- Massively averted in Mars Attacks! in that the Martians only speak a combination of "ack!" and "rack!" A translation machine also failed ("For dark is the suede, that mows...like a harvest.")
- Your Mileage May Vary. This Troper thinks the movie gets even better when you assume that the translation device actually works. There really is no definitive answer in the movie, both options are open, the viewer may choose.
- "We learned Earth languages from the world wide web." Would definitely explain Ironhide's Dirty Harry reference/Jazz's blackness/Prime saying "Oops, my bad".
- Any claims to have learned Earth languages from the Internet will not be accepted unless they have a satisfactory pronunciation of "NSFW".
- What's to worry about? It's pronounced "Nissfoow".
- No, it's "Ness-few".
- This Troper prefers to pronounce each letter separately of the acronym, so it would be "En-es-eff-double-ewe"
- Weirdly enough, in the second film, Megatron and Starscream have entire conversations in plain English despite not talking to any humans in particular. Maybe it's just easier to say than the garble they normally talk with.
- Interestingly enough, this is the first time ever in the Transformers franchise that provided an explanation for why they spoke English when the arrived on Earth. It was also the first time ever they were seen speaking their native language (Cybertronian) in certain scenes. Yes folks, that is right, the first ever time in the franchise's 20 year history to attempt to think about this logically, was in a Michael Bay movie.
- This troper seems to recall that issue #1 of the Marvel Transformers Generation 1 comic book series had the Autobots learn English by electronic surveillance of the humans after their awakening. Later issues featured Transformers arriving from Cybertron mention how they had programmed themselves with "human language."
- In Star Wars, the majority of characters speak English (or the viewers' language, translated). This is usually referred to as 'Galactic Basic', a common galactic language.
- And some of the finer moments in the original trilogy are when this trope is inverted: two characters converse, each in their own language, with no subtitles provided - Han and Chewie throughout; C-3PO and R2-D2 throughout; Luke and R2-D2, Han and the droid at the beginning of The Empire Strikes Back; and Lando conversing with his copilot in Return Of The Jedi come to mind. The beginning of The Phantom Menace could have used a lot more of this.
- It's explained in the expanded universe that "Basic" ic the human language, and because of demographics, the common interspecies language. However, some non-human can understand basic but not speak it.
- In the first edition, there were some english words on computer screens. Replaced by fictive alphabet in DVD edition.
- Earth Girls Are Easy had the furry human aliens learning English via television - resulting in them imitating Jerry Lewis and James Dean, and asking questions like "Are we limp and hard to manage?"
- Averted in District Nine: although they're subtitled (at least in the trailers) and are understood by the humans, the "prawns" don't/can't speak English.
- Plan Nine From Outer Space tries to Hand Wave this with some Techno Babble when the aliens are first heard (on a radio transmission) but fails epically when humans are talking to the aliens in person and this trope is still in effect.
- Actually the alien's translator (or dictorobitery) is switched on when they're arguing with the "Earth idiots", so this example doesn't fit.
- Centauri from The Last Starfighter apparently speaks English without the need for a translator device. Though considering the fact that he had to have spent considerable time on Earth while developing and marketing the Starfighter video game, it makes sense.
- the Transylvanians in the Rocky Horror Picture Show are all capable of both speaking (and singing) in English. Of course, it's implied they learned how to speak English from watching old "B" movies such as King Kong.
- Averted in Contact. The 'Vegans' make contact with a signal based on mathematics. When the National Security Advisor asks why these superadvanced aliens don't just communicate in English, the protagonist responds sarcastically that most people on Earth don't speak it. "Mathematics is the only univeral language."
Literature
- The Starcraft novel Queen of Blades (by Aaron Rosenberg) seems to have a bad case of this, with Jim Raynor encountering Zerg Cerebrates and Overlords that speak aloud in English, conveniently letting him eavesdrop. Subverted in that it turns out he was actually unconsciously hearing their telepathic voices.
- Justified inThe Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy by the Babelfish, a very small organism that went into your ear and read brainwaves to act as a universal translator.
- The explanation was particularly elegant in that the Babel Fish is said to survive by "eating" unconscious thoughts and emotions from thinking beings around it, and the means by which it "processes" these thoughts leaves only the most superficial surface thoughts — i.e. the thoughts behind intentional, verbal communication — "undigested" and excreted into the host's mind. In other words, it's an explanation for why it's a perfect translator and only a translator. Whereas other times, when the Universal Translator works by some kind of telepathy, it leaves open the question of why you can't use it to tell you what the guy is thinking all the time rather than only when he's talking to you.
- Additionally within The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy series, some words and phrases have almost universal phonetic equivalents in every other language, even though the meanings often vary considerably. There is, in any society advanced enough to make mixed drinks, a drink that sounds like 'gin and tonic', for instance, and throughout the known universe, our planet is the only one which uses 'Belgium' to mean something other than the most extreme profanity.
- We're also shunned for using the word 'cricket' to refer to a ball game, as the rest of the galaxy still remembers the Krikkit Wars. The equipment used to play cricket on Earth strongly resembles the Earth Shattering Kaboom-scale weaponry used in said wars, which is considered by other races to be extremely tactless of us.
- Additionally, there are phrases such as "I'm having considerable trouble with my life right now" or something like that will occasionally fall through a rip in time-space, and starting an intergalactic war because of its interpretation as a huge threat/insult at an alien conference table.
- CS Lewis averts the trope at the end of Out of the Silent Planet: the academic main character, who has lived with the alien planet's natives and learned some of their language, is recruited by a human Corrupt Corporate Executive to translate a speech full of flowery white-man's-burden rhetoric about why they should let him colonize their planet and take their resources. The main character does his best to render it within the grasp of his basic Alienese and ends up completely exposing the antagonist's agenda without twisting a single word.
- In Animorphs the Yeerks are apparently teaching*various hosts (Hork-Bajir especially) English so they can talk to each other. Of course, their alternatives were Taxxon (good luck pronouncing it without a several-foot tongue), the Hork-Bajir or Gedd languages (too simple), or some other Earth language (pointless as most of their human hosts knew English already).
- On the whole though this isn't too improbable. Human-Controllers' Yeerks would know English from their hosts' memories, and Hork-Bajir speak a strange mix of Galard and English (" Stop that gafrash shooting, logafach''."). Taxxon-speak is said to be almost impossible to decipher, even for Controllers.
- The free Hork-Bajir likewise speak mostly (crude) English mixed with their native language, but their Seer (who has genius-level intelligence by human standards, even) speaks flawless English - leading a National Guard commander to remark about the "aliens speaking more perfect English than [his] troops."
- The mi-go in HP Lovecraft's "The Whisperer in Darkness" speak English, but that's because they've been on Earth in secret long enough to learn our languages.
- And it's mentioned that they need surgical help in order to even produce the sounds necessary for human speech. They communicate with each other by telepathy, as well as bioluminescent colour shifts.
- S.P. Meek apparently thought this was too absurd a trope to use in his story Metaplanetary. Instead, his miniature Serkis Folk spoke Hawaiian. For no apparent reason and without so much as being lampshaded. And if you think that's a WallBanger, but keep reading anyways, you're in for one hell of a time . . .
- Played painfully straight in Power Rangers. Except for one alien in Power Rangers SPD, everything speaks english, from the Human Aliens to the twenty foot long mafia scorpion.
- Add in the fact that some of the creatures have been locked away for thousands of years, yet they always come out of the bottle speaking perfect English.
- In the short story "On a Clear Day You Can See All the Way to Conspiracy"
 by Desmond Warzel, the aliens speak perfect English; for at least two of them, however, this is justified, as they've been hiding out in suburban Cleveland and would need to speak English to blend in.
- Justified in Lord Of The Rings, as both the Hobbits and the people of Gondor speak the "Common Tongue" (or Westron, derived from Adūnaic, the language spoken in Numenor), which in the rest of Middle-Earth, though not necessarily the Common Language, is used as a Lingua Franca. For instance, the Mordor Orcs speak a bastardized version of blackspeech that has evolved for centuries, whereas the Uruk-Hai have been trained by Saruman to speak classical blackspeech (it's like the difference between Shakespeare and Cockney.) So, when the two sub-species argue with each-other about how to eat Hobbits, they argue in the Common Tongue.
- This troper doesn't remember Uruk-Hai being associated with the Black Speech of Mordor - Saruman would have taught them languages he thought the best, probably meaning Adūnaic, since it's the most prestigeous human language, or just plain Westorn. The Black Speech is mentioned to be spoken only by the Nazgūl, the Olog-Hai trolls, and the high-ranking officers and sorcerers in Sauron's service, such as the Mouth of Sauron.
- In Iain M. Banks's The Culture series of novels, he explains that although all dialog take place in Marain/Eachic, the former being the official language of The Culture, the latter being the language spoken on the planet the story takes place, it has been translated into the (reader's) language, albeit in a cruder form.
- Lampshaded in a Samurai Cat tale. The duo are on an alien ship trying to decipher the controls, and find that they're actually labelled in Japanese. Then they realise that, despite being from 17th century Japan, they were speaking English.
- Used egregiously in Christopher Stasheff's A Wizard in Rhyme series, in which the Ordinary High School Student protagonist transports himself to the story's alternate universe by deciphering a Summon Magic spell. The problem is, said alternate universe is a Fantasy Counterpart Version of Medieval Europe, and he explicitly learned their version of French. Then he goes and has adventures with Italians, Germans/Austrians, even Muslims, and yet there is no language barrier.
- Averted thoroughly in E.E. Smith's Triplanetary, in which the humans and the Nevians can only talk to each other after the Nevians build a frequency-shifter to bring their pitch of speech within the humans' range of hearing (and vice versa). More brilliantly averted even then, in that Costigan teaches not only the Nevians but his civilian companion Marsden the Triplanetarian standard language instead of English, whilst the humans in turn learn Nevian. The slow way.
- Lampshaded in other novels set chronologically later in the same universe. Virgil Samms describes to Rod Kinnison the communication difficulties that would be experienced in first-contact situations taking place under extreme pressure, and even acknowledges that the solution would require "a Deus Ex Machina with a vengeance". Shortly thereafter, the Arisians provide him with just what he needs, but it's more than adequately justified in canon. In Galactic Patrol, when Kim Kinnison describes how the Lens causes the receiver of the Lensman's thoughts to "hear" the words spoken fluently in their own language, he admits that without the Lens, he only speaks a few words of Valerian Dutch "and those with a vile American accent".
- Averted again (and even more radically) in Virgil Samms' contacts with the frigid-blooded, partially hyperdimensional Palainians, some of whose ideas and practices are so alien that warm-blooded three-dimensional beings have no way of conceptualising or understanding them. The Lens in this case supplies an otherwise-meaningless word or term which thereafter is associated with that concept. We never find out in Smith's original canon what a dexitroboper does, despite a demonstration (Samms is only able to understand it as being a job description to do with nourishment or nutrients), nor what emmfozing actually is (he knows it is to do with reproduction, but Kragzex can't explain it to him because humanity only has two sexes).
Live Action TV
- Although the later incarnations of Star Trek make occasional mention of "Universal Translators" being built into the uniform commbadges, the original series simply ignored the question of language except in a few rare instances.
- And, of course, the handwave doesn't explain the times where communication does become a problem, or where certain words get left in the original. If the translator doesn't translate the names of certain Klingon pets and foods, on the idea that the original word conveys information better than the translated word would, why doesn't that effect pepper the speech on other subjects? And why do characters sometimes have to hunt for a word in English, then give up and explain the concept they were getting at, since the word in their original language has no English equivalent?
- And don't forget the episode "Darmok", a brilliant subversion of this and Translator Microbes. The aliens are speaking English, in a way, but their language is metaphorical rather than indicative, full of seemingly unrelated references to historical events and battles, and is impossible to understand without the proper cultural background.
- In Star Trek First Contact, the Vulcan who greets Zefram Cochrane says "live long and prosper" in English. This is supposed to be the first time they meet humans.
- Possibly justified, as Star Trek: Enterprise implied that humanity had been monitored by Vulcans at least since Sputnik was launched. You spend that much time keeping an eye on them, you have at least a basic understanding of their language.
- Exactly. The Vulcans would have been monitoring our communications and broadcasts, identified the dominant languages and studied them, pegged English as the dominant language of science and technology, and been prepared to communicate in the appropriate tongue to minimize the fear or discomfort of First Contact.
- If Vulcans had monitored humans since Sputnik, chances are they know Russian as well.
- Doctor Who managed to explain this one by having the Doctor being able to mentally translate for his companions, who rarely thought anything odd about the fact they understood them. One of the Doctor's earlier companions did ask him once, but they were interrupted before he could answer and it was never brought up again. In the revival of the show that began in 2005, the translation is mentioned on more than one occasion to be performed by the Doctor's vehicle, the TARDIS, which is telepathically linked to the Doctor to the point that when he is unconscious, the translation fails. This became a plot point in one episode.
- The series four finale features Daleks that speak German when they invade Germany. Exterminieren! Exterminieren! Heh, heh.
- The German for "Exterminate" is "Ausrotten", not "Exterminieren". But I suppose that wouldn't have sounded as funny.
- At one point in the original series, it's stated that the translation is supposed to be unnoticeable. The fact that Sarah Jane Smith stops to wonder why she can understand Italian is evidence to the Doctor that something is wrong.
- Not quite aliens, but: In series four, when Donna realizes she can understand what the citizens of Pompeii are saying, even though they should be speaking Latin. She gets the standard response from the Doctor, and immediately tries to see what would happen if she spoke actual Latin to the citizens. It renders her words into some kind of Celtic dialect, thus proving that it's not just a translation device but a Woolseyfication device.
- The 456 in Torchwood:Co E speak actual English. The characters make note of it and it has a certain significance. Along with the hour at which they choose to speak, it indicates that the 456 are addressing Great Britain, with which they've already had secret dealings.
- Stargate SG-1 has aliens, diaspora humans, and even beings from other galaxies speak English. The issue of learning the local language served as something of a Padding in the movie on which the series is based, so this might actually be a case of Translation Convention, since the team members can be reasonably expected to be familiar with the common galactic languages (especially as most of them are dialects of Coptic or Latin). It was lampshaded in the novelization of the pilot episode "Children of the Gods", but that was more of Oneshot Revisionism.
- This troper recalls in either one of the commentaries, a documentary on the DVD, or something online, talking about this. Basically, the reason all the aliens know English is that spending the first 20 minutes or so having Daniel Jackson translate the language in every episode would get tedious.
- Becomes particularly egregious in Stargate Atlantis, when they go on their very first off-world mission without a linguist, and suddenly everyone turns out to speak English there too. And most egreriously that includes the holograms and flashbacks of the Ancients - yes, the very same Ancients whose specific not-even-remotely-English language has been heard and seen written down all across the span of the previous series.
- This troper recalls either reading something online or on one of the special features on the DV Ds, talking about this specific
- According to leading linguistic experts, a population isolated from any other human group will eventually develop a language similar to English and speak it with a Canadian accent.
- Babylon 5 has a longstanding subversion of this trope — the aliens all speak their own languages, and often have noticeable accents when they speak in English, if they speak in English at all. The ultimate example in this show would be Kosh, whose language is so strange it must be mechanically translated, and even then it is rarely comprehensible. Also of note is that mechanical translators are nothing near Translator Microbes : They must be tailor-made for a certain language, are of clearly visible size, have a stiff, monotonous sound, and are looked down upon by most species.
- Of course, Kosh being a Vorlon, how much of the incomprehensibility is intentional is anybody's guess... This troper always took Kosh's recommendation to "listen to the music (the actual Vorlon sentence), not the song (the translated English sentence)" as a subtle insult, to the effect of "If you can't understand what I'm saying, why don't you learn to speak Vorlon, you twit?"
- This troper took that to mean that the words in this particular conversation were entirely meaningless, and only meant to get the hired telepath's mind to wander, allowing Kosh to project her with suitable signals, and record something from her mind, which was the actual purpose of the entire negotiations.
- This was apparently a set-up for a later episode... which then didn't get made, because the actress left and her character got killed off.
- Crusade, the short-lived sequel series to Babylon 5, played with this trope in its homage episode to The X Files, "Visitors From Down The Street". After rescuing a pair of aliens of a previously-unknown race who unexpectedly speak English, the Excalibur is hailed by an alien ship — again in English. Captain Gideon comments sarcastically that either they're the same race as the others, or there's one hell of a busy English teacher running around that part of the galaxy.
- In the miniseries (and series) V, this is justified in that, since the aliens are trying to indoctrinate themselves into human culture, they must speak the local language at all times. Including poor Willie who was meant to go to Russia and thus spoke Russian but ended up in the U.S. due to a bureaucratic bungle and spoke English poorly.
- The various screen adaptations of Flash Gordon all feature the Mongonians speaking flawless English, with no explanation as to why. The 2007 series lampshades it, but still doesn't explain.
- As noted in David Schow's book on The Outer Limits, there's only one episode of the original series ("The Zanti Misfits") in which the aliens don't speak English, although various episodes justified this with different handwaves.
- Farscape handwaves the issue with Translator Microbes, which is fine... most of the time. In the fourth season, it's pointed out that Aeryn is trying to learn English, in case they ever get back to Earth. So far, okay - except that when the cast actually goes to Earth in the episode Terra Firma, they're all understood, even the ones who didn't care to learn English. In the previous episode, Kansas, they even talked about how they only knew three phrases in English. Even more jarring is there are parts of the same episode where they aren't understood - leaving it half-addressed but never really resolved.
- That's not correct, they weren't all understood. It was actually explained, as some Earth dignitaries decided to accept translator microbes, and some didn't. So, fully addressed and fully resolved.
- Highlander The Series: Duncan finds and unwraps the mummy of Nefertiri, who has been in a coma for 2000 years after committing suicide over the body of her queen, Cleopatra. As she is unwrapped, she wakes up, opens her eyes, and asks, in English, "What year is this?"
- Most tokusatsu has this trope all over the place, including Power Rangers, Super Sentai and Kamen Rider.
- Averted in Kamen Rider Kuuga, where the Grongi monsters speak their own incomprehensible language.
- The same happened in Kamen Rider Blade in which the majority of the Undead couldnt speak Japanese(or any other human language for that matter). Instead, they spoke in gibberish
- Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger (and naturally its English counterpart Power Rangers SPD as well) averts this for once by having one Alienizer who couldn't speak the local language without a translator device. The Alienizer was also a body switcher, switched bodies with the Blue Ranger and destroyed the translator device. So the Blue Ranger, in the body of a wanted criminal, had to prove to his friends that his own body was used by the criminal, while not being able to communicate normally. Of course the majority of the other aliens speak perfect Japanese/English.
- Almost lampshaded in Bakuryuu Sentai Abaranger: The Parasaurolopus Bakuryuu, having travelled from its native Dino-Earth to our Earth, ends up in South America and must swim to Japan where the others are. When he arrives he speaks perfect Japanese, but with the occasional "amigo" and the like thrown in for gags.
- In Space 1999, everybody in the universe speaks perfect English with no explanation. Of course, in this series NOTHING is ever explained.
- On 3rd Rock From The Sun, the aliens seem to be fluent in all Earth languages. In one episode, Harry turned on a Hispanic channel and all the Solomons started conversing in Spanish until they realized it wasn't the dominant language in Ohio. In another episode, Dick tested Tommy's intelligence by asking him questions in various languages.
- Lost In Space "The Keeper", The Keeper speaks English, and explains that he has monitored their radio transmissions and has a limited form of telepathy to help him understand the language. It is odd that he would go out of the way to explain this, as The Robinsons didn't ask him how he could speak, probably because it wasn't the first time they encountered an English speaking Alien without explanation.
Video Games
- The game Shenmue II has Ryo Hazuki travelling to Hong Kong and China. Apparently everyone there speaks Japanese (or English in the dub), even Shenhua, who's from a remote village. The game was originally planned to use different languages but this idea was dropped long before release.
- Averted in Starfox Adventures, where the "aliens" speak English only if you complete the game and equip a translator.
- The alien species in Mass Effect have no problem speaking English to the various human characters they encounter. Then again, many of them also have other, non-verbal methods of communication, like the elcor, and others, like the asari, are very experienced at learning foreign languages and using biotic empathy to gain knowledge from other species.
- In the Mass Effect novel, one of the characters mentions that he is learning to speak a galactic standard language. This language is what the aliens use when speaking to each other and that is why they all understand each other.
- Likewise, in the actual game, one of the NPCs looses a stream of Techno Babble, to which Shepard can to respond "Would you care to repeat that in Galactic?"
- According to the Bring Down The Sky expansion, everyone uses Translator Microbes if they can't speak each other's language - it's more polite and speaks well of your education and your willingness to avoid xenophobia.
- And even then these translators are not universal. They have to be constantly updated as new words or slang or grammatical conventions arise in known languages. It's explicitly mentioned that whenever a new species is encountered it's a huge pain in the ass to get even their most common language translated and sent all over Citadel space. There are people (most often Hanar) who spend their entire lives updating translation databases.
- Halo's Grunts, Brutes, and Forerunner Monitors speak English. In Halo 2, even the previously unintelligible Elites start taunting the player in English.
- They even speak it when there are no humans around. Obviously Translation Convention in that case.
- In Halo: First Strike: this is explained as due to standardized UNSC translation technology.
- There's no way the Elites could actually speak human languages with those weird mouthparts.
- Furries can't, either. Don't think too hard about it.
- On the other hand...this troper has seen some very interesting results when an effort is made to figure that out. Hint: how do parrots speak human languages? Not by using lips, that's for sure.
- Actually Free Fall addresses this, as one of the first things Florence was taught was ventriloquism... because as a sentient wolf she lacks human lips.
- Justified when you are playing as the Chief. Cortana does some weird stuff in Halo 1 and basically translates the covenant language into English
- The Hunters seem to say English words sometimes; eg "Grenade!" when you throw a nade at them.
- In Outcast, the hero finds himself thrust into an alien world on a Bronze Age - level. He has no trouble communicating with the natives and never stops to wonder at this, being more bothered re: aliens, the existence of, local evil empire, the overthrowing of. The player is encouraged to accept this as a necessary break from reality, until it turns out that there are no Translator Microbes - the aliens have all been speaking proper English. The hero meets a scientist from the same world-thrusting expedition, who lampshades the matter only to be told that the empire instituted the use of the shadowy Big Bad's language. Dun dun DUNNN!
- Inconsistent in the Metroid series, or at least the games where Samus interacts with anyone. On the one hand, Space Pirates and Luminoth speak in unintelligible growls and so forth, and Chozo runes need to be translated. On the other, the three non-human Hunters in Metroid Prime 3 all have English voice-acting, and the Pirates are veritable chatterboxes in the manga. Prime 2 implies it's due to Samus carrying a universal translator.
- Not space aliens, but pretty much the same thing; In Morrowind, despite being varying levels of hostile towards Imperials, everybody speaks your language. A few Dunmer come out with the occaisional word of their own tongue, but none of them refuse or are unable to speak Imperial (English) - not even the isolated desert tribes.
- You could handwave this by assuming your character is speaking Elvish too (of course, since the player only speaks Earthling ...). Which would mean that the honorary "sera" and the derogative "n`wah" are untranslated for a reason.
- Played weirdly in spore. Everyone speaks the same language, but it isn't even a real language. Luckily there is text so you understand what they're saying. Justified by the universal translator that you find in a crashed ship before you meet other species. (Though that doesn't explain why your own language needs to be translated into english text...)
- This is first averted in The Dig: A group of astronauts are stranded on a deserted alien planet, when the protagonist first encounters an alien he doesn't understand a thing the alien speaks, until he brings a companion (who has been studying the alien's language in a "library") and she is able to succesfully communicate with him (the dialog is heard in English via Translation Convention), later this is completely played straight when the protagonist ascends to the dimension in which the rest of the aliens are trapped, the alien leader tells him that in that plane of existence all minds comunicate perfectly, then the aliens return to the real world and their leader speaks and thanks him in perfect English with no explanation on how he learned the language.
- Justified in Iji. Iji's personal nanofield translates the alien language for her. It goes both ways, too; translating her English into the Tasen/Komato languages when she speaks with the aliens. Otherwise, none of the aliens speak English; it's why Dan can safely communicate with Iji through the loudspeakers.
- Done rather oddly in the video game, Heart of Darkness. The cheerful Amigos can speak English, but it appears their primary language is actually Spanish.
- Killzone's' Helghast speak English with a British accent while the Humans from the ISA speak it with an American one. Probably justified in that the Helghast are an offshoot species of humanity created when humans (likely from an Anglophone company or region) adapted to the planet. Lampshaded by the Big Bad's attempts at "language reform," which succeeds in changing th alphabet but eventually falls short of changing the spoken language due to "logistical difficulties."
Webcomics
- Used and averted in Sluggy Freelance. Some aliens (like the ones who invade the North Pole) have their own language (represented in the strip by truly bizarre symbols in their speech balloons). However, the series also features Aylee, who was speaking English mere hours after first bursting out of someone's chest.
- Last Resort wholeheartedly admits they speak English; specifically, they speak GET (Galactic English Terth), which is about as different from Modern English the same way there's a distinct difference between Biblical Hebrew and Modern Hebrew. However, in the same breath they admit GET is mostly a business/high-class language; part of the reason the show only does an hour a week of live broadcast is because translating and reformatting the program for so many different planets takes up so many resources that they can't afford to do them on the fly all the time. (The 'between shows' broadcasts are translated / parsed at relative leisure.)
- Of course, all of the criminals featured so far can also speak GET, so it can't be too uncommon... then again, anyone who couldn't get past the interview process for being unable to speak the same language as everyone else wouldn't be on the show anyway.
- Parodied in The Inexplicable Adventures Of Bob by Officer Zodboink, who speaks multiple Earth languages but can't keep them straight, e.g. "Hasta la wiedersehen!"
- Hand Waved in Stick Man Stick Man with a half-plausible technobabble explaination. Miracles of modern technology!
- There are multiple galactic languages in Schlock Mercenary, but English still makes the short list. At one point mid battle a gatekeeper stops to correct a mercenary's English, and complains if humans are going to force this godawful trade language on other races they should at least be good at it. He gets Killed Mid Sentence.
- Free Fall both addresses this and does not. No explanation on how Sam, the squid-like alien can speech English but as he wears a life support suit its posible it has a built in translation device. However Florence Ambrose the sentient wolf's perfect English is explained as one of the first things Florence was taught was ventriloquism... because as a sentient wolf she lacks human lips. Fine. All makes seance. Right? No. Given that she was raised by one Italian and one Vietnamese(or perhaps Thai, I forget) human Forster parent, the fact she speaks English is still only explained by "because everyone does."
- Or she just learned English in school, like this troper. If it's the dominant language on planet Jean, it makes sense that that's what she speaks.
- Inverted in Alien Dice, English is actually a dialect of Galactic Standard introduced by a bunch of Rishaan who were dumped on earth
Western Animation
- The Simpsons parodies this in the first Halloween episode, where it is explained by the aliens that coincidentally English and Rigelian are exactly the same.
- Transformers always speak English, even the ones who aren't from Cybertron. There's no real reason why, nor is it ever commented on. There's no reason given why exceptions like Transformers without humanoid robots don't, either.
- Subverted by the Junkions, who speak English, but do it in a way that makes little sense... They "Talk TV". meaning, in a nutshell, their dialogue is pieced together from fragments of various Earth broadcasts, resulting in lingual mash-ups such as "Don't look behind door number two, Monty! It's time to play "End of the Line," my valentine! Ge-ronny-doo-ron-ron-ronny-moooo!"
- Handwaved in the 2007 movie: Optimus Prime tells Sam and Micheala that they learned English from the Internet, with the exception of Bumblebee, who uses the radio to speak Junkion-style. So Prime can say "My bad," okay?
- In Transformers Animated, Jetfire and Jetstorm speak broken English with Russian accents.
- Teen Titans ALMOST avoids this one. In one episode, the alien character's ability to speak English is justified by the fact that her kind can instantly learn any language through "lip contact" with someone who speaks that language. But unfortunately, by that logic, all of her other people, who appear in a previous episode, must have snogged English-speaking humans as well.
- In the comics, it's eventually revealed that Tamaraneans can learn languages through any kind of touch; Starfire just smooched Robin because she felt like it.
- Of course, this raises other problems when you realize that, given the sheer amount of languages that Robin knows, he should never have to translate for her (as he does when speaking to Joey Wilson, who is mute and communicates through sign language).
- Possibly because it's not a spoken language?
- It's still a fully functional language (well, several) utilizing the exactly same areas of the brain as the spoken speech. The only difference is that the hands move instead of the vocal chords.
- Chip And Dale Rescue Rangers features two alien races, the Fleeblebroxians ("Dale Beside Himself") and space-traveling, high-tech-equipped dinosaur escapees from ancient Earth represented by Steggy ("Prehysterical Pet"). They all speak English. In fact, the only "aliens" that don't speak English are the giant pillbugs from "Fake Me to Your Leader".
- Kim Possible has two aliens of the same race that can speak perfect English from the get-go. Not only that, they even speak English between each other, when there's no others around...
- In Invader Zim almost all alien species speak English. Not only does Zim speak perfect English to humans (granted, with his own weird twists) but already before Zim arrives on earth Dib overhears the Great Assigning of the Irken invaders and seems to have understood everything.
- Of course, the aliens on Invader Zim also have "space sodas" and eat nachos, so in a way it would have been weird if they didn't speak English.
- Also, for some reason, they have a different written language (though they DO seem to write in English if it's necessary the viewers KNOW what they're writing).
- The Adventures Of Jimmy Neutron flaunts this trope magnificently. There is even a "Galactic Cable Network", complete with over 9 billion television channels...all in English.
- Bizarrely, before they encounter the aliens associated with said network, Jimmy reads a tablet sent from space and makes a throwaway comment about translating from Aramaic. So Yeah.
- This was parodied in an animated segment of Saturday Night Live. African humans encounter aliens, who must consult an English-Swahili dictionary to translate.
- While not quite aliens, you would suppose someone who died 1600 years ago would not be speaking modern English in Danny Phantom. Even the one non-English speaker speaks modern Esperanto. Better that than Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe.
- In Johnny Test, this is Lampshaded when they meet a race of Vegan aliens and Johnny states that it's good that they speak English.
- There have been three alien races on The Fairly Oddparents: the Yugopotamians, the Bodacians, and the Gigglepies. All three speak perfect English. In fact, Mark talks with Earth Surfer Dude slang, and the Gigglepies are a Rhymes On A Dime race.
- In the '80s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, upon meeting Miyamoto Usagi for the first time (brought over through a dimensional portal) Raphael points out, "He's not only from an alternate dimension, but also ancient Japan. So naturally, he speaks English."
- An Episode of The Tick had a very bizarre take on this: two alien races, each with a language consisting of one word: the Heys and the Whats. The Heys, incidentally, all looked exactly like Arthur, which led to him being captured and interrogated by a What who had learned to speak Hey:
"Hey!" "What?" " Hey!" " What?" "Hey!!" "What?!"
- Additionally, the Mr Exposition for that episode was a What who had learned to speak every language on Earth, "except Esperanto, you can tell that was going nowhere fast."
- Lampshaded on a Fantastic4 cartoon. The aliens spoke in their native tongue for awhile, then freeze framed as an animated Stan Lee came out and said "For the convenience of those who don't speak Alien, we'll have them speak English for the rest of the episode."
- Whilst not aliens (although, the jury is out on the Olmecs), everyone in The Mysterious Cities of Gold speaks the same language (which you would assume is Spanish). Whilst it may be logical for some of the Native Tribes to have some people amoungst them who had learned the Spanish Language by the time Esteban and co arrive in South America, it certainly doesn't explain why every little villiage girl, hidden tribe and TAO (who had been alone on an isolated island until meeting Esteban and Zia) could speak Spanish.
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