I don't think he understood binary during a New Hope. C3PO has to translate for R2 when they first meet.
this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2025
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Also he reads what R2 says via a screen in his X wing in ESB. I don’t think he understands binary until at least RotJ. Maybe he got bored in mechanical hand physical therapy and also studied droidspeak.
I doubt he got bored. That mechanical hand probably felt like someone else's until the nerves fully adjusted.
Luke Skywanker
Use the force, Luke
Use more force, Luke
Lube Skywanker
I love how quickly this became about masturbation.
I bet it has a few vibrate modes
He understands him perfectly in ESB.
I think it's implied that having spent enough time with R2, he eventually picks it up. I know that according to the lore, all X-wings are equipped with a translator, so that pilots can understand their astromechs. Given enough time flying together, it makes sense that Luke would need the translator less and less.
Not to mention it just helps move the story along, considering all the scenes they spend alone together in ESB, without C3PO. In a New Hope, C3PO is always around to translate when R2 has something to say.
Well, I guess that clears up my shower thought. Thanks!
Usually through the text translation on the X-Wing screen. Once on Dagobah, he's picking up the same context clues in tone that the audience is.
Duolingo
Droidolingo
I could never understand why they didn't just throw a speech module into R2-D2.
Cause all those beeps were cussing.
Because back in the 70s, computerized speech still seamed like something extremely difficult and very sci-fi. That's why only droids who really need it have a speech module.
Nowadays every cheapo smartphone has speech synthesis capabilities, but back then that was very sci-fi.
Btw, that's why a ton of modern sci-fi is retro-sci-fi (basically steam punk but with 70s computers), because real tech has surpassed sci-fi in many ways.
"Are you ready for science fiction? Well. I have this robot in the story....and he can talk! He can do basic calculations, AND speak the answers!!! ISN'T THAT WILD???"
producer pulls out iPhone
"Hey Siri, whats 4,684,854,853 divided by 7?"
"669,264,979"
And this joke exchange would have been more impressive if everyone hadn't known that I'm on a cell phone, with a built in calculator.
Seriously, any cell phone today would have been called INSANE in the 1970s.
I mean think about it. In the late 1960s Maxwell Smart talked into a shoe phone. And it was considered crazy high tech. So much so that as a kid in the late 80s, it was STILL crazy high tech to just have a phone. Just out and about.
I'm now old enough to know that technically cell phones existed at that time. But the fact that I was unaware they existed should serve as a stark contrast between cell phones in 1988 vs 2025. Ask any 5 year old today what a cell phone is, and they'll know. Now have them watch the original Get Smart series, and watch them get confused by why he has a cell phone inside his shoe. I would bet they wouldn't be as excited as I was when I saw how cool the shoe phone was. Today, it would be weird.
To be fair though, the opening sequence with the doors, IS still cool as fuck.
Yeah, science fiction has a very small set of fictional science goals.
- travel
- communication
- create (artificial) life
- no need to work
That's basically the whole wish-list of technology/magic science fiction. Or fiction in general.
And from a technology standpoint we are incredibly far along on most of these points. (Except the last one, but that's a systemic issue, not a technology one.)
The funnier thing would be having them react to hearing ChatGPT answer a question verbally asked "How many R's are in the word strawberry? and hearing ChatGPT answer back verbally "Four."
Like, a computer program could convert sounds to written text, understand it was a question that needed a number for the answer, and then completely beef it on the answer.
See the voice-activated 'joymaker' from The Age of The Pussyfoot , by Frederik Pohl, 1966: http://technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1026
If you can imagine a combination of telephone, credit card, alarm clock, pocket bar, reference library, and full-time secretary, you will have sketched some of the functions provided by your joymaker.
... Pocket bar? Googling it gets me nowhere. Surely he didn't mean a bar of alcoholic drinks? Maybe a pocket pry bar?
You were right the first time. It dispenses meds, stimulants, ~~intoxicants~~ and so on from reservoirs within it.
Edit: I misremembered. It doesn't dispense intoxicants. It merely orders them and has them delivered to you.
It says a lot about the culture of the 60s and/or Pohl himself, that the first conceivable use for "instant ordering" would be for drugs.
With the way how stupid LLMs are especially with maths I now think it's actually quite logical how you wouldn't want something like that in a droid that is mainly meant to do astronomical calculations.
In the novelization of ROTJ it is also revealed that the torture droid in Jabba's palace instructs C-3PO to just answer yes or no in order to reduce him to binary because that is something protocol droids are ill equipped for. On the other hand he speaks complex sentences to R2, I guess for much the same reason but the other way around.
Did you see the scene where he and his uncle were buying droids?
Just like Han Solo learned to speak the Wookiee language. Shitty writing.
I headcanon that Han can't understand a word Chewwy says and just goes on vibes.
He spent five years with the droid between New Hope and Empire Strike's Back.
Clearly it was the Force.
Luke is reading a translation on a screen
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/0/0c/Astromech_Translator_CCG.jpg
In the x-wing, that is made for the astromech sure.
How does he know what R2 is saying when they are not in the x-wing?
How do parents know what a baby is saying? They don’t. They spend enough time learning what sounds and movements or facial positions mean to speculate what is being communicated.
Artoo speaks with whistles and beeps and he moves. I’m betting that in the time they spent together, Luke had a vague understanding of the general gist of what Artoo was trying to communicate.
Droids personalities also expand as time goes on and they learn, which is why wiping their memory often is something that happens in Star Wars. R2 and 3PO both skirt memory wiping many times.
The microFloridians translate it for him
It's actually microHonduras
MicroHondas?
Bro I think that's just called a civic
He used droids on his uncle's farm. I'm guessing they use a similar language.
It’s binary, the dude programmed droids, you don’t think he learned boops and beeps?
He wasn't a droid programmer, that was his father.
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It's simple, George Lucas is a shitty writer!
It ain't that kind of movie kid.
Harrison Ford
Everyone in that Universe seems to. Not sure why.
It's because they're brothers, and siblings always understand one another
Distance education.
Didn't he have a panel in his X-Wing that displayed communication from R2?
He didn't.
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