Aurebesh/Legends

Aurebesh was an alphabet commonly used to represent the Basic language. The name comes from a combination of the first two letters, Aurek and Besh.

Behind the scenes
The word "Aurebesh" is similar to the word Alphabet, which is derived from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet (Alpha and Beta).

The assignment of the letters to their English equivalent was developed by writers at West End Games for Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game. This Aurebesh is occasionally used in electronic and board games such as Star Wars Monopoly. When Aurebesh-like writing appears in the original trilogy, however, the assignment of the letters determined by West End Games produces nonsensical results &mdash; most words seen in the movies appear to consist solely of consonants, and some letters appear on screen that are absent from the West End Games Aurebesh. In the prequel trilogy and in updated releases of the original trilogy, the Aurebesh writing uses the West End Games mapping, and can be translated to English.

Examples

 * During The Phantom Menace, when Anakin Skywalker is flying an N-1 Starfighter in the Battle of Naboo, a screen reads "Anakin turn the ship around and go back home right away." This is presumably a message to Anakin from R2-D2. It occurs just before Anakin's line, "Go back? Qui-Gon told me to stay in this cockpit, so that's what I'm going to do."
 * In the 2004 DVD release of A New Hope, the words displaying information as Obi-Wan Kenobi deactivates the tractor beam on the Death Star I, which were written using the Roman alphabet in previous releases, are now in the Aurabesh. Note that the particular instance, was the only one in the while series to show Roman letters.
 * In Return of the Jedi, Aurebesh is seen on the monitors of the Death Star II control center, when Darth Vader's shuttle is about to land. These graphics predate the West End Games description of Aurebesh, and produce gibberish if those letter assignments are used, but have been corrected in the special editions.
 * In few instances, as in Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith, inscriptions appear mirror-inverted. It is not known if it's a blooper or a variant of the script.