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Most of the bots, borgs, or computer equipment i've seen that can load a universal translator seems to reference the hand portable one in the main book or the ultimate edition book. I don't have an original main book anymore but the Ultimate listing says it is loaded with the nine major languages of the Americas; which i assume is different from the planets big 9; but I haven't been able to find it listed anywhere.
Working it out I came up with English, French, Spanish, Creole, Native American, Technocan, Dragonesse, and possibly Gobblee and Inuit.
Is there an official list somewhere or is my guess as good as anyone elses, or is it meant to reference just the world big 9 and im looking at it under too fine a lens?

Other then the magic translator in the RMB (everything) no there is not official lists for mundane translators.

I would guess that the translator would be loaded with the local languages of the region in which it was made in or programed for.

Yeah the Language Translator (Portable) in the RUE (which I'm going with assumes you are in North America since that is the main setting for that book) says it is programmed with the nine known languages of the Americas so I figured that was a list somewhere. If it's not then I guess my list there is as good as anything since I'm running the game. Thanks for verifying for me that it doesn't seem to be a thing mentioned.

I would note that each Nat. Am. tribe had it's own language (real world).
And you should check the two wild west world books to see which languages are present in Rifts NA.

One thing to consider also is that there has been a HUGE explosion in skills and languages.
When the game started you had skills such as "American" and "Euro" allowing a single skill slot to cover, basically "everyone in the entire campaign"... more or less the old "Common" system
Now there are dozens of additional languages. Tribal languages, racial languages, secret languages, codes, historical languages, extra-dimensional languages, magical languages... the list goes on and on.

A big question becomes "how much does the GM and the Party want complications over languages to be an issue"
Depending on the nuance level for the particular game you might not even NEED to pick the exact languages (I have been in games where the translators 'just worked' so as to gloss over the language issue and get on with the main plot. I have also been in games where parties would routinely have 10-20 language skills... and use them all and most people carried three or four, or more different translators)

generally those within the language families were close enough you could be understood though. though that does not help as much as you'd think:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenou ... e_Americas
it is worth noting that even though the native americans routinely knew several languages (their own and usually the neighboring tribes), you saw the advent of 'trade languages' meant to bridge language gaps, such as Plains Indian Sign language. these usually were not very complete or systematic though, meant more to get across general meaning rather than specific ideas.

Oddly enough the listing for the 9 major languages of the Americas isn't found in the item description, but the Language SKILL DESCRIPTION pg304 (RUE, RMB was pg32).


That is an understatement in terms of numbers (IINM megaversally speaking from an incomplete collected list I know of ~36 Earth languages & dialects, 59 alien languages, 12 races who adopted new native languages suggesting they have a prior "forgotten" one, 3 OCC specific languages, 3 distinct Telepathic Languages, 6 PW Trade Languages ((includes a separate telepathic)), and 75 aliens w/o an identified native language of any kind, plus 4 PF world human languages)

Yeah, my style of running is fairly broad most of the time so particularly with a translator they will be fine 99% of the time without even thinking about it. Because even if they don't speak a small local groups language odds are most of the town/tribes people will speak english or something else loaded on the translator if they have been in North America for .. I dunno a while. I was going to say couple years but it would probably take longer than that if they don't have a lot of outside contact.

Given that my group is all human and the only psychic is an operator so all his powers are machine oriented I figured that pulling the rug out from under them with language barriers occasionally would work to add something to some situations. I just prefer to be accurate. So I will need to rethink the selections of 'native American' (I should know there were several languages but sometimes the brain just ignores things) and Inuit. Inuit because they are rather remotely located so probably wouldn't be a major default.

So I still need to nail down two but you guys brought up some good points for me to consider here. For a while I was half debating throwing in an Urban/Slang dialect, but for one, Most of the OCC's that should start with that sort of thing start with language English or native tongue, and two that sort of thing tends to change really fast so formulating it into code might not be feasible. Possibly with the coming of the rifts the rate of drift of that sort of language would drop off, so I suppose it's not a terrible option; but it would be mainly for generational street gangs. Scavengers in the ruins of old citys, cradle to grave burbs residents, that sort of thing.

Something like Plains Indian Sign Language mentioned above would be a shoe in, but electronic voice translation might have some trouble with that sort of thing.
Or at the very least could only work with a camera mounted, and/or a video monitor, and if it only had one of the two could only translate one way.

In the old Main Book it lists the 9 major earth languages under the language skill section (pg 32). Same basic stuff is in RUE, also in the skill section(pg 304).

1) American
2) Techno-can
3) Spanish
4) Japanese
5) Chinese
6) Euro
7) Dragonese
Gobblely
9)Faerie

We know the FQ uses French, plus all the Native American languages. You also have things like Greek/Atlantean out there, and I think the NGR uses old German as well as Euro? I'm too lazy to go check lol.