A few weeks ago, I was sharing a table with some of my friends and suddenly they started discussing about the last episode of the Star Wars saga — Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker, which premieres this month.
Personally, I don’t see myself as a Star Wars fan, but there is no need to be the biggest fan of all to accept that these movies play a big role in our general culture.
And this was precisely what caught my attention, as I suddenly realized during the conversation that all of my friends were actually speaking the same language.
Communication was flowing smoothly. We were using proper names, nicknames, invented words, phrases in English, phrases in Spanish, and even shared some advices and life wisdom. Everybody knew the topic of conversation, and everything revolved around the Star Wars language.
As a translator this led me to think about everything my friends probably didn’t know about the Star Wars saga.
So today I would like to share with you some curious facts from my point of view.
Star Wars has been translated into over 50 different languages, being even available in the Navajo language, a Native-American language that is spoken by near 170,000 people. This has turned it into the first major feature film that has been translated into a Native-American language.
In the saga, around more than 10 different languages were spoken aside from the main language, which would be the Galactic Basic standard. These include the Ewokese, the Droidspeak, the Greedo, the Huttese, the Jawaese, the Mando’a, the Shyriiwook, the Sith language, the Ubese and the Bocce.
The character known as C-3PO is fluent in more than 7 million languages. In Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the droid updates its communications system with the “TransLang III” package in order to be able to communicate in all languages of the galaxy.
Star Wars has its own alphabet, the Aurebesh. This is used to write the Galactic Basic language, which was mentioned before.
There is a theory that the Greedo language, also mentioned above, is a simplified form of Quechua (a dialect originating in Peru). According to this theory, in several of these movies it is possible to clearly distinguish a number of Quechua words such as “qhenchalla” (which means “bad luck”) or “q’enqo” (which means “labyrinth”).
Finally, I will give you one last curious fact as a Christmas present of some sorts: In most countries the name of this famous saga is equally used in English and in its local language equivalent. Has someone noted this? Or is it that talking about “Star Wars” is now such a common part of our popular culture that it even sounds “natural” and perfectly recognizable in another language?
This will be our last entry for this year. So, we will be back in the next decade, in this same space… in a galaxy not so far, far away.
STAR WARS – What you probably know and don’t know about this epic saga
A few weeks ago, I was sharing a table with some of my friends and suddenly they started discussing about the last episode of the Star Wars saga — Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker, which premieres this month.
Personally, I don’t see myself as a Star Wars fan, but there is no need to be the biggest fan of all to accept that these movies play a big role in our general culture.
And this was precisely what caught my attention, as I suddenly realized during the conversation that all of my friends were actually speaking the same language.
Communication was flowing smoothly. We were using proper names, nicknames, invented words, phrases in English, phrases in Spanish, and even shared some advices and life wisdom. Everybody knew the topic of conversation, and everything revolved around the Star Wars language.
As a translator this led me to think about everything my friends probably didn’t know about the Star Wars saga.
So today I would like to share with you some curious facts from my point of view.
Star Wars has been translated into over 50 different languages, being even available in the Navajo language, a Native-American language that is spoken by near 170,000 people. This has turned it into the first major feature film that has been translated into a Native-American language.
In the saga, around more than 10 different languages were spoken aside from the main language, which would be the Galactic Basic standard. These include the Ewokese, the Droidspeak, the Greedo, the Huttese, the Jawaese, the Mando’a, the Shyriiwook, the Sith language, the Ubese and the Bocce.
The character known as C-3PO is fluent in more than 7 million languages. In Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the droid updates its communications system with the “TransLang III” package in order to be able to communicate in all languages of the galaxy.
Star Wars has its own alphabet, the Aurebesh. This is used to write the Galactic Basic language, which was mentioned before.
There is a theory that the Greedo language, also mentioned above, is a simplified form of Quechua (a dialect originating in Peru). According to this theory, in several of these movies it is possible to clearly distinguish a number of Quechua words such as “qhenchalla” (which means “bad luck”) or “q’enqo” (which means “labyrinth”).
Finally, I will give you one last curious fact as a Christmas present of some sorts: In most countries the name of this famous saga is equally used in English and in its local language equivalent. Has someone noted this? Or is it that talking about “Star Wars” is now such a common part of our popular culture that it even sounds “natural” and perfectly recognizable in another language?
This will be our last entry for this year. So, we will be back in the next decade, in this same space… in a galaxy not so far, far away.
May the force be with you!
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