Languages in Stargate SG-1

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.

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.

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!

Whoever wrote that FAQ is my hero.

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.

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.
All very scientific sounding The old mags are still available online.

Oh, and if you are a book person, check out my book Master of the Jinn at http://www.masterofthejinn.com

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…

Finally someone noticed it…

Anyway, just 20 years ago a man called Douglas Noel Adams has found the solution to all those apparently insurmountable problems: the babel fish!

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?

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”

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

“…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.

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.

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.

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.

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)

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.

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!!

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”.

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”.

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.