Do you know R2 D2? :-)
(Note: Are you here for the R2 D2 sounds in MP3 format? Scroll to the end of the page where are the download links!)
And before we continue, here’s a sample R2 D2 message that you can listen to:
R2 D2 and Obi Wan Kenobi (source for this photo: https://twitter.com/PhilSzostak/status/1160643528071905280 — btw, this is a cool Twitter thread that contains lots of interesting Star Wars facts)
And you know how R2 D2 “speaks”, by producing short bursts of various beeping sounds?
Here’s a refresher (in case you lived in a distant galaxy far, far away) — the moment when Luke and R2 D2 meet Yoda for the first time on Dagobah… unforgettable!
[Luke Meets Yoda (Empire-Strikes-Back), mirror copy of this video ]
OK so fast-forward to how R2 D2 “speaks” — I always wanted to be able to use some of his sounds when my smartphone notifies me of a new message or alerts me of something else, etc. A while ago I found this nice one-page website, r2d2translator.com, and there you could enter some letters/words into a text field and then the R2 D2 translator would “translate” them into R2 D2 “language”. And you could even download the translations in MP3 format!
This website still exists but since Adobe discontinued Flash at the beginning of 2021, it now stopped working (the Flash plugin in it, actually) and so the R2 D2 translations disappeared. Luckily, I was able to download some of these translations before the site’s content was gone.
I am now providing them here so others could download and compile their own R2 D2 translations:
1. R2 D2 “translations” from A to Z and 0 to 9 (individual MP3 files):
AB.mp3 | CD.mp3 | EF.mp3 | GH.mp3 | IJ.mp3 | KL.mp3 | MN.mp3 | OP.mp3 | QR.mp3 | ST.mp3 | UV.mp3 | WX.mp3 | YZ.mp3 | 12345.mp3 | 67890.mp3
2. R2 D2 “translations” (a single ZIP file with all the MP3’s in it):
Once you download the sounds, you can use some audio editing program to mix them, split them, and create various combinations for your smartphone’s notifications or whatever. :-)
Note: I got the MP3’s from the r2d2translator.com website but I have no idea what is their original source. Hopefully George Lucas wouldn’t mind. ;-)