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[Marksmad is waving goodbye]

Question is: How did the galaxy learn English in less than 100 years? 

Berlitz Online. Duh.

[Excella Gionne]

Berlitz Online. Duh.

Or Rosetta Stone.

[Marksmad is waving goodbye]

Or Rosetta Stone.

Nope. I've seen the Rosetta Stone. There isn't any English on it.

[Dunmer of Redoran]

Where? The confirmed existence of a "simplified trade language" for "most species" cannot be used as valid reasoning for your universal premise of "in game, people are speaking one language", especially when it is specficially stated that this is not the case in the majority of circumstances
 

why don't they. Do you have information on the workings of the translator machines that I am unaware of that describes reasons that they are capable or incapable of such things or reasons they produce responses the way that they do? The burden of proof for your claims here is on you, and you haven't provided it.

 

Why not? Is there a specific lore reason why translator technology would be incapable of being programmed sufficiently or insuffciently in a manner that allows or doesn't allow such lingual conventions when the ME universe tends not to operate by the same rules that ours does? Javik is a single individual provided with a specific reason for his ablities in Prothean physiology of "reading" physiologies of various species that other species are implied to not posses. That again does nothing to debunk the general claim of "Most individuals know only their mother tongue, and rely on machine translation".

None of the evidence you've provided is sufficient to make that claim outside of your own headcanon.

 

 

1. Where? The Hanar are unique because they physically cannot communicate like other races can. This is established as soon as the Hanar appear. It's a fundamental part of who they are and has always been a part of how they communicate.

 

2. Because translators, if they work like you claim they do, provide accents and inflections to all words spoken by all people. Why would the Elcor be an exception? There's no reason given for this. If translators work so seamlessly, this wouldn't happen. Which is why it's not the case.

 

3. The specific lore reason goes to #2. The Elcor are the strongest case for debunking the Translators Everywhere theory because they contradict the capability of translators that you're implying. Every other race's very intentions can get thrown into the translators. Why not Zoidberg Elcor? I think you're missing the point with Javik. He touches one person and then understands everyone he talks to. If they weren't speaking the same language, he couldn't do this.

 

In-game, translator technology seems to apply only to the Hanar, and to no one else. If translators had the ability to read minds and do such and such, they'd have to have AI capabilities. A VI isn't complex enough to make that kind of comprehension. Which would go a long way to explain why the Hanar are pretty much monotone and don't have much of a sense of humor, and every other race, even the Elcor, are a little more sensible than that.

[Dunmer of Redoran]

Nope. I've seen the Rosetta Stone. There isn't any English on it.

 

History jokes? Heartily endorsed.

[Quarian Master Race]

1. Where? The Hanar are unique because they physically cannot communicate like other races can. This is established as soon as the Hanar appear. It's a fundamental part of who they are and has always been a part of how they communicate.

I was asking where the basis for your claim that canon states otherwise, not about Hanar.

 

2. Because translators, if they work like you claim they do, provide accents and inflections to all words spoken by all people. Why would the Elcor be an exception? There's no reason given for this. If translators work so seamlessly, this wouldn't happen. Which is why it's not the case.

There's no reason given for this but neither one against it, so there is not a basis for the bolded statement, which is categorically an argument from incredulity and an inductive fallacy. I'm not claiming to know how the translators work, I am merely providing reasonable suppositions within the confines of the established lore. You are making claims that directly contradict it.
 

 

3. The specific lore reason goes to #2. The Elcor are the strongest case for debunking the Translators Everywhere theory because they contradict the capability of translators that you're implying. Every other race's very intentions can get thrown into the translators. Why not Zoidberg Elcor? I think you're missing the point with Javik. He touches one person and then understands everyone he talks to. If they weren't speaking the same language, he couldn't do this.

What capability am I implying for the translator? I've implied nothing general except that it translates communication methods in the manner presented in game. How and why it works from species to species is irrelevant. Javik's seemingly magical abilities don't prove or disprove anything, because yet again we know nothing about how the process works apart from "I've read your physiology and nervous system enough to understand your language".

In-game, translator technology seems to apply only to the Hanar, and to no one else. If translators had the ability to read minds and do such and such, they'd have to have AI capabilities. A VI isn't complex enough to make that kind of comprehension. Which would go a long way to explain why the Hanar are pretty much monotone and don't have much of a sense of humor, and every other race, even the Elcor, are a little more sensible than that.

No. "Most individuals know only their mother tongue, and rely on machine translation" and "translator technology seems to apply only to the hanar" are mutually exclusive statements unless hanar also constitute "most individuals" and especially in light of the fact that it is also stated that trade language is only possible for "most species" and not all. Your premise is flawed.

Why do the translators need AI capablities or even mind reading at all? Those are merely possible suppositions I've made for how they work. It can also be handwaved with "reaper tech" brainwave manipulaton, a combination of any of the aforementioned methods, or any other new form of space magic that the writers come up with regardless of its plausibility to us. Meanwhile your claims are literally impossible without the modification of the meanings of words in the English language used to make that Codex entry.

Once again, the fact that translators are being used doesn't mean that every facet and idiosyncrasy of their operation need be explained in detail in a manner that makes sense to 21st century science for them to be canon. By that standard, the entire setting is completely unfeasible because it is almost entirely founded upon a nonexistent element that breaks every known physical law about how our universe operates.

[DaemionMoadrin]

Get a room, you two.

[TheN7Penguin]

Quarians would also be likely to pull off translators effectively - having them built into the helmet.

[Quarian Master Race]

Get a room, you two.

I will accept any form of bumping this glorious thread, though I'm getting bored with posts only peripherally related to quarians at this point.

[Dunmer of Redoran]

I was asking where the basis for your claim that canon states otherwise, not about Hanar.

 

There's no reason given for this but neither one against it, so there is not a basis for the bolded statement, which is categorically an argument from incredulity and an inductive fallacy. I'm not claiming to know how the translators work, I am merely providing reasonable suppositions within the confines of the established lore. You are making claims that directly contradict it.
 

 

What capability am I implying for the translator? I've implied nothing general except that it translates communication methods in the manner presented in game. How and why it works from species to species is irrelevant. Javik's seemingly magical abilities don't prove or disprove anything, because yet again we know nothing about how the process works apart from "I've read your physiology and nervous system enough to understand your language".

No. "Most individuals know only their mother tongue, and rely on machine translation" and "translator technology seems to apply only to the hanar" are mutually exclusive statements unless hanar also constitute "most individuals" and especially in light of the fact that it is also stated that trade language is only possible for "most species" and not all. Your premise is flawed.

Why do the translators need AI capablities or even mind reading at all? Those are merely possible suppositions I've made for how they work. It can also be handwaved with "reaper tech" brainwave manipulaton, a combination of any of the aforementioned methods, or any other new form of space magic that the writers come up with regardless of its plausibility to us. Meanwhile your claims are literally impossible without the modification of the meanings of words in the English language used to make that Codex entry.

Once again, the fact that translators are being used doesn't mean that every facet and idiosyncrasy of their operation need be explained in detail in a manner that makes sense to 21st century science for them to be canon. By that standard, the entire setting is completely unfeasible because it is almost entirely founded upon a nonexistent element that breaks every known physical law about how our universe operates.

 

They say, but they don't do. You're getting into headcanon here. "Reaper tech" and whatnot has not at any point in the game been proposed as a reason

 

 

VIs don't have the social understandings that real intelligences have. They can work as computer intelligences and handle simple tasks like bean counting, but VIs cannot intelligently interface with a person and understand all that they say and do. To have that cognizance, they would need to be more intelligent. They'd need to be AIs. That's one of the fundamental things which distinguishes AIs from VIs (EDI can create and then tell jokes, no VI can create jokes on its own, for example). But we know that translators aren't AI. They're VIs. They don't have the complexity to understand all the underpinnings of language, all the inflections and associated complexities because they lack the intelligence to act like real-life interpreters do. That's why interpreters will always have work IRL. A machine cannot grasp the context of words spoken like a fluent speaker can and will take everything literally--it doesn't know how to discriminate. If it did, it would be intelligent. And intelligences with that kind of ability are illegal in Council space.

 

Long story short here, the codex makes some claims, but they aren't adequately demonstrated in-game for them to be plausible. In-game evidence overrides the codex.

 

-Elcor linguistic issues

-Hanar, the race known for physical limitations, being the only race with behavior that evidences physical limitations, heavily implying they're the only race with said limitations

-Javik learns how to talk to everyone and understand them all by touching one person and knowing that person's language

 

Another note to consider: the Codex says that Batarian is the lingua franca of Terminus space. Now why would it be the lingua franca if everyone used machine translations? Inconsistency reigns supreme in the codex.

 

 

The codex also said that the Protheans created the Mass Relays even though we know they didn't. The codex is wildly inconsistent, but in-game linguistic behavior is pretty stable, for the most part. The codex explanations here would be reasonable if they were backed up within the gameplay, but they are not. Things in the game seem to contradict them, not complement them. I'll take what the game says at face-value before I can take what the codex says at face-value. Not that in-game lore is perfect either, but if I had to pick? Mass Effect's not a roguelike. In-game >>> random text.

 

 

 

Looking back, I totally missed this:

 

I was under the impression that the Dwemer went too far and their ritual wiped out the entire race instantly. Or perhaps shifted all of them into another dimension. Not that I'm sorry to see them vanish, they were pretty cruel to the Snow Elves, who were turned into the Falmer because of that treatment.

I didn't know the Dunmer were involved at all.

 

The Dunmer were involved in the sense that the War of the First Council was one of the driving forces behind the Dwemer ritual on the Heart of Lorkhan.

 

That's one of my favorite things about TES lore. There's a lot of ambiguity, but it's not on the part of lazy writing. It's very much intentional. There are fascinating things that have never been explained. One of the most obvious is that Lorkhan may not be dead and may in fact have never died at all. The Heart might just be an Aedric artifact that when "destroyed" on Nirn, went to Masser or Secunda or another locale and will eventually rematerialize back in Red Mountain. Is it likely? No, but we know how Daedric artifacts work, so it's not entirely out of the question.

 

Don't think it's ever going to happen but a non-sequel game focusing on the Tribunal at their height would be pretty rad.

[stephenw32768]

Another note to consider: the Codex says that Batarian is the lingua franca of Terminus space. Now why would it be the lingua franca if everyone used machine translations? Inconsistency reigns supreme in the codex.

 

The codex also said that the Protheans created the Mass Relays even though we know they didn't. The codex is wildly inconsistent.

 

I've taken the codex to be written from an in-universe point of view; the extranet equivalent of Wikipedia, if you like.  So when it says the Protheans created the relays, it's because the notional person in-universe who wrote the codex entry believed that to be true.  It's an example of the "unreliable narrator" trope.

 

Inconsistencies like the machine translation/lingua franca thing can be explained as differing perspectives of different in-universe people writing the various entries, though I admit that's getting into headcanon territory as a way of explaining them away.

[Marksmad is waving goodbye]

I will accept any form of bumping this glorious thread, though I'm getting bored with posts only peripherally related to quarians at this point.

What about bumping Quarians, is that on topic?

[TheN7Penguin]

Given that we've gone from "___ Master Race Names" to various other things including Yahg in dresses, Quarian admirals and now translators, bumping Quarians can hardly be taken off the possible list of things that we discuss here.

[Quarian Master Race]

post

*sigh*....you continue to miss the point and make strawmen to argue against.  If it works for you, go for it, but yours is objectively an argument from incredulity with cherry picked "evidence" from sources you admit to being inconsistent used to support it. It is utterly implausible due to a plethora of logical, demographic, scientific and most importantly literary reasons that I won't reiterate, and furthermore is not explicitly substantiated anywhere in writing, gameplay or dialouge.

Since I don't carry the burden of proof in this instance, I can merely claim benefit of assumption as long as it doesn't contradict that Codex entry and we can go back and forth about this ad nauseam, and my glorious thread will continue to grow.

[TheN7Penguin]

Given that Mass Effect is set more than a hundred and fifty years in the future, and there are starships capable of going faster than light, it is not improbable that they have highly sophisticated translators.

Think about it.

Google Translate was launched in 2006 (just an example of a translator).

In 9 years, we have managed to create a fairly basic translator which still makes mistakes and isn't very good with, lets face it, relatively primitive technology.

Those in Mass Effect have had 19x the amount of time we've had to work on the same technology and make it relatively usable, and that isn't to mention the input from other, more advanced races such as the Quarians, whose technology far surpasses that of the humans, so will have been able to contribute more to the translators than we will have done.

If we had nineteen times the amount of time we've already had to work on the car, it'd be able to do pretty much everything.

[Quarian Master Race]

I got a warning point for my 2000th post and it got deleted. What a thank you for my important and constructive contributions to this forum.

[DaemionMoadrin]

Given that Mass Effect is set more than a hundred and fifty years in the future, and there are starships capable of going faster than light, it is not improbable that they have highly sophisticated translators.

Think about it.

Google Translate was launched in 2006 (just an example of a translator).

In 9 years, we have managed to create a fairly basic translator which still makes mistakes and isn't very good with, lets face it, relatively primitive technology.

Those in Mass Effect have had 19x the amount of time we've had to work on the same technology and make it relatively usable, and that isn't to mention the input from other, more advanced races such as the Quarians, whose technology far surpasses that of the humans, so will have been able to contribute more to the translators than we will have done.

If we had nineteen times the amount of time we've already had to work on the car, it'd be able to do pretty much everything.

 

Or more likely... the Asari, Turians, Salarians, Volus and all the other Citadel races needed either a common trade language or a sophisticated universal translator. By the time humans appeared, it had been in use for at least a thousand years. So they simply added English to the translator or taught them the language.

[TheN7Penguin]

That's horrible. What did you do?

[TheN7Penguin]

Or yes, that is also an option.

[Dunmer of Redoran]

 

*sigh*....you continue to miss the point and make strawmen to argue against.  If it works for you, go for it, but yours is objectively an argument from incredulity with cherry picked "evidence" from sources you admit to being inconsistent used to support it. It is utterly implausible due to a plethora of logical, demographic, scientific and most importantly literary reasons that I won't reiterate, and furthermore is not explicitly substantiated anywhere in writing, gameplay or dialouge.

Since I don't carry the burden of proof in this instance, I can merely claim benefit of assumption as long as it doesn't contradict that Codex entry and we can go back and forth about this ad nauseam, and my glorious thread will continue to grow.

 

 

Actually, we both do, because this isn't black and white here. This is one of the many, many problems with the Mass Effect lore and a testament to how badly-constructed it is. We hear things about translators, but then we see things that contradict their popularity. As we have the Hanar, they are a race that uses translators but they also have a manner of speaking that is robotic--no one else has that same manner of speech. That's not a coincidence. Javik and Elcor and the Turian aren't written down, but they're visible, totally audible, and clear as crystal. They don't have to say they don't use translators--their behaviors in these cases strongly imply that they're not being used.

 

In-game experience and the codex are in open conflict here. Mass Effect isn't a text based game, so I'm going to give the gameplay the benefit of the doubt over the codex here. And we know in-game overwrites the Codex (hint: Protheans). Neither may be perfectly consistent, but if neither is perfect, the one that gets center stage is the one to rule them all.

[Dunmer of Redoran]

I got a warning point for my 2000th post and it got deleted. What a thank you for my important and constructive contributions to this forum.

 

Which was what? 

 

I don't know how someone can get warned on here aside from flaming someone.

[Salarian Master Race]

Don't forget Stephen Hawking.

 

We have that right now.

[Quarian Master Race]

Actually, we both do, because this isn't black and white here.

It is, insofar as you continue claim a codex entry is incorrect on grounds of inconsistency and then use information from the codex to support your premise. Without the codex, the only conclusion you can draw from gameplay is that everyone speaks English, which obviously is not intended to be the case. If you are drawing information from the codex to support your "trade language" theory (and you have to be, because otherwise everyone including Hanar are clearly speaking English in gameplay), than you can't just throw out what doesn't agree with it and claim the rest as fact. That is cherry picking and an inductive fallacy.

 

Which was what? 

 

I don't know how someone can get warned on here aside from flaming someone.

Well if a mere stating of the fact that this OP is rustled and posting a jimmies gif along with some not-gloating is flaming....

http://forum.bioware...in-new-me-game/

but I really don't get it. It wasn't nearly as offensive a post as some in this thread, and that OP's logic was abusive to my brain, yet it doesn't get deleted. Racist double standards.

[Dunmer of Redoran]

It is, insofar as you continue claim a codex entry is incorrect on grounds of inconsistency and then use information from the codex to support your premise. Without the codex, the only conclusion you can draw from gameplay is that everyone speaks English, which obviously is not intended to be the case. If you are drawing information from the codex to support your "trade language" theory (and you have to be, because otherwise everyone including Hanar are clearly speaking English in gameplay), than you can't just throw out what doesn't agree with it and claim the rest as fact. That is cherry picking and an inductive fallacy.

 

Well if a mere stating of the fact that this OP is rustled and posting a jimmies gif along with some not-gloating is flaming....

http://forum.bioware...in-new-me-game/

but I really don't get it. It wasn't nearly as offensive a post as some in this thread, and that OP's logic was abusive to my brain, yet it doesn't get deleted. Racist double standards.

 

I'm using information from the codex to support my premise by pointing out that the codex is inherently flawed. The codex gives us statements that are contradictory--favoring either side of the same coin disregards the other. That's why I'm saying it's better to disregard the codex altogether here. It's terribly unreliable even compared to what's in-game. Just another random example: Tali translates "Keelah Se'lai" to Shepard. Why would she need to do this when phrases are otherwise translated? I'm not going to pretend that no one ever literally uses translators aside from the Hanar, but given the way characters communicate with one another, it looks to me much more likely that they're speaking the same language (simple multipurpose trade language) than communicating with a translator that can pick up the tone, inflection and intention of everything people say but somehow excludes an entire species that's been on the Citadel and can't pick up idiomatic expressions.

 

As for poster with rustled jimmies, this is why arguing anywhere outside of the MP forum is so dangerous.

[TheN7Penguin]

It's just because people hate on Quarians. :/

 

Keelah se'lai, I believe, is translated to the closest meaning. There may be no equivalent in English, especially given the phrases many uses.