One giant massive hole in ME (in general) that really bugs me.

Still doesn't make any sense to me...

Creating whole new languages for each race would be very time consuming and as we all know time is money. Universal translators are used everywhere in sci-fi genre to bypass this problem. It would be lovely and very interesting to hear what turian langueage would sound like but unfortunately it is what it is.

That an AI program can understand a language without coming across it before. How would the AI know that whatever communication is coming from alien race was and then how would it interpret it in a sound that is distinguished differently from everything else while remaining to keep the sound somewhat "standard?" Ex. Archon has a distinct voice yet is somehow understandable even though its method of communication is unknown. The AI is, for lack of better words, too fast to know what is being communicated. Think about our own language (English). Compare that to a different language where subjects and verbs are used in different parts of a sentence and I think you get the point that an alien language could be so different from what we experience that an AI program wouldn't be able to cut it no matter how sophisticated it is.

When there is a translator for a language, the translator has to wait until the person is done talking before they can rely what was said to said recipient.

How do you explain lip syncing?

I think the devs have said that this will be addressed in the game and that adromedans wont be speaking english.

Remains to be seen how the translations aspect is handled in Andromeda. There is some indication that we arrive after the others meaning either the others of the Initiative or the new species we meet could have adapted translators before we arrive, we just download the new data. Would be a shame to have no first contact scenario in the game though.

In the end, it isn't really feasible to invent a couple functioning languages just for some alien dialogue in a game, most people will want it in english (or other localized language) anyway, not subtitles. You could do fake languages with sentences with no real meaning but that gets annoying pretty quickly for a number of reasons. Play some KOTOR, anyone not get annoyed by Ithorian and Twi'lek dialogue after the first three times?
Not to mention there would certainly be complaints about bad lip syncing...

How do you know our data can even talk to theirs?

why do almost all the species we come across look more or less like they have the same body type as us humans? I legit want to know this one...

ACHUTAA!!! De wanna wanga pateesa!

Haha, in KOTOR it was all cartoony and cute, though. The repeated phrases did get tiresome after a while, but never really lost their charm.

There are universal translators. When Thane calls a FemShep "Shia," she comment that "her translator must have glitched." So it isn't that everyone is speaking English per say. It's more like Common or Trade Speak out of D&D.

You raise a fair point about the natives in Andromeda. I think that part of the game itself will be learning a Rosetta Stone for the language. Either by studying or by having a native in the party. That's how I figure the writers will handle that.

I mean someone from the Initiative arriving before us could have done the translation, we update out translators and can now understand the alien language. As for aliens understanding us, they translated it too or we gave them translators.

These stuff will always be handwaved to some degree unless what you're telling is a story about understanding people speaking a foreign language just like how most sci-fi will handwave their way to some form of FTL travel.

As for why everyone has the same body type as humans, so they can share the same animation rig thus saving yourself from doing a lot of basic animations for a bunch of different rigs and save on resources like RAM. Game engines sometimes also have limitations on how many animations can be loading and/or playing at once which could factor in too.

Of course, we've seen two major alien species so far. A bit early to proclaim Andromeda has nothing less human like the Elcor or Hanar.