Why does the Shaman refer to apemen as "humans"?

[Nyagger]

The developers have gone out of their way multiple times to state that Apemen are NOT humans,
and that the "pale blue planet" is NOT earth
yet in one of the galactic dock scenes the shaman lets slip that "we humans..."
is that bad writing or someone being lazy here?

[kellorkleft]

If that's the case, probably just a translation error during localization. It happens.

[Shiro]

Because "apemen" is how solarians call humans?

[Scorpix]

if you get called apeman for 500 years then probably you would get used to new names

[Sir_Sam_Vimes]

When did the devs ever say the pale blue planet is not earth? Because it is absolutely earth

[ThreeFingerG]

Why would "apemen" "from the pale blue planet" NOT be humans from Earth?

[Nyagger]

Originally posted by ThreeFingerG:

Why would "apemen" "from the pale blue planet" NOT be humans from Earth?

because the devs said so

[Shiro]

Originally posted by Dogemon:

Originally posted by ThreeFingerG:

Why would "apemen" "from the pale blue planet" NOT be humans from Earth?

because the devs said so

When and where did they?

[Sauron]

Originally posted by ThreeFingerG:

Why would "apemen" "from the pale blue planet" NOT be humans from Earth?

Because solarians don’t know name Earth, and they don’t care. And they don’t consider humans as equals to respect them. Just apemen from pale blue planet.

[funkyojo]

From my perspective, the devs thought that ape-people are human and pale blue planet is Earth...
I'm pretty sure the devs never said what the OP claimed.

[林博仁(Buo-ren Lin)]

The "Human" name is from the Apemen's own perspective.

[Barely Average@sptfy/yt/sc]

solarians named us "apeman" cause...well... scientifically we evolved from apes.... the rest may be potential spoilers so dont read if you dont want to spoil anything.

since they basically are farming humans they prefer to distance themselves/ have no interactions with them.That way it becomes less unethical / ignorance is bliss / they are too primitive and will probably off themselves anyways . This is also why you get all the interactions with chubby and how he responds to shuanshuan.
Assuming you did read "humans" that means the apeman have lived long enough to name themselves that. But since the humans haven't really interacted with the solarians and vice versa the solarians do not know what they call themselves or their planet. Most of the game is in perspective of a solarian/alien/ yi so thats why they have always been called apeman because thats what they have named the humans. Also honestly human is a word that doesnt really get thrown in normal conversations anyways or earth.

[Longrat]

The pale blue planet is definitely meant to be earth and Shuanshuan is meant to be the Yellow Emperor, of Chinese mythology, the founder of human civilization.

[silph]

It seemed to me they were trying to avoid the word human in the localization. Like the apemen don't know themselves by any other name.

By the way, the apemen and their planet can be obviously a reference to humans and Earth without actually being humans and Earth. By not naming them such, you can avoid a lot of pointless lore implications and contradictions. It creates more freedom for the story to be its own thing.

On this topic though, one other minor localization oddity I noticed is at the end, the recorded council meeting, someone (Yi maybe) refers to the inhabitants of the pale blue planet as "humanoid", which doesn't make sense. Even if they're called humans, Yi would be more likely to call them "solarianoid" or I'd just say "bipedal" if anything at all.