On 11 Feb 2016 10:13 pm, <tmr0195@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> Howdy Greg Chalik,
>
> IIRC most if not all the Traveller rule sets have either translator computer programs or a purpose built translator electronic equipment. My time in the service I knew guys who took all sorts of course some of which where languages.
>

Thanks to spending two years aboard a ship with 350 people from 40 different countries visiting some 39 ports in South East Asia, I picked up a fair bit German and Swedish and Czech. But I also picked up the ability to say 'hello', 'thank you' and a few other things (often rather random) in quite a large number of other languages.

Thirty years on and this is actually really useful on days such as our university's welcome Fayre for international students. You'd be surprised how pleased new students, freshly arrived in the country , struggling with home sickness and culture shock really light up to hear a few words 'from home'. Although one snag is, I have some colleagues who think I really speak all those languages! (I wish! Just today I was asked how to say 'thank you' in Romanian by a colleague who'd just been given a gift for some complicated help shed provided. Fortunately that was an easy one: multumesc, or mersi)

My Traveller point was just to reinforce the comment that with all that time in Jump I would expect some people to spend time learning languages given how many there could be in the Third Imperium.

Even with language programs. Why? Cherchez la femme. (Or your nearest gender of interest)

I lost count of the number of friends aboard the above ship who were interested in one particular language .... and the reason was often thanks to their interest in *someone*.

There's nothing quite like being able to chat up someone with a few well chosen words in their heart language. And having C3PO playing gooseberry just doesn't cut it! I don't think this all too human factor will go away in the Third Imperium even with clever translation software.

And traders would almost certainly see similar advantages.

> In theory the Third Imperium has had more than enough time to have warships find a world that did not speak Anglic and be equipped for the possibility.

Absolutely. Although again the human element steps in... having linguists capable of dealing with underlying principles makes adjusting to an unknown language that much easier. Especially if they are related.

>
> The Traveller rule sets on the topic of language is open to interpretation and in my opinion anything is possible if the players agree.

There's a great article in one of the JTAS' on this. I'm in bed so can't look it up now but shout if you need a reference.