A friend of mine hooked me up with the first 8 seasons of Stargate SG-1. I started watching Season 1 a few days ago. I’m enjoying it quite well thus far, except for one thing: the languages (or lack thereof).
Now, I know I’m picking nits. I really do. But I can’t help it. Why do all of the aliens in SG-1 speak English? Not just any English, either – modern English. As my SG-1 buddy noted, they say things like ‘Okay’. They might talk with an accent, but it’s still English.
I understand fully the out-of-plot reasons. I figure most people would be put off if one of the primary languages in SG-1 was ancient Egyptian with subtitles. In that case, the show probably would’ve tanked, and I wouldn’t be writing this now. 
My complaint is, they don’t even make an attempt to explain the communication barrier that the characters can instantly jump over. In the movie, Daniel (the geek) speaks various ancient languages. The people on the planet they go to are ancestors of ancient Egyptians. It turns out that they’re speaking a dialect of a dead language, which Daniel slowly starts to understand. The SG crew doesn’t appear on the planet and immediately start communicating with the inhabitants in English.
In the show, they pop through the gate andddd… woot! Everyone speaks modern English! How convenient.
I don’t expect all of the different peoples to speak a different language with subtitles. That’d be extreme, and would also kill the show. But couldn’t they have put something in the storyline somewhere that made at least an attempt to explain the communication? Maybe one of the advanced races they find early on gives them a generic Universal Translator or something. 
What prompted my nitpicking of this is the episode Emancipation. In it, the crew goes through the Stargate. They’re on a planet where the people are descendents of the medieval Mongols. Their culture is essentially the Mongol culture, preserved intact on this planet. Daniel himself commented, “These could be Ghengis Khan’s peoples!”
Okay. The Mongols did not speak modern English. Even with an Oriental accent.
Grrrr….
(/geekrant)
Addendum: While speaking to my SG-1 buddy and bitching about the fact that the Mongols speak English, he said:
I suppose there’s the off off off chance that SG-1 happened to randomly take a crash course in Mongolian, and it’s translated for the viewer’s benefit.
Har, har.
Comments 49
Word. As a an SG-1 fan, I’d have to say that the lack of language is annoying.
I’m currently in the second season, where they get better at languages, with alien languages and things.
Posted 17 Aug 2006 at 6:50 pm ¶I’m Stargate-obsessive and the lack of language has always made me want to scream loudly at the television. A few years ago, the FAQ on the Stargate website said something like this:
Q: Why does everyone in Stargate speak modern English?
A: They don’t.
Well, I suppose they don’t if you take *that* question in the absolute sense. Grr. Silly topic-avoiding FAQs.
Posted 17 Aug 2006 at 7:15 pm ¶Max – I’m glad they get at least a bit more creative in Season 2. Thanks for the heads up.
DotBot – That’s a really dumb FAQ answer (and a cop out, heh). Thus far, just about all of the aliens have spoken English. Pretty good at it, too!
Posted 17 Aug 2006 at 8:23 pm ¶Yeah, that is a big plot hole that my dad used to be a little annoyed about, but it’s a good thing they didn’t subtitle, because I like the show, and am glad it is lasting a long time!
Posted 18 Aug 2006 at 12:40 am ¶Whoever wrote that FAQ is my hero.
Posted 18 Aug 2006 at 9:21 am ¶This used to bug me but once I understood the behind the scenes reasoning, I got over it. I figure they know they are catering to a hardcore type of audience that would watch everything from the movie on and we know that Daniel speaks 8000 languages and that they are spending time dealing with that off screen. They do deal with the issue in the episode where they meet the Unas.
Posted 19 Aug 2006 at 6:11 am ¶A good point. When I was the publisher of Fantastic Films magazine 1978-1985, we had articles on alien languages that were big hits. For instance the musical language in Close encounters, the five notes, actually translated as HELLO.
The old mags are still available online.
All very scientific sounding
Oh, and if you are a book person, check out my book Master of the Jinn at http://www.masterofthejinn.com
Posted 19 Aug 2006 at 6:39 pm ¶well, apophis speaks to his jafas in a egyptian-sounding langauge. and in one episode, jack says “daniel, find a language to tell these guys that we’re not goulds” and the attackers answer in english “why should we believe you?”. well, at least the show’s makers make an attempt to show that they’re not completely unaware of the issue…
Posted 24 Aug 2006 at 6:36 am ¶Finally someone noticed it…
Posted 27 Aug 2006 at 6:18 am ¶Anyway, just 20 years ago a man called Douglas Noel Adams has found the solution to all those apparently insurmountable problems: the babel fish!
Posted 27 Aug 2006 at 6:21 am ¶Perhaps the local stargate of the world they are visiting embeds the language of that world they visting in their minds as cross through it?
Posted 17 Sep 2006 at 12:39 pm ¶Laura: Hmm, that’s doable. That would be an explanation that could be applied to all past episodes without going back and editing them to insert the universal translator.
Posted 17 Sep 2006 at 5:30 pm ¶I guess it shouldn’t other me, but language always seems to irritate me. I am now in the process of watching Emancipation, and it seems this is where everyone begins to really notice it. I recently finsihed watching Farscape recently, and was on the warpath because Aeryn was trying to learn English, which is a problem on the other end of the spectrum, because the translator microbes they threw in on the very first episode and made frequent reference to would not have allowed such a thing, as it would translate all of it. I guess I should just accept “it’s in the script”
Posted 01 Nov 2006 at 9:35 pm ¶well…in the show it does say that the ancients that were in earth scatered around the galaxy using the stargate and seteled in other planets. maybe when they had children and all that, the ancients taught them english
Posted 30 Jan 2007 at 5:07 pm ¶“…was on the warpath because Aeryn was trying to learn English…”
Matt: Bit off the original topic, but Aeryn was trying to learn to Talk english in Farscape. The translator microbes allow one to understand any language, but they all still spoke in there native tongue, this would be a problem if you wanted to visit Earth where everyone clearly does not have access to translator microbes, hence learning to speak english.
SG-1 is annoyingly wishy washy about the language question, constantly switching between alien and english depending on individual scripts. Even more so since they are excellent at explaining any other potential anomalies.
Posted 19 Feb 2007 at 11:44 am ¶I never did finish watching the Farscape stuff. I recall being bitter when it was cancelled, and then I never did watch any of the other stuff that was aired, like the mini series. They shouldn’t have cancelled it.
Posted 19 Feb 2007 at 1:00 pm ¶One possible answer that I have read in many places, is that the aliens are not speaking English, they are speaking Goa’uldish, which SG1 also speaks. The viewer just hears it as English for obvious reasons. When alien languages are used, it is because they do not speak Goa’uldish.
Posted 03 Mar 2007 at 5:31 am ¶D.P. Roberts:
That’s a plausible explanation, but I still find it a bit of a cop out on the part of the makers of the show.
Posted 03 Mar 2007 at 11:39 am ¶I did some more searching and apparently Laura is right. According to one of the writers on the show, the Goa’uld predicted this problem with languages, so they made the Stargates embed translation nanites (or something like that) into users of the Stargates.
I went back and watched Emancipation, the first episode that dealt with this, and the SG1 team does seem surprised that the Mongols can understand them. I wonder why they didn’t explore this?
Without an onscreen explanation, it does seem like a kluge, and I agree with Josh that it is not very satisfying. But, then again if I can get passed the constant insubordination in a military command that occurs in SG1, among other things, I guess I can accept the explanation of the language issue.
Posted 03 Mar 2007 at 10:37 pm ¶First of all, if you had only been watching Stargate for two days before you wrote this, you couldn’t possibly had enought time to discover all the languages that are in the show. First of all, if they did have to translate a language every time they walked through the gate we would be looking at substancially longer episodes, and longer episodes means more money spent by the show, and more money spent is less money left over for a new episode. And, this is all explaing in one of the special features sections on SG-1, but seeing that you had only seen two days worth of shows, I suggest you don’t pass judgement before you know what you’re talking about.
Posted 27 May 2007 at 5:31 pm ¶D.P. Roberts: Thanks for looking into that further! I appreciate the effort. If that’s the explanation from one of the writers of the show, while I would have liked that info to be presented IN the show, IN the beginning, I can live with it. An explanation from one of the writers outside of the show is better than no explanation at all.
Chris: Thanks for commenting. I’m aware that if they had to translate a language every time they walked through the gate, the episodes would be longer, costs would be higher, etc. etc. Did you even read my post?
At any rate, what special features section are you talking about? Was it a special episode of SG-1, or literally a special feature, i.e. on a DVD? If that’s the case, it wouldn’t help people who watched the show on TV when it originally aired. What my post was attempting to call for was at least SOME explanation, in the BEGINNING of the show (not in some hidden feature on a DVD) as to how SG-1 was communicating with all of the various peoples they were encountering. Just something brief, even just a bit of text (a la BSG, with the text in the beginning about the Cylons), to explain how they were communicating.
Sorry my post upset you. It certainly wasn’t my intention.
Posted 27 May 2007 at 5:59 pm ¶in one episode Daniel says something like most of the races we have come across speak a dielect derived from latin (i think it was the one where T has to go on trail for killing some guys dad when he was first prime)
Posted 23 Jun 2007 at 7:58 am ¶I like the idea that the stargates impart the ability to understand and speak other languages, although it would have to be an imperfect, inconsistent technology to explain why they do sometimes have a language barrier. The Ancients, and not the Goa’uld would have to be the ones who created the technology, since they built the stargates, and the Goa’uld are just scavengers of technology.
As for the explanation that the SG-1 team speaks Goa’uldish, they would have to have learned it quickly and fluently, and it still doesn’t explain why they can even speak with worlds that have never been enslaved (or even encountered) by the Go’auld.
As for the ‘constant military insuboordination’ (which is actually pretty rare on the show), those levels of insuboordination and much worse happen all the time in the military. In fact, the Air Force is in many ways one of the more relaxed of the branches. If anything, I always cringe at the fact that Carter seems to think that every time she disagrees with O’Niell in the course os saving their lives, she has to begin with, “With all due respect, Sir…” They also always make a big deal about not using first names, which is not at all unusual, especially among officers.
In any case, it is really lame that they didn’t even attempt an explanation in the very first episode. The original Star Trek series ignored the language problem, too.
I would have liked to see the actors who played their characters in the original movie play their alternate reality versions in one of the alternate reality episodes. Although Carter and T’ealc didn’t have counterparts in the original.
Here’s a question, though: Are all the stargates’ symbols star constellations as seen from Earth? That seems to be the explanation from the movie, but that seems unlikely, unless the stargate technology was invented on Earth by natives to Earth, which doesn’t seem to be the case. I know the series has a different stargate dialing procedure, but I forget what the difference is.
Posted 12 Aug 2007 at 8:02 pm ¶Johnny: It’s been a while since I watched an episode (I really need to get back to watching season 2…), but if I recall correctly, whereas in the movie, every stargate had a different set of symbols, all of the gates in the TV show have the same set. And I’m not sure about the constellations – in the show, they have a sort of “map”, with stargate “codes” (basically like telephone numbers). If they explained how the sets of symbols correspond to constellations, I’ve forgotten the explanation.
Posted 13 Aug 2007 at 4:15 pm ¶i often think about the whole language thing and, well i think of it like this… people can still go to church every sunday, totally ignoring their monsterous history ie, the crusades, dark ages etc…. space ships don’t make any sound in space cuz it’s a vacum but we get over it cuz it would sound rubbish on tv if they didn’t woosh..!! sometimes we just gotta ignore stuff to get what we want out of it…even the universal translators in star trek are a fair attempt at explaining it u still gota streach your imagination to accept it!!
Posted 23 Aug 2007 at 7:49 pm ¶This topic leads me to something I’ve thought about for a very long time, and it’s not just with Stargate SG1/Atlantis but with other Sci Fi shows as well. Forget about why everyone speaks English on other planets, but why is it that 90% of the universe is …dare I say it…white ?
On the first episode of Atlantis, when they showed the ancient ship departing, it was cool, finally, to see people of color being the ancients. But in subsequent episodes, Ancients are whitefolk. I think it creates a social staple that says it’s normal to be white, but any other color, is something extra, or not of the norm.
Being an American, that ideology being depicted in science fiction shows is just “ass backwards”.
Posted 19 Oct 2007 at 1:22 pm ¶Akhen: I’d never noticed that, but you’re right. The vast majority of folks, regardless of where they’re from, are white.
I’ve not watched SG1 for a while; are all of Teal’c’s kind black, or do I have that mixed up in my head?
Posted 20 Oct 2007 at 11:29 pm ¶I’m not sure about Teal’c’s Jaffa planet as a whole, but I know his family are black folk.
And, people who are white probably wouldn’t notice this precedent as readily because being white is “normalcy” on TV shows.
Look at that weak ass show, Flash Gordon. Everybody in the other dimension is white. I think I would have atleast respected it more if everyone was maybe say, Asian looking. Now, that would have been something different!
Atleast BSG has some diversity, albeit not much, but it give a depiction of color being a non-issue. Rather, what planet you came from is the “race”.
Posted 22 Oct 2007 at 10:25 am ¶I am halfway thru Season 1 and this show has problems. Little teeny glimmers of fun in the midst of alot of dumb crap. I will keep going, thru to season 3 and see if things get better but right now this is lowbrow sci-fi and the lack of translation at this point just underscores the bad writing and lack of talent involved in this project. So far it’s maybe 4 out of 10 for me on a rating scale.
Posted 04 May 2008 at 2:29 am ¶Axis: A lot of it’s silly, yeah, but I still enjoy it. Some episodes would definitely get a 4 (or lower!) out of 10, but there have been some I’d given an 8 or 9.
Posted 04 May 2008 at 10:04 am ¶I honestly did not read all the comments, but I think a good solution to this could be that the ancients, knowing that the sg teams are going to fix most of the problems of the galaxies, tampered with some universe laws and make all humans capable of understand each other AND they make them not to notice it
Albert
Posted 05 Oct 2008 at 2:14 pm ¶Albert,
If that were true, there definitely would have been an explanation for this. Either Carter, or McKay or someone would have said, “Did you notice that since we’ve stepped through the gate into the PEGASUS galaxy, that everyone here speaks Engish, even the Wraith! I guess it’s not a Milky Way thing after all,” or something like that.
I like Laura’s explanation (see September 17,2006). I wish they included that in the show somehow. Perhaps the gate malfunctioned when they went to Abydos, and the language translation didn’t happen, or the Goul’d prevented it from working, thereby keeping the population enslaved and under control.
Posted 09 Oct 2008 at 2:37 pm ¶That’s why I specifically said that the Ancients made the humans not to notice the fact that they were capable of understand each other. if they do not notice this in the Milky Way, obviously they won’t notice it in the Pegasus Galaxy. I thought about this because I found problems with the embeded languages from the stargate device theory: How do you explain the Unas? the gate also malfuntioned? And how do you explain gates used by the first time by the Tauri? if no one of the people of that planet went through it how could the stargate absorb that language and then give it to the sg team?
A interference of a Higher Being would answer this questions IMHO
Albert
Posted 15 Oct 2008 at 10:24 pm ¶Bleee bleee blah blah. Blee blah biha blihaha blah!
Stargate’s translation… We all spoke the same language once. Neil Stephenson’s Snow Crash has some good ideas about universal languages.
Posted 02 Nov 2008 at 1:10 pm ¶Akhen: (October 19, 2007) Dude, don’t turn this into something about racism. It’s just the actors, okay? They aren’t going to go out of their way just to hire a black actor.
Josh: (October 20, 2007) No, not all of the people on Chulak are black. Bra’tac is white.
Posted 02 Jan 2009 at 2:37 am ¶Morpheus2Z: Thanks for the reminder; I’d forgotten about Bra’tac.
Posted 02 Jan 2009 at 10:43 am ¶No problem.
I would like to add something that occurred in the episode “Summit” Which I just watched a couples hours ago, and made me think about this. (It is episode 15 in the 5th season)
In this episode, they send Daniel on a mission because he can speak fluent Goa’uld, so he can communicate with the system lords. However, all of the system lord are speaking English.
I think that the show just makes them talk in English so that we can understand them, and not have to read subtitles (Which I have realized are NEVER used in the show). So the use of English is just to make it easy on viewers.
Posted 02 Jan 2009 at 7:17 pm ¶Josh, this blog has been quite popular, hasn’t it ?
On January 2nd Morpheus2Z said: Dude, don’t turn this into something about racism. It’s just the actors, okay? They aren’t going to go out of their way just to hire a black actor.
My problem is not that they don’t go out of their way to hire Black actors. My problem is that they don’t go out of their way to hire non white actors.
Posted 02 Jan 2009 at 7:44 pm ¶There you go, they are not going to go out of their way just to get an actor of a different ethnicity. They just hired an actor, that’s all. It’s not like they purposely hired white actors, I doubt they are racist.
Posted 02 Jan 2009 at 11:08 pm ¶Morpheus, I will entertain one last post about this subject. Looking at my previous posts, I didn’t mention anything about racism. I love the show Stargate (having watched the movie at the theater the day it came out with a bunch of my friends), and I would not watch it (the series) if I thought it was racist (and I would hope that others wouldn’t either). I didn’t even mention the fact that the characters Tealc and Ronan are very similar, and both are not white folk (and don’t even get me started with Lt. Worf, oops wrong show). What I do think, is that those who produce the show, including the writers even, have this idea, that I believe is ridiculous, that the galaxy is full of white folk. Now, before you go on a racism rant, here me out. We’ve accepted that there are countless worlds that can support life and look just like earth. Ok. We’ve accepted that these worlds are mostly occupied by humans, or those that take human form (except the Unas, Wraith, and the Azgard). Ok. We’ve even accepted that most of these world speak English, the very reason this thread was started in the first place. Ok. But to accept that they, about 95% of the Milky Way and Pegasus Galaxy’s sentient species look human, and look like Anglo Saxons at that is ridiculous. If the planet earth is populated by a mix of ethnicities , then why can’t the Universe be as well? The fact that the producers of the show haven’t gotten this yet, is mind boggling.
I am not naive. I understand that Hollywood is mostly controlled by white people, and this is what will be portrayed to me on my television. I’m ok with that. I’ve accepted that a long time ago, with shows like Star Trek and Farscape, and know that not to be racism, but rather a kind nepotism. Also, since the majority of the wealth in this country is controlled by white folk, television shows are going to be catered to them. However, since I consider myself an intelligent person, who tries to look at things objectively and scientifically, but always with a sense of humor, I can safely say that if I were to find an object buried in my backyard, that had a diameter of about 9′ and carbon dates to about 400,000 years ago, and by connecting it magically to my 110 amp and picking random symbols on it, open a wormhole that connects me to a planet half a galaxy away, when I step out, there is no way in heaven or hell, no way, that I would expect to see someone who looks like you.
Oh, and to get back to the original thread…I doubt that when I step out of the other side greeting the locals with “Hey, my name is Akhen and I come in peace” will be met with “Welcome Akhen, we are Species 8472, and it looks like you made a wrong turn at Fluidic Albuquerque”.
Posted 03 Jan 2009 at 5:35 pm ¶Lol, Fluidic Albuquerque?
Anyway, I just want to say that maybe the Goa’uld only took humans from areas that happened to be white people inhabited?
Well, that is all I have to say fro now… eh, bye
Posted 04 Jan 2009 at 12:18 am ¶“Anyway, I just want to say that maybe the Goa’uld only took humans from areas that happened to be white people inhabited?”
In the case of Stargate television productions, Canada.
Posted 06 Jan 2009 at 12:22 pm ¶Missing the point guys n_nU
Posted 11 Jan 2009 at 9:09 pm ¶I have to agree with Axis. Stargate SG1 has lost me at “Emancipation.” I’m not sure I will bother watching more of it. I might try a few more episodes, but if Axis has made it through most of season 1 and is still as disappointed as I am, SG1 is off my list.
Of course, the first season of ST:TNG pretty much sucked and I stuck with it. Maybe because Star Trek meant something to me and Stargate only had one movie before SG1.
Posted 19 Jan 2009 at 7:24 pm ¶Season 1 wasn’t the best season. But be rest assured, it does get better. They didn’t stick around for 10 seasons for nothing. Trust.
Posted 22 Jan 2009 at 12:44 pm ¶I lie to my family when I watch Stargate Atlantis, my favourite show of the franchise. It’s a lot easier, with it being a spin-off of a spin-off, to convince them that all that language stuff was sorted out with technology in SG-1, which they never watched.
Now all I have to do is convince myself.
Posted 04 Mar 2009 at 10:10 pm ¶Hah, Meredith.
I’m just about done with Season 4 at this point, and for the most part, I’ve let the issue go; it doesn’t bother me much anymore. It does bug me occasionally though, when Dr. Jackson will stress that such and such people on such and such planet are the direct descendants of Vikings or whatever. It’s at those points that I’m yelling “Then why aren’t they speaking a derivation of Old Norse?!” at the TV.
Posted 04 Mar 2009 at 10:52 pm ¶Yeah well…
The stargate (nanite) translating languages wouldnt really work i guess.
Check out, ‘The Fifth Race’:
First Oneill speaks Ancient when he gets to the Asgard planet Othala (Aida galaxy), computer is translating in that case.
Once he gets the knowledge of the ancient removed from his head he goes back to English.
But after saying ‘Hello’ and Asgards replying with ‘Hello’…comes the part ‘You understand me?’, ‘Yes – we speak many languages’.
+ Given the Asgard ‘language’ which Humans dont understand (little grey bugs).
As for ethnicities…well its not only whites, and as per the universe should be equally (PG Galaxy, Aida galaxy, Ori galaxy,etc) colored…well im surprised to see as many humanoids, couldve been a bit more diversified:)
But yeah, thats just missing the point, use some of your imagination:)
Posted 10 Mar 2009 at 9:34 pm ¶correction: thats a diff episode when comp is translating
Posted 10 Mar 2009 at 9:36 pm ¶So one of the asgards explain to the other that he is speaking the language of the ancients, and he is from earth wanting help
Trackbacks & Pingbacks 2
[...] I finished watching Emancipation the other day, the episode of Stargate SG-1 that was bugging me. I bitched about it already here. After finishing Emancipation, I moved on to the next episode, the Broca Divide. [...]
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