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The Mandalorian: We now have a translation of Boba Fett's message

Thank you, Fantha Tracks and Reddit.

Jennifer Bisset Former Senior Editor / Culture
Jennifer Bisset was a senior editor for CNET. She covered film and TV news and reviews. The movie that inspired her to want a career in film is Lost in Translation. She won Best New Journalist in 2019 at the Australian IT Journalism Awards.
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Jennifer Bisset
2 min read
mandoa-chain-code-1

Boba Fett's chain code, translated.

 Sander de Lange/Fantha Tracks/Lucasfilm

The latest episode of The Mandalorian saw bounty hunter Boba Fett reveal his chain code to Mando, proving the Mandalorian beskar armor really belongs to him. Mando understands the symbols. Boba Fett understands them. Even Fennec Shand (Ming-Na Wen) appears to understand them. Thanks to Star Wars fan site Fantha Tracks and Reddit, we can too.

The symbols are written in Star Wars alphabet Aurebesh, Fantha Tracks writer Sander de Lange and Reddit user zackgardner provided translations. "It appears chaincodes basically function in a pedigree or family tree," zackgardner noted.

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Whether this makes sense to you or not, here's the translated message: "Foundling, Took into… The year the... Concord Dawn, Mentor Jast, Father Fett, Boba Fett."

Before we translate the translation, here's a better look at the deciphered message (thanks to SWLibriComics on Imgur). The symbols appear to be letters with parts clipped off:

<blockquote class="imgur-embed-pub" lang="en" data-id="a/BrCDHhV"><a href="https://imgur.com/a/BrCDHhV">Boba Fett mandalorian Chain-code rev. 2</a></blockquote><script async src="//s.imgur.com/min/embed.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

So what's the translation of the translation? It appears the chain code is a chronicle of Boba's origins. Let's start with "Concord Dawn." That's the home planet of Jango Fett, Boba Fett's "father." Boba is a clone of Jango -- his home planet is Kamino, known for its cloning technology.

But back to Jango. This is where the "Foundling" part comes in. Like Mando, Jango is a foundling, an infant taken in and cared for by others. Who took him in? "Mentor Jast" could be a reference to Jaster Mereel, Jango's adopted father. Mereel was the Mand'alor, the leader of all the Mandalorian clans on Mandalore, the homeworld of the Mandalorians.

On Concord Dawn, which is also Mereel's home planet, Mereel saved a young Jango from the Death Watch, a violent splinter faction of the Mandalorians. When Mereel was later murdered, Jango succeeded him as the new Mand'alor.

The takeaway is that the Fetts have strong ties to Mandalore and can be called Mandalorians.

This hasn't always been the case: George Lucas himself told The Mandalorian executive producer Dave Filoni the Fetts weren't Mandalorians. But in Star Wars Legends, aka Star Wars stories outside the six original Star Wars movies produced by Lucas, they were. It seems The Mandalorian is leaning into that Legends lore.

CNET's Sean Keane contributed to this report.

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