Basic and English

[Gil Hamilton]

Hamilton, you're not making sense.

If you're treating SW as real, we're still obviously not in the universe during the events taking place.

It is documentary footage. You don't pretend you're actually there, or magically watching from hyperspace yourself--where are the smells? Why is there music?

We have to treat it as if it is 100% real. Treating it like a documentary isn't suspension of disbelief. All it does is give you a cop out so you don't have to admit that you can't suspend disbelief all the time. If you are going to suspend disbelief, you need to do it totally, not half ass it like you're doing. That means treating it like it is completely literal and real. That means, what we are seeing and hearing is completely accurate and they are literally speaking English.

And even if we do treat it like a documentary, that changes nothing. They are still speaking English in the documentary. Even if it was dubbed over, their mouths should be moving to whatever language was dubbed over. You never see a documentary where non-English speakers speak English, right down to their mouth movements, do you? Of course not.

Sorry, IP, but there is no way out of this. There is two options. Suspending disbelief or not. The former means that English is completely identical to Basic, because that is exactly what we see and hear.

[Gil Hamilton]

And strangely enough, in Japan, Basic sounds like Japanese, in Germany, it sounds like German...

It doesn't matter if it's in Japan or Germany, the mouth movements are always English. They aren't "autotranslated".

[Gil Hamilton]

No, under SoD, we treat the movies as historical documents. The unnamed editors have chosen to add wipes, fades, transistions, sounds in space, and English/French/German etc. translations for our benefit.

But under SoD, we don't exist. Even if some magic editor in the sky editted StarWars into a film, said editor couldn't have made it into English, since as far as said imaginary editor is concerned, we and the English language do not exist. How can an editor dub something into a language that does not exist? He cannot. Therefore, we cannot use an imaginary editor to solve the problem, because under SoD the editor could not possibly dub it into English anyway.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

You're reading way too much into SoD.

There a reason for such an odd attitude change?

[Gil Hamilton]

And for the record, I'm suprised to people have the gall to tell me that I'm not making sense. I'm not the one who is bending over backwards and making up weird convoluted crap about imaginary editors et cetera to explain why StarWars is in English. You know what difference between saying that an imaginary editor made it all English and that StarWars is a series of movies and was filmed in English? The latter is completely 100% true, the former is just a pantload that someone made up to avoid admitting that they can't suspend disbelief all the time. That's why it always tickles me when people say that I'm not making sense or that I'm being stupid for taking all this with less than total seriousness. No, I don't have an enormous stick up my ass, unlike Spanky. No, I'm not too stubborn to admit that sometimes you cannot suspend disbelief, unlike IP. I'm sure I'm going to be majorly flamed for all this, because people here don't like it when you go against the grain of the majority. But you can't call me stupid for it, cause calling someone stupid or not making sense for being grounded in reality is bullshit.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

So you've been going on like that just so you could make a point?

How rather petty...

[Illuminatus Primus]

Yes, yes Gil, I'm sure you understand how SoD works more than Dr. Curtis Saxton, who himself suggested the "tractor beam console is translated for our convienence, just like the dialogue" bit.

You're being obtuse.

Are John Williams' songs playing in the background of the Theed Reactor room? Are there actual fade-outs and transitions in the SW Universe?

We definitely exist. We're treating this as real, so we're the scientist observing RL documentary footage. When we Suspend Disbelief, we're suspending the fact we know this is a film with American actor directed/produced by George Lucas, etc., etc.

SoD is what tells us these things must be editorially inserted: these things cannot be part of actual observation and real life. Music and scene-transitions cannot be in something that is real. English could not possibly really be spoken by humans in a superadvanced galactic-spanning ancient civilization far, far away, and a long time ago. These are realism concerns implicit in Suspending Disbelief at all.

What, you thought SoD meant you put yourself in God's place inside the SWU when watching the films?

Did the entirity of the Imperial Armed Forces force everyone to wear the same insignia in ROTJ?

The universal language of the galactic civilisation was named "Basic" in roleplaying game sources. The tractor beam power controls in A New Hope were inscribed in English, and those markings must be regarded as an implicit translation in the movie medium, like extra-textual subtitles imbedded in the scene. However every movie contains explicit, raw, untranslated examples of Basic text.

http://www.theforce.net/swtc/preq/text.html#basic

Ordinarily, this revelation would be shocking enough, but we have also discovered that one of them, named George Lucas, was somehow able to produce astonishingly accurate video depictions of our civilization.

http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/index.html

I don't know what the hell your problem is right now and lately, but you are acting like a rod is firmly in your anus and the moment you start waxing poetic about "around here" and "going against the grain" and similar cry-baby soapbox rants which have precisely jack and shit to do with the discussions, you should realize it too.

[Gil Hamilton]

So you've been going on like that just so you could make a point?

How rather petty...

No, being petty would be calling you an obnoxious self-important prick with the sense of humor of a brick. I'm just saying what has needed to be said for a long time.

[Gil Hamilton]

Look at that, you managed to construct a nice Appeal to Authority there, IP. Who cares what Curtis Saxton has to say? Unless he writes it in a LucasFilm book, he's no more an authority on the issue than anyone else.

[Illuminatus Primus]

There's no excuse for this, Gil.

You've just been a big asshole. I don't know who shit in your Spaghettios, but I think you should take a break from the board for awhile. Just a tip.

Oh, and Spanky might need to just stop and shut up sometimes, but the guy does have a sense of humor, can let things roll off his back, and can discuss stuff casually.

The obnoxious jerk right now is you Gil, and there's no damn excuse.

EDIT:

Look at that, you managed to construct a nice Appeal to Authority there, IP. Who cares what Curtis Saxton has to say? Unless he writes it in a LucasFilm book, he's no more an authority on the issue than anyone else.

Now I think you really should sit down before you hurt yourself, you stupid fuck.

Yes, because diegesis and SoD are obviously the moral property of Lucasfilm, to know anything about how they work obviously means penning a book they sign off on!

Did you even think before you posted that? I'm sure you're winning converts against our intellectual dogmaticism or whatever the absent vacuum between your ears has invented.

I also like how you ignored everything else I said just to make that ridiculously brain-dead comment. You're just being a troll.

Suspension of Disbelief has to do with empiricism and the scientific method, and Dr. Saxton is quite the authority on that compared to you. Your problem isn't our stubbornness, it is that you don't have any fucking clue what you're talking about.

[Kurgan]

No, under SoD, we treat the movies as historical documents. The unnamed editors have chosen to add wipes, fades, transistions, sounds in space, and English/French/German etc. translations for our benefit.

Shortest and best explanation I've heard on the subject.* Kudos.

This makes it easier to put on the conspiracy goggles when considering the "Greedo scene" too! ; )



*Remembers this same argument occuring in Star Trek.

[PainRack]

Gil, have you ever watched a cantonese film being translated into english, like say Jackie Chan drunken master?

Now tell me that isn't a form of autotranslation and that Jackie Chan was actually speaking in english for that flick. Translation experts can do wonders nowadays.

Hell, I seen totally different sentence structures being used just so that the words will fit with the actor's mouth movements.

[Lord of the Farce]

Gil, have you ever watched a cantonese film being translated into english, like say Jackie Chan drunken master?

Now tell me that isn't a form of autotranslation and that Jackie Chan was actually speaking in english for that flick. Translation experts can do wonders nowadays.

Hell, I seen totally different sentence structures being used just so that the words will fit with the actor's mouth movements.

But that still has a fairly noticably amount of dubbing. Perhaps a more accurate example of "auto-translation" is in anime, where just about everybody is speaking in Japanese, even when they are actually (in-universe, at least) speaking english.

[PainRack]

But that still has a fairly noticably amount of dubbing. Perhaps a more accurate example of "auto-translation" is in anime, where just about everybody is speaking in Japanese, even when they are actually (in-universe, at least) speaking english.

Drunken master was the only film I know that westerners will know.

I would had prefered to use the example Naked Weapon. It was only when I was playing the second disk(after I unplugged the VCD player audio component) that I realised that there were actually 2 languages involved. One english and the other chinese.

Also, don't you mean speaking in English, while they are actually speaking Japanese?

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Basically, yes. Like in Gundam (or Cowboy Bebop), how everybody speaks Japanese even though it would more likely be English.

Or any anime that's set in the US or Europe, with the characters being natives, but still speaking Japanese.

It's honestly not that difficult of a concept at all.

[Gil Hamilton]

God, I really did make an ass out of myself last night. Shit, sorry guys.

[Lord of the Farce]

Also, don't you mean speaking in English, while they are actually speaking Japanese?

No, I mean that in the original (un-dubbed) version of the anime, you see everybody speaking in japanese. But, after in-universe considerations, it becomes obvious that many of them are actually suppose to be speaking english, but all the dialogue is automatically translated-and-lip-synched for the viewer's benefit.

There is some official support of this being the same case with Star Wars.

[Illuminatus Primus]

That's a great source, Farce. I'll copy that link for future reference.

[Tychu]

Ive been reading most of the posts and the original people failed to pick it up that the spoken (basic) is not the same as the written language in Star Wars. To my knowledge before Basic became the official spoken language in the SW galaxy there was 2 dominant languages, Basic and Aurebesh. When the Old Republic formed they took on a spoken language of Basic and took Aurebesh as the official written language. Aurebesh did have a spoken language at that time but since then it wasnt widely spoken. This all taken from theforce.net timetales

[Lord of the Farce]

Ive been reading most of the posts and the original people failed to pick it up that the spoken (basic) is not the same as the written language in Star Wars. To my knowledge before Basic became the official spoken language in the SW galaxy there was 2 dominant languages, Basic and Aurebesh. When the Old Republic formed they took on a spoken language of Basic and took Aurebesh as the official written language. Aurebesh did have a spoken language at that time but since then it wasnt widely spoken. This all taken from theforce.net timetales

It'll help to provide a source, either as a quote or a link to where in particular the quote can be found.

[Lord of the Farce]

The Expansionist period, as all cultures gain interstellar travel. Basic, verbal language based on the tongue of the Human inhabitants of the Core World peoples, quickly becomes a universal language after its rise in use in diplomacy and trade. At the same time, Aurebesh becomes the second most widely used as a technical language. Aurebesh eventually evolves into the written form of Basic. Intelligent species have developed a bewildering array of communication forms. Fortunately, Basic (aka Old Galactic Standard), the standard language of the Old Republic, enables almost everyone to understand almost everyone else. Basic, derived from the native tongue of Coruscant's humans, is designed to be easy to understand and pronounce. Most alien species can speak it, and almost all of them can understand it. Most records and texts are stored in Basic. Nevertheless, a variety of other languages are in use. It is not unusual for someone to speak several languages; Basic, a native tongue, a couple of regional dialects, and a smattering of trade languages. A well-travelled citizen may speak dozens of languages.

Conjecture and "SW Gamer #5."