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I'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.
( 1: 'Everyone has translator gadgets.' )
( 2: 'Galactic Basic.' )
( 3: 'The paladins have translator gadgets.' )
(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.
( 1: 'Everyone has translator gadgets.' )
( 2: 'Galactic Basic.' )
( 3: 'The paladins have translator gadgets.' )
(This will be finished later.)
