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kaylin881I'm writing Voltron fanfic. This sometimes requires coming up with answers to questions that aren't very clear in the show, like "what year is it on Earth?" or "why does every alien speak English?" or "who the hell let a teenager spend a year on his own in a shack in the desert?"
Today I'm going to explore some possible answers to the second question: Why does every alien in Voltron speak English?
Well, obviously, they don't. But their speech is rendered in English - sometimes as particular regional variations, such as Allura's RP and Coran's Kiwi accent - and, more importantly, the human protagonists react as though that's what they're hearing. There's no indication that the humans (other than perhaps Shiro) have taken the time to learn some hypothetical galactic common tongue since leaving Earth, and they wouldn't have known about its existence before that. So either all aliens do speak English for some reason or there's unobtrusive translation going on in the background, so subtle that our protagonists don't even comment on its existence.
Let's rule out one possibility first: it can't be something on the aliens' end. It's kind of implausible that absolutely everyone outside Earth, even if they're a prisoner of the Galra or a member of a civilisation that's been isolated for centuries, goes around wearing translator tech the entire time just in case they meet someone who doesn't share a common language with them. I can accept that the Galra might have such translators themselves, because being able to speak to the people they conquer makes sense for an expansionist empire, but we clearly see non-Galra communicating with both the paladins and each other.
Furthermore, Allura and Coran can communicate despite having been in stasis for 10,000 years, with no indication that galactic standards in translator tech have changed since their time. It's the equivalent of a chunky little early laptop from the '90s being compatible with the latest iPad, only multiplied by 500.
(Side note: the state of the art in technology doesn't actually seem to have advanced as much as one might expect since the destruction of Altea. The Galra are obviously making scientific progress, since we see their weaponry advance over the course of the series, so why does Altean technology such as the Castle's particle barrier still hold up against their latest developments?)
***
If the aliens don't have translators, how do they talk to each other? Given the high level of interconnection between planets (largely thanks to the Galra), it seems reasonably plausible that there's a lingua franca of some kind, like English for Earth. Probably not everyone speaks it, and I'd expect isolated communities like the Arusians or the mermaids to be stuck using translators, but the majority of the non-Galra aliens we meet have lived under Galran occupation and had contact with the wider universe.
In fact, the/a Galran language is the obvious candidate for a lingua franca, since this pattern-matches to the way such languages become dominant on our world. The reason English is so ubiquitous as a second language is because the British conquered so much of the world in the last four hundred years. Before that, French and Latin were the default languages used for diplomacy and international communication.
This solves the problem of how the aliens can talk to each other, but not how they can communicate with the paladins - other than Shiro, who's likely had opportunities to learn Galran as a prisoner. Allura and Coran can reasonably be expected to have learned the Galran language before they went into stasis, but even with Zarkon's influence it's implausible that it would still be recognisably the same language after so long. To give that some scale: when Allura went into stasis, Earth was just coming out of the last ice age. Sabre-toothed tigers went extinct around the same time as Alteans. We barely have guesses for what languages were spoken back then; even Proto-Indo-European isn't that old. Without translation tech, the Alteans are likely to be in the same boat as the humans: they have the same chances of understanding their allies as a rubber dinghy in a whirlpool.
***
Even if we postulate the existence of a lingua franca, then, it's obvious that someone must have translation tech floating around. But since we've already ruled out the possibility of all the aliens going around with translator gadgets, and the Galra can't be relied on to be around all the time even if they have translation, the technological solution has to be on the protagonists' end. There are three possible sources of translation: the Lions, the Castle (possibly alongside some portable Altean technology), or the paladin suits.
None of these alone is entirely sufficient. The paladins don't get their suits until after they've already met and spoken with the Alteans, so before that point they must be relying on the Castle or the Alteans' personal translator gadgets (maybe implants or ear-wires?). If the Castle has ambient translation magic, or translating nanobots, they can't understand anyone outside of it without separate translators. If it's the Lions providing some kind of telepathic translation, Lance would be the only one able to understand the Alteans at first, and Allura and Coran would have to find their own translation solution when they interface with other aliens. I think a combination of several of these is likely: if the Castle has Altean translation tech working in the background, there's no reason it wouldn't have been installed in the paladin suits as well.
(This will be finished later.)
Today I'm going to explore some possible answers to the second question: Why does every alien in Voltron speak English?
Well, obviously, they don't. But their speech is rendered in English - sometimes as particular regional variations, such as Allura's RP and Coran's Kiwi accent - and, more importantly, the human protagonists react as though that's what they're hearing. There's no indication that the humans (other than perhaps Shiro) have taken the time to learn some hypothetical galactic common tongue since leaving Earth, and they wouldn't have known about its existence before that. So either all aliens do speak English for some reason or there's unobtrusive translation going on in the background, so subtle that our protagonists don't even comment on its existence.
Let's rule out one possibility first: it can't be something on the aliens' end. It's kind of implausible that absolutely everyone outside Earth, even if they're a prisoner of the Galra or a member of a civilisation that's been isolated for centuries, goes around wearing translator tech the entire time just in case they meet someone who doesn't share a common language with them. I can accept that the Galra might have such translators themselves, because being able to speak to the people they conquer makes sense for an expansionist empire, but we clearly see non-Galra communicating with both the paladins and each other.
Furthermore, Allura and Coran can communicate despite having been in stasis for 10,000 years, with no indication that galactic standards in translator tech have changed since their time. It's the equivalent of a chunky little early laptop from the '90s being compatible with the latest iPad, only multiplied by 500.
(Side note: the state of the art in technology doesn't actually seem to have advanced as much as one might expect since the destruction of Altea. The Galra are obviously making scientific progress, since we see their weaponry advance over the course of the series, so why does Altean technology such as the Castle's particle barrier still hold up against their latest developments?)
***
If the aliens don't have translators, how do they talk to each other? Given the high level of interconnection between planets (largely thanks to the Galra), it seems reasonably plausible that there's a lingua franca of some kind, like English for Earth. Probably not everyone speaks it, and I'd expect isolated communities like the Arusians or the mermaids to be stuck using translators, but the majority of the non-Galra aliens we meet have lived under Galran occupation and had contact with the wider universe.
In fact, the/a Galran language is the obvious candidate for a lingua franca, since this pattern-matches to the way such languages become dominant on our world. The reason English is so ubiquitous as a second language is because the British conquered so much of the world in the last four hundred years. Before that, French and Latin were the default languages used for diplomacy and international communication.
This solves the problem of how the aliens can talk to each other, but not how they can communicate with the paladins - other than Shiro, who's likely had opportunities to learn Galran as a prisoner. Allura and Coran can reasonably be expected to have learned the Galran language before they went into stasis, but even with Zarkon's influence it's implausible that it would still be recognisably the same language after so long. To give that some scale: when Allura went into stasis, Earth was just coming out of the last ice age. Sabre-toothed tigers went extinct around the same time as Alteans. We barely have guesses for what languages were spoken back then; even Proto-Indo-European isn't that old. Without translation tech, the Alteans are likely to be in the same boat as the humans: they have the same chances of understanding their allies as a rubber dinghy in a whirlpool.
***
Even if we postulate the existence of a lingua franca, then, it's obvious that someone must have translation tech floating around. But since we've already ruled out the possibility of all the aliens going around with translator gadgets, and the Galra can't be relied on to be around all the time even if they have translation, the technological solution has to be on the protagonists' end. There are three possible sources of translation: the Lions, the Castle (possibly alongside some portable Altean technology), or the paladin suits.
None of these alone is entirely sufficient. The paladins don't get their suits until after they've already met and spoken with the Alteans, so before that point they must be relying on the Castle or the Alteans' personal translator gadgets (maybe implants or ear-wires?). If the Castle has ambient translation magic, or translating nanobots, they can't understand anyone outside of it without separate translators. If it's the Lions providing some kind of telepathic translation, Lance would be the only one able to understand the Alteans at first, and Allura and Coran would have to find their own translation solution when they interface with other aliens. I think a combination of several of these is likely: if the Castle has Altean translation tech working in the background, there's no reason it wouldn't have been installed in the paladin suits as well.
(This will be finished later.)
