Author Topic: Galactic Basic Standard = English or not?
Lord_Hydronium  6273 posts
Title: Literature Gardener
Registered: Jun '02
15597_Vergere
Date Posted: 4/28/07 8:30pm Subject: RE: Galactic Basic Standard = English or not?
Thrawn McEwok posted:
Hydronium: The problem is that Tolkien's metafiction is explicitly a printed text of a translation of material from the Red Book of Westmarch, rendered into English out of Westron (and large sections of which were already translated from Elvish) - whereas the Star Wars source material is the movies...

Something like the Sil is presented as a self-conscious English rendering of a Westron translation from Elvish...

I don't think that analogy really holds up for the Star Wars movies. Yes, the material has been edited - but when we see Artoo's comments written in Aurebesh on a screen, or hear Leia's lips move, and hear the live-recorded dialogue... are you arguing there's a form of "simultaneous translation" going on? mischief

- The Imperial Ewok

Well, part of the problem comes from how far we want to take the metafiction. If we assume that Lucas' movie is exactly what it is in the real world, that is, a film starring Mark Hamill et al. with special effects by ILM, only we add that he got the story/dialogue/info in the first place from the Whills, then it's not a problem at all; he translated the source in the same way that Tolkien did with the Red Book, just to a different medium.

If we want to go with a literal IU presentation, be it through R2's recordings or Voren's propaganda films, then we run into that problem, but I don't think the idea of a sophisticated form of dubbing is out of the question (it is starting to push Occam a bit, but compared with the alternative, I think it's the more reasonable choice). Maybe it was even R2 who auto-dubbed it so our 20th century American ears could understand it.

EAJ: Havac answered that well. Basically, the translators changing Basic to English would want to preserve everything that that implies, including loanwords in Huttese, pidgins like Gunganese, and related languages like Olys Corellisi and presumably High Galactic.

There is another interesting problem, though, which is the other Basic alphabet we see, namely, our own Latin alphabet. It's contrasted with Aurabesh, so it's not just a transliteration of that. So either this is an alphabet different to Aurabesh and the Latin one, and for some reason was transliterated to the Latin one instead of Aurabesh, or it happens to be the same as the Latin one. While the latter is less plausible, I do like it better, mostly for the reason that, if you transliterate one, why not do it to the seemingly more common one?

And before someone says that I'm really overthinking this: Well, duh. wink

 

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Ris_jSarek  2541 posts
Registered: Feb '05
18187_Z-95 Headhunter
Date Posted: 4/28/07 11:48pm Subject: RE: Galactic Basic Standard = English or not? - Date Edited: 4/28/07 11:50pm (1 edits total) Edited By: Ris_jSarek
GrandAdmiralJello posted:
"Latin" would make more sense as High Galactic--compare fi to filius and the archaic Basic of Adumar's perator to imperator. This doesn't work for the entire language, particularly the Jedi's use of it, but it would fit in quite well as the ancient language of law, politics, and religion. This is not to say that High Galactic == Latin, but that it plays the role of the language. The Kuati may use its terms for their own ships to make them sound classier--but the High Galactic names are given to us "in translation" as Latinate names.


Also a reasonable supposition, though I did mean for the Latin analog language, whatever it might happen to be, as a source of Latinate words in Basic, not necessarily as having an analagous social role in the galaxy (for which High Galactic does work perfectly).

GrandAdmiralJello posted:
To return to my earlier point without doing a quote by quote--Earth is not in the GFFA. There is no way that the "English" language could have arrived in the GFFA a long, long time before it ever existed on Earth unless your claim is that Earth got English from the GFFA. That sort of ridiculousness goes far beyond the tolerant pale in terms of parsimony, and should rank with the worst fanfiction ideas ever.

jSarek--are you really going to make the claim that humans on Earth originated from the GFFA, and that English speakers are therefore the original population? Keep in mind, then, that human pre-English history doesn't make sense then.


I'm going to make an even bolder claim, and make an appeal to the Rigellian Paradox - that, like the language of Kang and Kodos from The Simpsons, by astronomical coincidence, Galactic Basic and English happen to be *exactly the same* with no causal link between the two. This is of course completely impossible, but no more so than humans evolving in the GFFA in the first place. I include it in my "starting package of disbelief" I use to accept Star Wars in the first place, along with the independent presence humans, habitable Core Worlds, breathable gas giants, inhabitable single-terrain worlds, hyperspace, multi-millennial cultural and linguistic stagnation, and a host of other things.

However, Earth, or some comparable planet, *must* exist, because the opening title card must be talking to *somebody*. "A long time ago" and "a galaxy far, far away" only makes sense if there's someplace in another galaxy in the future for it to be talking to.

 

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SuperWatto  5872 posts
Registered: Sep '00
45743_Azzameen Crest
Date Posted: 4/29/07 1:09am Subject: RE: Galactic Basic Standard = English or not?
I got another, easier explanation: it's fiction.

 

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EJA 
Registered: Apr '07
Date Posted: 4/29/07 2:28am Subject: RE: Galactic Basic Standard = English or not?
Maybe the GFFA got the Latin alphabet from Earth time travellers from the distant future, and it was incorporated by the SW humans. It's just a thought, the best I can come up with right now. A similar thing happened in "The Shadow Out of Time", a story by H.P. Lovecraft. Opinions, anyone?

 

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SuperWatto  5872 posts
Registered: Sep '00
45743_Azzameen Crest
Date Posted: 4/29/07 2:30am Subject: RE: Galactic Basic Standard = English or not?
I got an opinion, but I'm not too sure ya wanna hear it...

 

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EJA 
Registered: Apr '07
Date Posted: 4/29/07 2:36am Subject: RE: Galactic Basic Standard = English or not?
SuperWatto posted:
I got an opinion, but I'm not too sure ya wanna hear it...


Yes, SuperWatto, I am well aware that it's all fiction, and doesn't really matter that much. But it's still fun to discuss all the whys and wherefores of the SW universe cool

 

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SuperWatto  5872 posts
Registered: Sep '00
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Date Posted: 4/29/07 2:57am Subject: RE: Galactic Basic Standard = English or not? - Date Edited: 4/29/07 2:59am (1 edits total) Edited By: SuperWatto
I agree this is a pretty funny topic.
However, if you ask for opinions on something like this, I'll always step up and be the first to flaunt the way I feel about it!

See, the moment any link between the GFFA and Earth becomes canon, is the moment I'm throwing in the towel. No matter how many of the Big 3 die, no matter how often Palpatine or dead heroes come back - this is the one and only thing that can drive me away.

It's a long time ago and in a galaxy far, far away, it's got nothing to do with us, and that's why I love it.

But hey, that's just my opinion. I also think churches should become discos, so who's gonna listen to me?

 

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Ris_jSarek  2541 posts
Registered: Feb '05
18187_Z-95 Headhunter
Date Posted: 4/29/07 5:55am Subject: RE: Galactic Basic Standard = English or not?
SuperWatto posted:
See, the moment any link between the GFFA and Earth becomes canon, is the moment I'm throwing in the towel. No matter how many of the Big 3 die, no matter how often Palpatine or dead heroes come back - this is the one and only thing that can drive me away.

It's a long time ago and in a galaxy far, far away, it's got nothing to do with us, and that's why I love it.


Heh, I look at that same phrase AS a canon link between Earth and the GFFA.

SuperWatto posted:
But hey, that's just my opinion. I also think churches should become discos, so who's gonna listen to me?


That would be six different kinds of awesome.

 

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Rogue_Follower  8535 posts
Title: Manager:
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Registered: Nov '03
6468_Blackhole
Date Posted: 4/29/07 8:19am Subject: RE: Galactic Basic Standard = English or not?
SuperWatto posted:
See, the moment any link between the GFFA and Earth becomes canon, is the moment I'm throwing in the towel. No matter how many of the Big 3 die, no matter how often Palpatine or dead heroes come back - this is the one and only thing that can drive me away.


QFT x2.

The moment LFL gets that stupid, it all goes down hill from there. plain

 

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EJA 
Registered: Apr '07
Date Posted: 4/29/07 10:08am Subject: RE: Galactic Basic Standard = English or not?
You know, something that has only just occured to me: This kind of thing has been explored to some degree in classic Star Trek (*ducks to avoid rocks thrown by all the anti-Trekkies on this board). There were several episodes which feature planets whose inhabitants had developed cultures that duplicated those of Earth, even down to language. These episodes are:

- "Miri": An entire replica of Earth itself is discovered, along with the remains of a civilization that equalled Earth's twentieth century.

- "Bread and Circuses" - a planet with its own 20th century version of the Roman Empire, with all the trappings and terminology. Mr Spock notes that the inhabitants speak English.

- "The Omega Glory" - a planet's inhabitants, the Kohms and the Yangs, are descended from that planet's own Americans and Communists. The Yangs even have their own American flag and Constitution, and Holy Bible.


In the series, this is put down to something called Hodgkin's Law of Parallel Planetary Development. Something like this could've happened in the GFFA.

 

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SephyCloneNo15  6880 posts
Registered: Apr '05
8068_R5-D4
Date Posted: 4/29/07 12:28pm Subject: RE: Galactic Basic Standard = English or not?
Ris_jSarek posted:
I'm going to make an even bolder claim, and make an appeal to the Rigellian Paradox - that, like the language of Kang and Kodos from The Simpsons, by astronomical coincidence, Galactic Basic and English happen to be *exactly the same* with no causal link between the two.


Except for the number 4 tongue

Lord_Hydronium posted:
There is another interesting problem, though, which is the other Basic alphabet we see, namely, our own Latin alphabet. It's contrasted with Aurabesh, so it's not just a transliteration of that. So either this is an alphabet different to Aurabesh and the Latin one, and for some reason was transliterated to the Latin one instead of Aurabesh, or it happens to be the same as the Latin one. While the latter is less plausible, I do like it better, mostly for the reason that, if you transliterate one, why not do it to the seemingly more common one?


And then there's at least Greek letters like Lambda and Delta and Omega.

 

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dp4m  36462 posts
Registered: Nov '01
13878_Luke Skywalker Dark Empire
Date Posted: 4/29/07 12:42pm Subject: RE: Galactic Basic Standard = English or not?
Rogue_Follower posted:
SuperWatto posted:
See, the moment any link between the GFFA and Earth becomes canon, is the moment I'm throwing in the towel. No matter how many of the Big 3 die, no matter how often Palpatine or dead heroes come back - this is the one and only thing that can drive me away.


QFT x2.

The moment LFL gets that stupid, it all goes down hill from there. plain


Well, see you guys then. happy

Since the E.T. aliens are senators and E.T. landed on Earth, there must be a link. tongue Which is why E.T. recognizes Yoda as a Halloween character and says "hooooome" as well.

 

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Ris_jSarek  2541 posts
Registered: Feb '05
18187_Z-95 Headhunter
Date Posted: 4/29/07 12:42pm Subject: RE: Galactic Basic Standard = English or not?
SephyCloneNo15 posted:
Ris_jSarek posted:
I'm going to make an even bolder claim, and make an appeal to the Rigellian Paradox - that, like the language of Kang and Kodos from The Simpsons, by astronomical coincidence, Galactic Basic and English happen to be *exactly the same* with no causal link between the two.


Except for the number 4 tongue


Or in the case of Basic, except for coffee. ;-)

 

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Dawud786  2654 posts
Registered: Dec '06
42320_Luke Skywalker
Date Posted: 4/29/07 12:47pm Subject: RE: Galactic Basic Standard = English or not?
Ris_jSarek posted:
SuperWatto posted:
See, the moment any link between the GFFA and Earth becomes canon, is the moment I'm throwing in the towel. No matter how many of the Big 3 die, no matter how often Palpatine or dead heroes come back - this is the one and only thing that can drive me away.

It's a long time ago and in a galaxy far, far away, it's got nothing to do with us, and that's why I love it.


Heh, I look at that same phrase AS a canon link between Earth and the GFFA.




It's a link that is established as of 1977 though, when the story was first heard by Earth people... there's nothing to suggest a historic link other than that. We are getting this from the Journal of the Whills in some fashion or another... but our evolution here has not been impacted by that civilization nor has our's impacted their's in some lame way like time travel.

 

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Darth_Davi  2030 posts
Registered: Jul '05
17804_Jedi
Date Posted: 4/29/07 1:53pm Subject: RE: Galactic Basic Standard = English or not? - Date Edited: 4/29/07 1:55pm (1 edits total) Edited By: Darth_Davi
If galactic basic isn't English, and Earth doesn't exist in the Star Wars galaxy, how would anyone on Earth know how to translate the journal? If its not English, or, even an Earthly language, there is nobody on Earth that would have been able to decipher the linguistic nuances, nor would anyone from the SW galaxy have been able to pre-translate it for us, as they would have no clue what to translate it to. If its not English, there is simply no way that English, Spanish, French, Chinese, etc would be included among C3PO's six million forms of communication...They wouldn't have been able to translate their work into English, we wouldn't have been able to translate their work into English. We would have just a book, and nothing to compare it with, no other samples, nothing. Galactic Basic has to be rooted in an Earth language, otherwise it would be so completely foreign, we wouldn't have any way to translate it. Essentially, it would be gibberish with no way to decode it.

 

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