Technically, the aliens don't speak English. The writers just ignore the language issue unless it's critical to a plot. So, for example, the Ancients (the people who created Atlantis) have their own language that is similar to Latin because they are said to have inspired that language. In some episodes they will have a story that is dependent on someone having to translate that language to figure something out and as part of that a character might even speak the words as they actually sound. When interacting with an Ancient, though, they will just have the actors speak the same language with no setup whatsoever.
This means that, in-universe, there are actually different languages, we just don't regularly see them being used for production reasons. The rational of the writers is that they didn't want to spend 10-15 minutes of each episode having a character translate new languages and instead wanted to simply jump into the story.
If you were hoping for hard science fiction that's understandable and perfectly reasonable but, yeah, the show isn't that. It's an action adventure that utilizes science fiction elements to populate their fictional universe.
I do sympathize because I tend to get annoyed with Star Trek's universal translators, for example, as they also work based on the convenience of an individual story. The Klingons are the biggest offenders of that; writers love to have them all of the sudden break into their own language in front of someone with a universal translator and then they like to take it a step further by having the non-Klingon reply in Klingon, which the Klingon ends up being impressed by.
I don't like Star Trek, though, so that probably irks me more than it would if it was done in a series that I liked as I would then have reason to be more forgiving about it (as you described also being the case for you and Star Wars). That's basically where I'm at with Stargate; the first season of Sg-1 was hard for me to get into but then they started shifting the tone and developing story arcs that I found engaging and the language thing doesn't bother me in the slightest.
My feelings on Farscape are much the same, if you've ever seen that one. I LOVED the serial story that came together after much of a head banging first season and because of that I can forgive the deluge of humanoid aliens that can often interbreed, which bugs me to no end in Star Trek. I get that, like with the language issue, there's also a production reason for that, but one of the things I liked about Stargate was its attempt to work around that limitation by not always (but mostly) providing solid and creative in-universe explanations for all the humans we see. Star Trek could have done something similar or, at least, put a limit on the aliens of the week that warranted increasingly stupid attempts to "disguise" a human as an alien. Although, again, maybe I'd give them a bit of a pass if Star Trek was something that I liked, as many of the franchise's fans will do if someone brings these issues up to them.
Btw, although the Stargate shows don't deal with language much, it was a major part of the 1994 movie. The transplanted human population that they encountered at the other end of the Stargate basically spoke a version of Ancient Egyptian and they had to spend a good chunk of the movie trying to communicate with them. I don't know if that will interest you or not, but maybe you'll want to try watching that.
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Navaros
8 years ago
The aliens on this show definitely speak English. If they didn't, then the non-alien characters wouldn't be able to understand them and vice versa.
The OP is right. This is a huge glaring flaw of this series.
They should have invented a UT type of explanation to overcome that flaw somewhat. Without one, the show is, as the OP said, completely implausible.
"Science creates fictions to explain facts" – Gilman
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Xaeden
8 years ago
I don't know how much of my post you read, but in short: There's a difference between pretending an issue doesn't exist and saying, in-universe, that so-and-so is true. They make in-universe references to other languages, they just show us characters speaking to one another without impediment.
This is perhaps too nuanced for some people to easily grasp but there is a difference between the mimetic and ontic in drama. Put simply this refers to a difference between representation and embodiment. Say, for example, you're watching a stage play set in Roman times and all the actors are speaking English. Does this mean they are portraying the Romans as English speakers? What about if they use words that had no Latin correlation? You could say; "Of course they're speaking English, otherwise they wouldn't have said X, Y, or Z." But every time language is mentioned they talk about Latin, not English and they even throw in a few Latin words here and there when the plot demands it. The conclusion is that this a choice made for artistic and/or production reasons. It's not to say that the Romans characters you see actually speak English.
As another example, there's a play called Cloud 9. In it, 100 years pass but the characters only age 25 years. A literal person might say; "But wait, of course they aged 100 years, otherwise they wouldn't be able to interact with people living a 100 years later." But the play tells you they only age 25 years and there's no magical potion type explanation. It's an inconsistency between the mimetic and ontic for artistic reasons. Simply, the play is trying to put characters in a situation under circumstances that suit the kind of story they want to tell. So, no, they did not age 100 years. But, yes, they should have... if the play was trying to portray what you see as what actually is. It wasn't and neither is Stargate on the language thing.
Universal translators, btw, do the same thing. They attempt to lampshade the issue but they do not conform to realistic portrayals. For example, I could say "Of course everyone in Star Trek is speaking English, otherwise they wouldn't mouth English words." Universal translators are a contrivance that create alternative differences between the mimetic and the ontic. You know that they are supposed to be speaking other languages and (perhaps) accept that English words are not dubbed over different mouth movements because of production reasons.
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tgemberl
8 years ago
Xaeden,
Those are really interesting, deep points. I think I can kind of see what you are saying without understanding all the details. As I said in my original post, it's a matter of whether you can suspend disbelief to enjoy the story. The more I think about it, the issue for me probably isn't the languages. I think it's just that TV series in general aren't too interesting to me. I am watching that Stargate movie you recommended. I'm impressed. But to want to watch the TV series, I would have to really want to see what each of those characters does each week. That just doesn't interest me.
Here's an example of the kind of problem I have with characters. In what little I have seen, I find Dr. Rodney McKay an annoying, insensitive character. If this were a movie, I would think, "this movie is interesting, and even though I don't like this character, I can put up with him for 90 minutes." When it's a TV series, I think, "do I want to invest in seeing this annoying guy every week?"
"Extremism in the pursuit of moderation is no vice."
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tgemberl
8 years ago
Xaeden,
I saw the Stargate movie. It was quite good. I thought the way they depicted how the scholar learned the people's language was very believable. It was a combination of his knowledge of ancient Egyptian and his relationship with the young woman.
I did think maybe the Evil God Ra element was a little bit cartoonish. But I suppose villains and action scenes are part of what make movies exciting to people. I guess if you're going to have Kurt Russell, who I really like, in a movie, you've got to have action scenes. He's probably one of the leading "tough guys" in film.
"Extremism in the pursuit of moderation is no vice."
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Xaeden
8 years ago
It's one of Emmerich's better outings. If you want to see him going from "a little bit cartoonish" to a lot watch his Independence Day sequel or 10,000 B.C. I'm being hyperbolic; don't actually watch them if you haven't. With Stargate, he has spoken about how he told the studio he could do it for a smaller budget than would be typically expected from an action, science fiction movie and then he pulled it off by focusing on human moments, including that whole bit about trying to figure out what was going on by learning the language. Ever since the first Independence Day movie hit to such big numbers, though, Hollywood keeps making the mistake of giving him a big budget for his films and he's lost himself in nonsense CGI spectacles, which don't even do well so why studios keep financing them and why he keeps trying to make those types of movies I do not know.
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