Category Archives: Aurebesh to English

This week’s post is a follow up to last week’s in which I encountered an example of a rarely used Aurebesh number system and incorrectly guessed how to properly read it.

In doing some research I discovered that it is possible to write Aurebesh numbers in two different formats, in the same way we use both Arabic and Roman numerals in English. With this new information, I have corrected the translation in the entry about Dromund Kaas signs.

The most common form of Aurebesh numerals more or less match the appearance of Aurebesh letters, but the second technical style uses pips and dashes and is perhaps related to droids’ binary language.

I was able to find examples of both styles in canonical sources and in SWTOR and imagine that most citizens of the galaxy use them interchangeably.

The origins of Aurebesh’s dual number systems, however, are murky as far as I can tell. The original Aurebesh guide from West End Games did not indicate glyphs for numbers, and two of the first fan-created fonts from the 1990’s included their own style of numbers. The iterations that followed use differing variations of those styles and have found their way into official content. I suspect which type of numbers we encounter in the Star Wars universe simply comes down to which font the artists who created the prop, scene or illustration had on hand.

Looking at both, it’s clear to me that the styles were developed separately from the original Aurebesh. The technical numbers with their pips and dashes are appropriately futuristic, but they don’t really match the rest of the alphabet. While the Arabic style more closely matches the Aurebesh, the glyphs too closely duplicate our own numbers for my taste. Those numbers could appear in a non-Star Wars setting and remain perfectly readable.

However, we can assume that the history and development of writing in the Star Wars universe is at least as diverse as it is in our own. The letters of the Aurabesh could very well have come from one corner of the galaxy, and the numbers from another. At any rate, be glad that we don’t count like the Gree and have to recite multiplication tables using hexadecimal color codes!

I’m sure I flew by this poster a hundred times before I ever noticed it on the Republic Fleet. Unlike many other signs and posters, it doesn’t seem to have been used much around the galaxy despite the fact it features one of the movies’ most infamous background characters: the loveable Gonk Droid.

The prominent Y features in a lot of signage around the game and I assume it is the logo or shorthand for a large manufacturing firm, which I’ve decided to call “Yirt Pan-Galactic Industries,” after the name for the Aurebesh Y.

This sign, like many others, uses the Æ glyph, enth, as an ampersand. Since there is no official Aurebesh ampersand, and enth looks a bit like one, it seems like a reasonable substitution.

Within the game world, there are no true Power Droid NPCs like the one in the poster, but four small Power Droid pets were included in some Cartel Market packs. Gonk droids also exist in the game, but, as anyone who has played an Agent knows, they look rather different than their film counterparts, even having arms and long legs. I suspect as the droid’s design was refined over the centuries, articulated limbs were deemed inefficient and unnecessary.

Greetings, sentients! This blog will be devoted to all things related to the MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic, but I reserve the right to digress into general Star Wars territory as well.

The origin of this blog came on a patch day some time ago, during which I perused my screen shot folder to kill some time. I came across this snapshot from the famous HK-55 montage in chapter 4 and decided to decode the Aurebesh. Click on the thumbnails below to see the results.

I was curious to see how much thought went into the alien text that filled the screen. The meaning of the prominent parts was pretty obvious, but I was pleasantly surprised that the Terminator-esque readout was consistent and logical within the context. I’d often stopped and taken a moment to translate some of the signage spread around the game worlds and I thought maybe some other folks out there might be interested too.

Now, I know that I’m not the first to undertake such a project, and I’m not sure how much interest there is in discovering that Kolto barrels in flashpoints are marked “Kolto” and a neighborhood watch sign on Corellia reads “Watch.” So I figure I’ll also opine on other aspects of the game as the mood strikes me.

As for who I am and why you should care, well, I can only address the first question. I’m one of those old fogeys who, primed by Jack Kirby comics and Star Trek re-runs, was the perfect age back in 1977 for Star Wars to burn itself into my brain. And my fondness for it has never left. From the comic books and trading cards of my youth to the pen and paper RPG and computer games of more recent times, I’ve never stopped being a fan.

I’m not much of a computer gamer and my last console was a Sega Genesis, but I was a World of Warcraft junkie until burning out during Mists of Pandaria and have played SWTOR since launch. Aside from the setting, I find the relaxed pace of SWTOR a nice fit for my MMO jones.

Thanks for taking a look, and I hope you’ll pop on by and see what’s new in the worlds of Aurebesh.