Troperville
Help us survive. All donations are anonymous on the wiki and unacknowledged, as we don't wish to create a hierarchy among Tropers.
Editing
Tools
Toys
|
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.
See Eternal English for the time travel equivalent.
Examples
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.
- 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!")
- The Human Aliens in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha speak straight Japanese even though their computers don't. Said computers, by the way, speak and display text in English or German, depending on what civilization built them.
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.")
- "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".
- 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.
- Yeah but Star Wars also averts it allot by having verious different alien languages and accents. "Hutteese" is the most common one aparantly, and Han Solo aparantly speaks both Hutteese and English as Han and Greedo are able to have a conversation in their own languages with little dificulty. Also, The Ewoks actually speak a language based on an old woman from an obscure nomadic tribe in China. Even robots seem to speak different languages even though, presumeably, they were designed for Human use. (or for uses in organizations that include humans anyway, as both the Rebels and the Empire have ships SPECIFICALLY designed to accomodate R2 units).
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.
- The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy was a huge subversion. Douglas Adams noted that the thought of aliens speaking English seemed strange and so there was 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.
- An additional subversion within The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy series was that some words and phrases had almost universal phonetic equivalents in every other language, even though the meanings often varied 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.
- 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).
- 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.
- 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 Godorians (Gondorim? Gondoreese? whatever) speak "The Common Tongue", the language of the Numenor Empire, which in the rest of Middle-Earth, though not necesarily the Common Language, is basically used as a Lingua Franka. For example, 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 Shakespear and Cockney. So, when the two sub-species argue with each-other about how to eat Hobbits, they argue in the Common Tongue.
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 (you can learn much about a culture through the vocabulary and structure of its language), 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.
- 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 treis to see what would happen if she spoke actual Latin to the citizens. They think she's Celtic.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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?"
- Hey, that makes sence! Now, on to the other 1001+ Koshism...
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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."
- 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.
- Justified when you are playing as the Chief. Cortana does some weird stuff in Halo 1 and basically translates the covenant language into english
- 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!
- The Italian Job - Jusified, then unjustified and then unjustified some more. In Turin, if a pedestrian gets hit by a car, they respond in English. This would be jusified as (although not mentioned in the videogame version's dialogue) there is a football match between Italy and England, so the city is flooded with English people. However all the pedestrians resopnd this way and in the same American accent use in the London stages. Finallay, to top it all off they do have recording of it in Italian for the Italian language version, in that version the London pedestrians speak Italian!
- 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...)
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!
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?
- 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 (except for a few terminology issues) but already before Zim arrives on earth Dib overhears the Great Assigning of the Irken invaders and seems to have understood everything.
- 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.
|
|
