1899: a linguistic review (part 3 of 4) … and what failed to impress: - Sometimes the characters do not manage to communicate verbally, because they don’t even try to find a common tongue. A Polish boy and a Chinese girl are unable to communicate in either Polish or English, but why didn’t they try English or German that are commonly used on the board of the ship? We know he knows both these languages and she at least knows some basic English. I know it is cute to see them communicating non-verbally, but the whole setup is silly. - Sometimes the characters manage to agree on something very quickly despite not really understanding each other. This, however, can be somewhat explained both by the critical circumstances and (warning, slight spoiler!) by the season finale . - The dialogues were written in English and translated into other languages, but it seems to me the translations are not that great. Judging by Polish lines, some of them seem very unnatural. - Last, but not least, translators, even amateur ones, are rarely seen. Sometimes a characters starts translating as hoc as needed, but nobody ever asks “could you please translate it for me” which would seem natural in some scenes.