star wars - Why does C-3PO speak to Jabba in Basic/English?

It's established that C-3PO can speak the Huttese language, as he does at the gate to Jabba's palace, but when he is performing his interpreting duties for Jabba (for example, when Jabba is negotiating with Leia, disguised as Boushh the bounty hunter), he translates whatever language is being spoken into Basic (shown to us as English).

Why?

Jabba can obviously understand Basic when it's spoken to him, but it's clearly not his native language. Doesn't this seem inefficient, and potentially rude? I can understand the filmmakers wanting to minimize the portion of the movie that requires subtitles, but there's enough Huttese dialog already that it seems like this would be fairly marginal.

Thoughts?

Answer

The main reason Hutts do not always speak Basic is a sense of superiority: they believe their native Huttese is a better language, and often prefer to speak through translators rather than lower themselves.

The same goes for others speaking Huttese - C3PO was possibly not deemed worthy of speaking Huttese when translating lesser beings.

Comments

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