"Actually, I speak a sprinkling of space speech. The little fella's forlorn because he dropped his favorite toy."
— Cap'n Turbot, PAW Patrol
Imagine you're on another planet. Its inhabitants don't understand you, but you understand them perfectly. You do not have Translator Microbes in your ears; you really are hearing the alien language and understanding it perfectly.
Simply put, this is when a character is able to understand aliens. If the alien sounds are not physically impossible for a human mouth to reproduce, expect the character to speak their language, too. If the aliens can communicate with all human characters, it is likely that the aliens are just speaking English. If the aliens are only shown to be able to communicate with one human, they are meant to be speaking their own alien tongue that the human happens to be fluent in.
Please note that this is when a character inexplicably understands an alien language. If a character can understand an alien language because they learned how to, it is no different than a native English speaker learning a foreign language and is not a trope.
Subtrope of Inexplicable Language Fluency. Compare Speaks Fluent Animal, for when a character is able to understand animals. May result in Bilingual Dialogue if conventional translation isn't used. Can overlap with Suddenly Fluent in Gibberish if the ability springs out of nowhere.
Examples:
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Comic Books
Fan Works
- There are a few examples in The Lion King Adventures:
- Alien parasites the Inque and the Vimelea have no problem communicating with the animals.
- A soul-stealing alien called Shauri not only has dialogue but is a Surfer Dude.
Films — Animation
- In Chicken Little, Fish out of Water is able to communicate with the alien child Kirby and explain his situation to his friends. He, like the rest of the animals, has never heard the language before.
- Space Chimps: The titular characters and the aliens are able to communicate with each other. While it's possible that chimps and aliens just have a Common Tongue, in the sequel it's explicitly shown that Zartog speaks some strange alien language that doesn't resemble chimp noises at all.
- Titan A.E.: The first time Cale Tucker encountered the Drej, he was a boy of four. He was sent off-world with Tek just before the Drej mothership destroyed the world with an Earth-Shattering Kaboom. Much later, when Cale is nineteen, he gets captured by the Drej, and made to reveal the location of the Titan spacecraft. Somehow, Cale can understand what the Drej queen is saying, including her desire to eradicate humanity entirely. (The novelization explains this as Akima having slipped him a Drej-to-English translator device when they were captured.)
Films — Live-Action
- In District 9, it's clear that the South African characters understand Prawn.
- It Conquered the World: Dr. Tom Anderson is contacted via radio by an alien from Venus. There isn't any explanation for how he can understand the Venusian's language, and to anyone else the radio sounds only like static. He responds in English, which the Venusian can also understand just fine. The only thing close to a Handwave mentioned is that both characters are supposed to be highly intelligent, but a specialty in languages is never so much as hinted at. No matter how intelligent he may be, understanding a language from another planet is highly implausible.
- Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings: Trevor Slattery is somehow able to understand the chirping noises made by 'Morris', a six-legged, winged, faceless ball of fluff based off of a hundun/dijiang from Chinese mythology. This comes in useful, since Morris, through Trevor, is able to lead the heroes to Ta Lo. Possibly justified since Trevor has been imprisoned with only Morris for company for a number of years, so he didn't suddenly pick it up.
- Spice World: Some alien fans of the Spice Girls travel down in a spaceship to meet the girls, who understand their subtitled alien gibberish.
- Characters regularly being able to understand Chewbacca in Star Wars, even if they've just met him. No need to have known Chewy for years like Han and Lando.
- Surprisingly, Solo retcons Han understanding Chewbacca upon the two's first meeting, with Han somehow already fluent enough in the Wookie's language to convince him to spare his life.
- Pretty much all characters in the Star Wars franchise. People seem to understand R2-D2's beeps; Han Solo understands Greedo, etc. Defied in Return of the Jedi, when Jabba uses C-3PO as an interpreter, but this was explained elsewhere (in one of the comics or the novelization of the movie) as a pretense on Jabba's part; he could understand others just fine.
- Also defied in The Force Awakens, where Finn can't understand BB-8 or Chewie. One could theorize that his sheltered life growing upon as a Stormtrooper meant he wasn't exposed to enough languages to learn it as most others do because, in later films, he seems to understand them just fine.
Literature
- Roark: Mira Donazetto works as a translator for the Godan.
Live-Action TV
- Hoshi Sato in Star Trek: Enterprise was posted as communications officer because this was before they had "universal translators" and she had a natural gift for being able to get the gist of alien languages. (As the series went on and more and more alien species just spoke English, this plot point was quietly dropped.)
Video Games
- Either this, or the aliens have Translator Microbes, or the aliens understand English in Artemis: Spaceship Bridge Simulator. You can draw the aggro of an enemy ship by saying that their "Maternal leader wears combat boots".
- Moshi Monsters: The Zoshlings (Moshlings from another planet) are able to communicate with the monsters.
- Star Wars: The Old Republic: Every character seems able to understand every alien language in the galaxy, even languages like Rakata and Esh-kha that haven't been widely spoken for millennia. While the Jedi and Sith classes can justify it with the Force, the non-Force classes have no such excuse.
- Either this trope, Aliens Speaking Japanese, or some magical version of Translator Microbes is why the Moon-dwelling Ambiguously Human Lunarians of Touhou Project are able to converse with the heroines.
Web Animation
- Lobo (Webseries): Lobo understood what the MBA member was saying. Lobo got angry when the MBA member mentioned Sunny Jim, Lobo's rival. He has never heard their language before.
Western Animation
- Ben 10: Alien Force: Averted, or rather, explained in "Unearthed": the plumber badges serve as universal translators. In the end of the episode, Kevin asks Tiny's parents why his badge can translate what they say but not Tiny's speech, and they explain she's still a baby. Naturally, the aliens that have lived on Earth for years (and their children) know Earth languages. Seems the case of the Highbreeds and DNAliens, who talk among themselves in their own language.
- Ben 10: Ultimate Alien: In "Escape From Aggregor", nobody understands Galapagus, until Gwen mentions Tiny's episode. Grudgingly, Kevin uses his plumber badge to translate Galapagus' speech, saying that he's not going to change any diapers.
- Dwayne McDuffie explained in his forum that Pandor could make himself understood by common Earthlings in "Too Hot to Handle" thanks to a translator in his suit. He's still understood after he flies off his suit, but it could be the plumber badges again.
- Any alien on Garfield and Friends can talk with Garfield.
- Green Lantern: The Animated Series: among other functions, the rings of power work as universal translators. In "Babel", Hal, Killowog and Razer crash in a very hostile planet with their rings almost deplected and no power source to recharge the green ones; Razer still has the battery he stole from Atrocitus, but had no time to recharge due the previous events in "Cold Fury". Hal and Killowog quickly become powerless and depend on Razer to act as translator (and protect them from the poisonous atmosphere), until his ring dies, too. They are forced to communicate with gestures, causing a misunderstanding that makes them be captured by the locals.
- Josie And The Pussy Cats: In Outer Space has Melody encounter an alien creature that looks like cotton candy with eyes and flippers. The critter speaks in a series of bleeps, and Melody names him Bleep. She can also understand him perfectly, and acts as translator for everyone else. Also, Bleep seems to understand English just fine.
- Discussed in The Loud House episode "Zach Attack", when Zach accidentally leads the citizens of Royal Woods to believe an alien invasion is taking place. To solve the problem, he dresses up three of his friends as aliens, who speak gibberish, and Zach pretends to translate them for the other citizens.
- PAW Patrol: In "Pups Save a Space Toy", it's revealed that Cap'n Turbot can understand alien speech when the young alien says he's lost his favorite toy. "Pups Save a Space Rock" also shows that he can understand alien rocks.
- The Simpsons: Parodied in the "Treehouse Of Horror" segment "Hungry Are The Damned", when the Simpson family meets Kang and Kodos.
Kang: Greetings. I am Kang. Do not be frightened. We mean you no harm.
Marge: You... you speak English.
Kang: I am actually speaking Rigelian. By an astonishing coincidence, both of our languages are exactly the same. - Transformers: Prime: Much like his movie counterpart, Bumblebee had his voicebox irreparably damaged by Megatron. This has limited his speech to nothing but a collection of mechanical beeps and trills. While his fellow autobots have no problem understanding him, humans find him indecipherable. Enter Rafael Esquivel, resident brainy kid and tech expert who has no trouble understanding Bumblebee perfectly right off the bat. No actual explanation is given for this beyond him theorizing it's for the same reason he could understand binary code before he could read. As this was after the whole Sari Sumdac arc, it led to dozens of fan theories that, sadly, never panned out.
- Ferb from Phineas and Ferb is shown to speak perfect Martian in the episode "Unfair Science Fair Redux (Another Story)".
