So in Stargrinder there are a few things to keep in mind.

First there's the culture skill. It's your knowledge(people, places, history, society, geography, economics, etc.) skill at the usual one rank per level. And apparently it gives a language per rank. So characters get race + common + int bonus + culture ranks languages. People get lots of languages.

Second there's the "ignore language" stuff. Telepathy is pretty common, the tech is generally cheap, spells to skip the issue are low level and long lasting. Plus if you use the official settings/adventures any npc/group that doesn't automatically speak common has some kind of bypass available. It's like environment hazards, they included them but they're so trivial to ignore that you have to change rules to make them matter.

Third is that almost nothing mechanically depends on language except the social skills and some envoy tricks, and I think there might be one feat that has anything to do with language at all. Everyone is roughly equal in combat as long as they take the dr = bab feat, have an 18+ attack stat, and take weapon focus plus the feats to get better than basic melee & pistols (if they need to).

So the guy's "I translate words" isn't relevant. But it's such a minor and optional aspect of the game that it's not a big deal. Especially since he couldn't really spend too much in character resources on it.