15 réponses à ce sujet

[EpicNewb]

It doesn't make sense.  They can't be the only aliens that have their own language.  Everyone else speaks straight up human English

[StarcloudSWG]

Because a> Bioware didn't have the time to write multiple different, consistent languages, each distinct from the other. b> Bioware *does* expose you to fragments of the different languages, if you bother to pay attention to the in-game planetary descriptions.

 

and c> Omnitool translation programs are good enough that they can translate 99.999 percent of what everyone says. Keelah Se'lai doesn't have an easy translation and therefore does not get translated.

 

If you pay attention, you'll even find that some aliens ARE speaking english without the use of a translator. Remember Morlan from Mass Effect 1? The Salarian shopkeeper in the marketplace next to Chora's Den? Remember how strange his speech was compared to all the other salarians who spoke perfect english?

 

That's because Morlan was NOT using a translation program. He'd learned english well enough to be able to communicate in it, even if he was using non-english grammatical constructions with it.

 

You've got to pay closer attention to the information you're given in game.

[Reorte]

Similarly with other humans speaking other languages. The odd bit of Spanish from James (there was some wasn't there, hope I'm not making that up!) makes it sound like he's speaking English normally, so no translation. Similarly with the name-I've-forgotten dodgy cop on Noveria. Of course when it is translated it wouldn't lip-synch but I imagine Bioware (not unreasonably) thought that players wouldn't react well to that.

I've a theory about keelah se'lai and bosh'tet. Quarians presumably had a wide variety of languages before the geth drove them into space. With survivors from all over the place, speaking different languages, they settled on some lingua franca which might not even be quarian (speaking some major Council language, probably an asari one, would be logical), so the original language isn't in the translator software and the odd phrase or to in it comes through untranslated.

The translator might reproduce the speaker's voice, but any idea about accents? The quarians certainly have quite a few.

[Xen]

The quarian language is called khelish, and you get a bit more exposition on it if you read Ascension. 

http://masseffect.wi...uarian#Language

It isn't the only language this happens to, but it did get the most exposition of the two alien languages that did. People do remember it most probably because Tali tosses keelah and bosh'tet around practically every other word. By contrast, you only hear korbal from Wrex once or twice, and Grunt or the Shaman say krannt a few times for example.

http://masseffect.wi...Krogan#Language

as to why these two would have terms that frequently make it through, probably has something to do with them being pariah species, whom the Council aren't updating their glossaries on the translator to as thoroughly.

originally I chalked accents up to the quarians attempting to speak Council languages (would make a lot of sense to learn one or two for Pilgrimage in case you lost access to machine translation), but that doesn't hold up when you see that Tali downloads translator software for human languages upon rejoining the Normandy in ME2, and that all the other quarians still have them during her Treason hearing even though they'd have no reason to be speaking anything but khelish in this instance.

There's likely not a real explanation. Universal translators would essentially have to have some form of mind reading magic to work the way they are presented in game. They're just there so the setting can work. More likely, accents and filters and are just to give the setting some flavor.
 

[Obliviousmiss]

Also, if you're Femshep, Thane calls you "Siha," and femshep asks if her translator glitched. (Happens if romanced or unromanced.) 

[gothpunkboy89]

Some words don't have translations.

 

Hulk is Hulk in English, Spanish or Japanese.

[CptFalconPunch]

I dont understand how they keep their voices after their speech gets translated.

[GDICanuck]

I dont understand how they keep their voices after their speech gets translated.

Google translate has come a looong way.

[Vespervin]

Because quarians > all of the other aliens.

[aoibhealfae]

Play SWTOR. The droids, aliens and occasionally humans speaks in their own language, you only read the subtitles and you only respond in English. Same thing in ME universe except that their primary Xbox-FPS audience didn't like reading too much subtitles so it make things simpler. 

[KrrKs]

To be honest, I don't like subtitles.

While you read those, you *just* read those and don't really look at whatever is happening in the scene. So you are inevitably not seeing whatever it is the characters do, especially if it a rather small thing like a smirk or little hand movement or some-such.

 

Considering the character that you play is still supposed to understand it anyway, using the actual localization language is the way to go, imo.

It also spares dev time, as there is no need to come up with a (unique per species!) gibberish that sounds like a language.

[ZipZap2000]

Ardat Yakshi

Dralafar

Those are two off the top of my head im fairly sure there are others. It seems to depend on the species. Quarians and Drell come across as being very cultured. Salarian and Turian seem very proper in their speech, modern. I get the impression the Asari aren't that forthcoming with these things.

[StarcloudSWG]

Again, pay attention to the planetary names and descriptions. Many of them are drawn from Volus, Asari and Turian languages. The ones near Tuchanka are of course drawn from the Krogan language.

 

And the ones around Khar'shan are drawn from the Batarian language.

 

There's plenty out there if you bother to look instead of only listening to the words spoken in dialog.

[dragonflight288]

It doesn't make sense.  They can't be the only aliens that have their own language.  Everyone else speaks straight up human English

 

We're exposed to the Salarian dialects, with the names of their original colonies in Mass Effect 1, which was the name of Captain Kirihe's units as a way to give them something to hope for, and we know from in-game lore that Salarians get their names for planet, colony and system they are born in. So that's a bit of language unique to them.

 

ME2 has Azure, the "luxury" hotel in Lair of the Shadow Broker that is in an Asari dialect and slang-word. 

 

And the codex entry says that the omni-tool has a universal translator in it so the species can understand each other, so to us they may be speaking English, but may not be speaking it at all based on the lore. 

[FlyingSquirrel]

Ardat Yakshi

Dralafar

Those are two off the top of my head im fairly sure there are others. It seems to depend on the species. Quarians and Drell come across as being very cultured. Salarian and Turian seem very proper in their speech, modern. I get the impression the Asari aren't that forthcoming with these things.

 

I'm sure the real reason for this is just artistic license for scenes where it was more effective to have an alien use a word from his/her own language. But I actually think it makes sense if you assume that the translator programs work through a sort of database, possibly with each user able to set preferences via their omni-tools.

 

The quarians and the drell are both somewhat marginalized as a species. Quarians face a lot of discrimination and probably tend to limit their interactions with other species because they aren't sure what kind of response they will get, and the drell just aren't very numerous. Bailey says in ME2 that they don't see many drell on the Citadel. So it makes sense that there would be some gaps in the database for the quarian and drell languages. "Ardat Yakshi" are something the asari don't like to talk about, so again, it's probably missing from the database. Plus, doesn't Samara say that it's from an older iteration of the asari language? You might expect the krogan and batarian languages to have similar gaps given their own marginal status, but there was probably more of an impetus to study their languages in detail given that they both turned *against* the Council regime at one point.

 

As for James, if I'm right about the personal settings, he clearly likes to throw in the Spanish words for effect, so he could just set his program not to translate Spanish into any other human languages when he's speaking.

[Reorte]

As for James, if I'm right about the personal settings, he clearly likes to throw in the Spanish words for effect, so he could just set his program not to translate Spanish into any other human languages when he's speaking.

Or it doesn't translate at all if both speaker and receiver are using the same language, so odd words can slip in from other languages.