As Star Wars fans—especially Darth Vader fans—we probably think we know a lot about the Sith Lord from the Original Trilogy. But did you know that Darth Vader’s armor in A New Hope is actually different from what we see later in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi?
Beyond the obvious changes, like his helmet, there’s one tiny detail most people miss. If you look closely at Vader’s chest control panel, you’ll notice strange “alien” characters written across it.
So what are those symbols? Do they actually mean anything?
The Symbols Are Based on Ancient Hebrew Characters
Many of us know that Star Wars has its own written language called Aurebesh. It wasn’t part of the original films. Aurebesh was created later by Stephen Crane while working on Star Wars Miniatures Battles for West End Games. With Lucasfilm’s approval, Crane developed a full alphabet by taking various symbols that had already appeared on props in Return of the Jedi and assigning them letters from the Latin alphabet. That’s how Aurebesh eventually became the standard written language of the Star Wars universe.
Because of that timeline, the “alien” writing on Darth Vader’s chest control panel cannot be Aurebesh. Those symbols first appear clearly on Vader’s armor in The Empire Strikes Back, years before Aurebesh was officially created. At the time the costume was designed, there was no in-universe Star Wars alphabet meant to explain what was written on the panel.
So over the years, many fans across the internet have tried to translate the symbols on Vader’s chest panel. One well-known example comes from a discussion on Stack Exchange, where a fan who confirmed that Hebrew was their native language took a close look at the characters.
After going through the symbols carefully, the conclusion was simple: the text doesn’t actually mean anything. While some of the characters resemble Hebrew letters, they aren’t arranged in a way that forms real words or sentences. Some symbols are incomplete, rotated, or placed randomly, making proper translation impossible.
In other words, the chest panel may look like it contains written language, but when examined closely, it doesn’t convey a readable message at all.
However, there is another fan who came to a very different conclusion. This fan also confirmed that Hebrew was her first language and claimed she was able to translate the text successfully. On TheForce.net, a fan who went by the name Nat stated that she translated the symbols into something more coherent.
According to her work, the original text on Darth Vader’s chest control panel can be read as “Ein MaaSaV NimChaLim (!) Aad SheZaCha.” Translated into English, she interpreted it to mean “His deeds will not be forgiven until he merits.”
But at the end, we don’t have any confirmation from any Star Wars, eventhough we never heard George Lucas or anyone from the film got confirmed this idea.