ST People cannot talk to droids.

*waves hand* people CAN talk to droids

 

I talk to my Sphero BB-8 all the time Even my dog barks at him LOL.

 

Mandarin sounds like a bunch of gibberish to me, but a bunch of my friends seem to understand it just fine.

 

That's not conversation. That's talking to the droid. Is this about conversation or about understanding? Every one of those lines is not an indication that Luke is understanding what R2 is saying.

 

On Earth.

In a galaxy far, far away - anything is possible.

 

Yeah...ok, Luke asking Artoo questions and Artoo twittering his responses isn't conversation. Got it.

 

Now people are mixing up the whole question initially posed. The fact is Luke could not understand what R2-D2 was saying beyond figuring out simple responses when he asked yes/no questions. Asking if he was ready for some power was a question posed knowing the answer, like asking if a dog is hungry while getting out the food.

 

Don't buy it. It's been shown in the OT/PT and now the ST that people who use astromechs frequently develop a level of understanding.

 

My question is, the droids apparently have little or no trouble understanding english, common, or whatever it is being spoken.

Why do they reply back in droid speak? It's not like they're not equipped to create the sounds needed. They can play back holograms for the force's sake!

We have Siri, Cortana, and whatever you feel like calling Android's voice command system. They don't reply back in binary when you ask them a question, mean to tell me no one in a galaxy far, far away has figured out to put this in the droid OS?

 

Guys guys guys, it's explained in The Night Before that Seth Rogen can only talk to dogs if he's on a combination of powerful hallucinogenic drugs. Such is the same with Rey and Poe.

 

My guess is the Astromechs are already packed to the gills with data/info/programming to deal with ships and are setup to communicate with ships primarily, and since the Droid's owner learns a level of understanding, that they don't bother with adding an acutal voice modulator to speak basic.

From Han understanding the maintenance droid, and responding that their must be a "reason" for it... etc, people deal with these enough to where it's not important to them.

 

You don't get fireballs in space either, are well really arguing reality in a fictional universe where people can move objects with their minds?

Only in SW fandom.

 

In season two of Rebels Ezra actually learns how to understand Chopper (Hera, Sabine and Kanan already could, Zeb is the only one in the crew that doesn't understand), he has a line during one episode that he's been learning Binary. It's canonly possible.

 

But not Luke when talking to R2-D2, which is the source of your constant referencing.

 

Again... Yes he does...

Luke: If you’re saying coming here was a bad idea, I’m beginning to agree with you.

He shows right there he has an understanding level. He's literally saying what "he thinks" Artoo just said.

 

If.

 

In the SW universe, people can and do talk to droids and they understand one another.

If you want a better explanation, the Star Trek universe is right down the hall.

 

That's exactly how I worded it... a level of understanding.

Like I said... he said exactly what "he thinks" Artoo just said. That IS a level of understanding.

 

If you want to analyze it, you could say people in the SW universe learn droids with their beeps and whistles respond to certain situation with certain sounds so they learn which ones those are and that tells them what the droids are saying. They also might learn a specific level of sound recognition akin to words. Maybe that's how the droids are programmed and their speech is like a code to mean certain words?

So beep beep whoop

beep = word A

whoop = word B

Like Morse or something akin to it.

 

I was joking a bit, but if I can go full nerd...

If they have hologram projectors and speakers to play the range of sound frequencies needed, they are capable of producing the correct sounds for "normal" speech.

The sounds they make are not some binary data blast, unless it's some incredibly inefficient one with long notes and beeps needed to convey even small bits of data, and that's pretty much impossible. If their processors (or whatever they use) took that long to model such a tiny bit of information, there would be no way they'd be capable of doing anything seen in the movies, or even what a modern calculator does.

If you've ever heard a modem's noise, that's what compressed data sounds like. You can suppose that they have a different sort of data scheme in Star Wars to account for beeps and whistles, but if it was strictly a data stream, all the beeps, whistles, and whatever should be compressed to to the fastest possible communication rate between droids. What you end up with is a range of tone changing so quickly is just going to sound like noise/static to anyone actually listening to it. I *suppose* you could say they can only communicate audibly at obscenely slow speeds, but where in the world would such a limitation come from?

Therefore, there is obviously a droid language programmed separately into them to communicate, and it seems to take around the same time to communicate information as regular speech does. So what is the point of installing a different language than the one most humanoids seem to use in the first place? Not to mention you have already used up memory to store humanoid speech since the droids are able to understand it. All you need to do is point the code to humanoid language instead of whatever the equivalent beep or whistle is.

The one out is that they *are* speaking their equivalent of binary, but slowed down to a point where humanoids could possibly understand it when talked to. BUT, you still get the same noises when there are just two droids near each other talking. How many scenes do you have of C3PO and R2-D2 alone? R2 doesn't suddenly change his data rate to a fast blip of static that 3PO responds to.

Anyway, the obvious real answer is "because it's fun to imagine droids have their own language and it let's them make cute noises sometimes".

 

Ok... you are getting Trek level technical on this... Star Wars doesn't go that route. Star Wars... the tech is there to fit the plot/world/environment. In Star Wars, the tech serves the story, not the story serves the Tech.

People understand droids in Star Wars because it adds to the fun of Star Wars. Plain and simple.

 

I don't think you read the last sentence, but yeah, it's obvious I'm a star trek fan as well. lol

 

Ben in ANH talked to R2:

Artoo comes out of the cave whistling about (we can assume) Luke, to which he replies "Oh don't worry, he'll be alright"

I think some people can get the basics of what the droid is saying.

 

If you start asking questions like that and you are going to have a very bad time. Many things in the GFFA do not make sense from a rational point of view. Willful suspension of disbelief is necessary.

 

I do have some thoughts, but honestly the fact that Star Wars skews more to the adventure side of the spectrum than the hard sci-fi side is fine with me. It is one of the reasons I love it so much. Droids in this story are characters first and specific machines second. For example, for any civilization that can travel the galaxy and has shown on-screen that they have voice synthesis.. what possible reason is there for not having that tech in any droid that needs to communicate? Is the synth chip too expensive in this world where we can travel the stars? Just don't look at it too closely..

That said..

If they were literally speaking binary, there would only be two pitches and they would take forever to say anything useful at a rate that a human could parse.

I can buy that they are full blown languages that some people just learn and be mildly satisfied, but..

My favorite way to think of it is like a form of shorthand. Lookup real shorthand sometime if you are interested. You wouldn't necessarily write a novel full of nuance and complex emotion with it, but you could most certainly carry on a rich variety of conversations. So I think the small groups of beeps and tones all represent simple words, concepts, and phrases that you can extrapolate into a series of "thoughts". If you want to speak of love, or the beauty of the trees in autumn, get a protocol droid