It should be little surprise, given a moment's thought, that distinct Cybertronian languages exist. The Transformers did not go about speaking English or any other known Earth language long ages ago on their distant metal world. Though the records of such conversations are frequently translated for us, we should not forget that these conversations originally flowed in odd electronic syllables past strange metallic lips, or were etched by alien hands long eons before the first humans painted muddy shapes upon dark cave stone.

HistoryEdit

CanonEdit

Madman's ParadiseEdit

The first language used by the Transformers was likely the Quintesson language inherited from their former masters. It can be seen upon the walls of the Quintesson dimensional transporter room. It rather resembles Egyptian hieroglyphs.

More than Meets the EyeEdit

The language used by the Autobots when they first awoke in 1984 was easily learned. Spike Witwicky learned to read Modern Autobot after only knowing the Transformers for a single day. (Autobots and humans could also converse freely on their first encounter, though the hows and whys aren't addressed onscreen. On the MUX the Autobots were programmed by the Ark with human languages collected by the Sky Spy probe.)

Cosmic RustEdit

Ancient Autobot was the language used by the ancient Autobot colonists that fled Cybertron in the distant past. Most modern Transformers (or at least the Decepticons) could not read it. Cosmic Rust

The Golden LagoonEdit

In the episode "The Golden Lagoon", Beachcomber uses a built-in translation program in an attempt to translate bird song, without much success. Presumably, all Transformers possess this translation program and not just Beachcomber.

On the MUX, when Teletraan I was first reactivated and went about scanning Earth "life forms" that it also scanned and translated Earth languages. It could have also downloaded it into each Transformer as it repaired them, explaining why both the Autobots and Decepticons could speak English right off the bat.

Shattered GlassEdit

The Around Cybertron news program features both advertisements and a news scroll at the bottom of the screen written in Autobot text.

NotesEdit

• "...For All Mankind" uses the Star Wars Aurebesh script to represent Cybertronian writing.

• The lettering used by Agoracer in the AllSpark Wars is taken from the "Ancient Autobot" font created by Jim Sorenson in the late '90s. This font was loosely based on the writing in "Cosmic Rust". The AllSpark Wars, as the first official usage of the font, retconned a canonical order to the language.

• Likewise, the lettering used by Agoraptor used Sorenson's Decepticon Graffiti font, based on the writing from Decepticon Graffiti!.

• The Ancient Autobot font has since shown up on Banzai-Tron's Timelines toy, on Burger King's Transform Your Way promotion, as a part of the Around Cybertron news broadcast, and on the cover to "All Hail Megatron" volume 3.