Cybertronian languages

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.

Marvel Comics
Runamuck and Runabout sprayed Cybertronian graffiti across Earth monuments.

Animated series


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.



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.

The controls of the Plasma Energy Chamber were labeled in Ancient Cybertronian, which Spike Witwicky did not recognize but Cerebros was able to read.

In contrast, 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

Beast Wars


Cybertronix is the name of the modern written language of the Maximals during the Beast Era. Whether this is the same language spoken on Cybertron during earlier portions of the Generation 1 continuity or at all similar to that written and spoken aloud in the live action Transformers Movie is unknown. As it is specifically referred to as the "modern written language," it seems likely that there were other Cybertronian languages, with other names, at some point in the past. The computers on the Chromia 10 label displayed planets in Cybertronix.


 * NOTE: Although the name was never given canonically until Razor's Edge, Cybertronix was the name Larry DiTillio and/or Bob Forward gave to the language used by their characters in Beast Wars, as first stated in a post to alt.toys.transformers on January 1, 1997 . This post indicates that Cybertronix is the name of the spoken language as well as the written, and that both the Maximals and Predacons speak it.

The character sets used to represent Cybertronix in the Beast Era cartoons are simple English language character substitutions. The Maximal and Predacon alphabets are significantly different from one another. Maximal characters are a fairly regular collection of straight lines, circles and semi-circles and dots. Predacon characters are jagged, curved, irregular and often feature serifs. Fonts are available containing the translation key, and many scenes of both Beast Wars and Beast Machines contain humorous messages for the dedicated fan. For instance, the text on the Nemesis pictured to the right reads "Red Dwarf", referencing the gigantic starship from the sci-fi/comedy series of the same name. These translations also give us some insight into Maximal and Predacon numbering systems. While Maximals use a decimal based system similar to Arabic numerals, the Predacon system is organized much like Roman numerals, with one to three vertically stacked horizontal dashes representing 1 - 3, V representing 5, X representing 10 and so forth.

Beast Machines
While in the big floating head, Megatron took to addressing people as a hologram composed of Cybertronian symbols, possibly Cybertronix. The symbols took the form of a big floating head. Real original there, Megs.

Transformers (2007) movie
Rather unique to this continuity, several Transformers (notably Optimus Prime and Megatron) have Cybertronian words etched onto their heads, near the cheek area. What they say is anyone's guess (Would have been a darn good question to float around at Botcon though). The All Spark was covered in Cybertronian glyphs, leading Sector Seven to conclude a connection between the All Spark and Megatron. Additionally, cometary forms are covered in Cybertronian "tribal markings".

The Decepticons communicate in Cybertronian (which to human ears appears to be a collection of high-pitched, chirping electronic sounds) when speaking among themselves on Earth, but have learned enough English to communicate with the humans when necessary. The crew members of the vessel Ghost 1 thought that one could make out words if they had a degree in theoretical physics...and were tripping on bad acid.

Cybertronian languages appear to contain a lot of information in small fragments, as is evidenced by Jazz and Optimus's "conversation" in the novelization of the movie.

(The written version of Cybertronian appears now and again throughout the film, most obviously during Decepticon dialogue, where the subtitles are displayed in Cybertronian briefly before translating to English.)

It is also worth noting that this is the first time in media that Transformers are seen speaking their own language. In previous continuities they all spoke English.