CT Does Luke share communication with R2-D2 without translation?

Poll, vote, critical analysis, quip, one-liner, whatever. All responses good.

The question attempts to tease apart whether or not substantial information is received by Luke from R2 beeps and boops. I.e., If Luke and R2 were placed in a sealed room, could Luke and R2 carry on an extended conversation with high information content?

As opposed to....

Luke being able to hear some general sense of R2 and then saying something, to himself, to the air (camera), or to R2 that is not necessarily a direct answer to R2 beeps.

Looking for general impressions And for analysis of submitted evidence.

 

I think he can understand them. He worked with binary droids all day, I'm sure he picked up the meaning behind the various boops, beeps, and blurps.

 

On the way to Dagobah, he R2's beeps were translated onto a screen in the cockpit. He does kind of have conversations with him, but that could just be picking up body language and tone.

 

"If you're saying coming here was a bad idea, then I'm starting to agree with you."

Sounds like Luke is guessing.

 

He seems to get a sense of what Artoo is trying to say.

 

Now that I think about it, that could have just been because R2-D2 was outside while Luke was inside the ship and couldn't hear him. Other than that, Luke doesn't seem to indicate that he can understand him the same way Rey understood BB-8. C-3PO constantly translated for him, and in The Empire Strikes Back, he responded to him like a person would respond to a pet.

 

There is a middle way: in ANH Luke could not understand him, but he was learning to and by ESB was gaining some basic understanding. In more time, he would've been able to.

 

This is evidence based. Very good.

 

Just out of curiousity: Is there a website with all the different sounds of Artoo and how to interpret these?

To my knowledge we mostly get the idea what Artoo tries to communicate or how he feels about something but I'd love to learn if any serious attempts have been made to catalog all his sounds.

 

As a child even I could understand Artoo sometimes.

He beeps "do you?" clear as a bell to C-3PO, who responds " No. I don't like you either".

 

I know what my dog is saying, in a way, from the noises he makes and the body language. I'd say it's like that with Luke and Artoo.

 

So, folks from Classic Trilogy area, this is an exercise in pursuing a testable hypothesis that was broached elsewhere, elusive. The relevant scene that most closely parallels this question is of course Luke and R2 and an X-Wing, between Hoth and Yoda's hut. Can any of you OT people take up the challenge to watch the relevant ESB scene, with as much careful attention to what Luke is doing as is necessary to see exactly what Luke is doing, and with as much careful attention to what Luke is saying in tandem specifically with what Luke is doing, and then state your own

independent,

precisely researched,

repeatedly verified / high sampling size

findings?

Where is Luke looking when he says what?
What is the dependency between complexity of statement, or information content, and, what Luke is doing when stated.
Like y(x) over x.

 

That's the most bizarre post I've read since I've been on here.

 

Hernalt

According to this excellent screen cap compilation - http://starwarsscreencaps.com/star-wars-episode-v-the-empire-strikes-back-1980/24/ - I'd say it's obvious that Luke looks at least twice at his translation screen to read what it is Artoo is exactly saying.

Here is what the screenplay said:

EXT. SPACE - LUKE'S X-WING
Luke's fighter, its wings closed, speeds away from the icy planet.
Soon it disappears into the stars.

INT. LUKE'S X-WING - COCKPIT
Luke, looking thoughtful, suddenly makes a decision. He flips several
switches. The stars shift as he takes his fighter into a steep turn.
The X-wing banks sharply and flies away in a new direction.

The monitor screen on Luke's control panel prints out a question from
the concerned Artoo.

LUKE (into comlink)
There's nothing wrong, Artoo.
I'm just setting a new course.

Artoo beeps once again.

LUKE (into comlink)
We're not going to regroup with
the others.

Artoo begins a protest, whistling an unbelieving, "What?!"

Luke reads Artoo's exclamation on his control panel.

LUKE (into comlink)
We're going to the Dagobah system.

Luke checks his readouts and makes a few adjustments. He rides along
with only the soft hum of the instruments to break the silence.
Finally, Artoo chirps up.

LUKE (into comlink)
Yes, Artoo?

Artoo utters a soft, carefully phrased steam of whistles.

LUKE (into comlink, chuckling)
That's all right. I'd like to
keep it on manual control for a
while.

The little droid lets out a defeated whimper. Luke smiles, and
continues on his course.

 

As pointed out in another thread, Han can clearly unequivocally understand a maintenance droid in ESB. There is precedent.

 

This discussion is STILL going on?
What the frak?

 

Actually, I find the issue rather interesting, because I had never paid too much attention to it before.

Ah, okay, here is the scene with the Treadwell droid on top of the Falcon in ESB:

HAN Hi, kid.
(to droid)
There's got to be a reason for
it. Check it at the other end.
Wait a second.

http://starwarsscreencaps.com/star-wars-episode-v-the-empire-strikes-back-1980/14/

 

Yeah, apparently that's the point we've now reached. Ugh

 

That's evidence based. Good.

 

From what I've seen and/or learned so far, I'd say it's rather obvious that Luke doesn't understand astro droid language while Han Solo is able to understand Treadwell droid language.

In the deleted ANH scenes on Tatooine Luke brought a Treadwell along to fix a vaporator but their interaction was limited to Luke issuing orders. Assuming Luke spent time mostly around Treadwell droids I could believe he also understood their language (there was also one in Lars Homestead: http://www.propstore.com/content/tunisia/starwars5b.jpg)

In the case of Solo I'd actually expect him to understand more droid languages than Luke, considering he probably and way too often has to deal with them when he's fixing or upgrading the Falcon in any intergalactic port his travels might take him to.

 

That's the limit of independent confirmation I was seeking.

The Has Solo scene was brought up as some kind of a silver bullet that is supposed to catastrophically demolish the relevant concern. I am not aware, at all, of such a catastrophic destruction.

I have no problem taking it as a likely fact that Han Solo can communicate by ear and voice with a Treadwell droid to the limit of repairing a spacecraft. Let Treadwell beeps be codes that Solo knows from an operator's manual. Not a suspension of disbelief. Even if Solo is sort of talking to himself based on what the Treadwell beeps mean, he still gets the tenor of the specific repair subject.

I can further lower the degree of suspension of disbelief that Han Solo can talk to a Treadwell repair droid by referencing that he's 'made a lot of modifications myself', he's either truly or by idiom 'been from one side of this galaxy to the other', which is to mean, he has arrived upon and left multiple, multiple planets, and has been through multiple equivalents of a Mos Eisley space port, a Mos Eisley docking bay 94, a Hoth hangar, a Cloud City auto shop. The degree of suspension of disbelief that Solo can talk to a Treadwell repair droid goes down to near zero. Now, add in one supposition that Han in fact owns that Treadwell and that it deploys from the Falcon only during long maintenance and repair downtimes, and that suspension of disbelief goes to zero.

One thing that can be said about R2-D2. There are several models of this form factor, R2, R4, R5, maybe more. Just to glance at the second "octet", and just to assume that this "octet" is consistent in an alpha and a number, then there are 26*10 = 260 available "octets", for a total of presumably 260 uniquely designated R2 units. A Princess, who is a Senator, who is flown around on diplomatic missions in a Corellian Corvette, sounds about to have the correct status and socioeconomic or geopolitical oomph to be in possession, in some large domain we might call an Empire, of such a possibly rare device. Let that second "octet" float in either number or alpha. [A-B,0-9]*[A-B,0-9] now yields 36*36=1296 unique R2 units. That sounds like a number that is closer to a galactic-size market. But for comparison's sake, imagine an R2 line of products that had a single character for a second octet. Even, a single number. That is a vastly smaller total product line. One might be forgiven for thinking that such an R2 unit would be exceedingly hard to find. Hard to get to know. Hard to get to know, in particular, if you're not in a socioeconomic or geopolitical status like a Princess who is a Senator, and, also hard to get to know if you're not in a place that gets some kind of regular representation of personages of socioeconomic or geopolitical status.

Now the relative scarcity of any kind of R2 unit, on so vast a field as the galaxy, is not for naught to the concern if one other fact is applied. The Death Star I had its own black R2 unit. I cannot know whether or not the Empire's other capital ships had similarly scarce astromech droids, but it is quite imaginable since the expectation of Star Destroyers is to in fact go into battle and incur necessary urgent repairs of all magnitudes. And so if there happened to be a large naval action with a large number of Star Destroyers, not all of which survive, the 'imaginability' of Imperial R2 units who go down with any given ship is quite conserved.

 

Considering both Poe and Rey can understand droid, and apparently Han as well (good catch there!), it seems likely Luke can as well.

 

icqfreak

But that's exactly the point, Luke reads Artoo's translation on his cockpit screen in ESB. Other than that he gives orders and merely guesses what Artoo might want (like energy from that fusion furnace in their Dagobah camp). There is no scene in the OT that could possibly suggest he really understands what Artoo says, which also applies to Solo (because he never had a real chance for actual interaction with Artoo).

Hernalt

I agree that the apparent capability to identify individual R2 units could suggest there are not that many, but this is a particular item where I guess that nobody really thought it through.

Add to this that "R4" is a misnomer of the Kenner Action figure. Luke and Threepio clearly identified "Red" as another "R2 unit", same applies for Dave (Red Leader) who actually addressed his "R4" as "R2" in the draft from March 15, 1976 in the extended scene prior to his crash.

 

Lt. Hija

That is interesting. There's many fruitful and fun differences between Star Wars 1977 script and film. I cannot profess to know much about "R4". I had R5-D4 in Kenner, of course. Just cursory double checking of your correction yielded up this neat trip. Again, the lore of "R4" is beyond the concern. The same population distribution, vis a vis a hypothetical 'limited edition' type of astromech, obtains.

http://www.angelfire.com/droid/astromechs/page10.html

 

I will not by myself introduce comparisons from a certain recent film, since this is Classic Trilogy.

But I imagine if there was a Wedge type of person, perhaps, even "a" Wedge, at the height of the Rebellion, whose overriding talent and responsibility was piloting an X-Wing in all the portfolio of missions that an X-Wing might support, and was so good at his job and experienced, that he earned the moniker 'best pilot in the Rebellion', and this moniker was based on a statistical representation of his successes to losses, of his ability to bring his wingmen home, of his ability to inflict maximum damage at least risk to the very enterprise, or to protect maximum resources at least expenditure, etc, etc, other metrics, and is necessarily with an expensive, rare astromech unit for hours on end, day in, day out, week in, week out, month in, month out, then, for my money, the degree of suspension of disbelief that a Wedge of this type might be fully conversant with high information content with his Binary astromech droid, say, an R2 unit, or an R5 unit, whichever, is zero.

The (putative) fact that such a Wedge can be conversant with his astromech droid demonstrates the fact (putative) that:

A Wedge, of this kind, can be conversant with his astromech droid.

That is, more or less, so incontrovertibly demonstrated that there is no grounds to doubt it.