Yeah I mean leave it to us in North America to always throw an English language curve ball hehe. Just having something in translation w/ subtitle there would still be worthwhile though. Representation is a plus sure, but mainly I just think it would look cool and have nice knock on effects for all the animations down the line. It'd be so novel that I think it'd get a lot of plaudits and a pass even if butting up against the limits of the technology. I think implementing some kind of Sign (take whatever regional variant/some fantasy version thereof) would be comparable to the amount of work involved in say, recording separate audio tracks in different languages for the spoken dialog, but it would be a bit more versatile since it could be translated in script subtitle to whatever the native tongue. Like they could do it in ASL or Auslan or BSL or French, or German like the girl in Dark, and I'd never know, cause I'm not fluent, but it would still carry the same kind of dramatic appeal and novelty. They could find a way to do it tactfully. Sure we'd probably still some version of the silent monk or mummers trope or a slate around the neck, but I think they could do it up better if they just put some heart into it. For the outside audience it would probably still carry better with a pair of characters, so you could have one do the translation into common. In cinema its well established by now as a ready in. So for example, in Dark you have the older sister translating for the younger sister (actually translated dialog though, so not just doing the Han and Chewie or Luke and R2 repetition schtick there). It sets up some nice shots and framing. Like not just the constant shot-counter-shot and over the shoulder dialog, but we get more wide angle 2 characters in scene shots, which tend to be more interesting and slightly less formulaic. Once established more gestural shots would then carry into regular spoken dialog as it hybridizes across the board. I think it could work similar to Githyanki or like Quenya in LotR films, where it becomes a kind of a universal. Or like in the same way that it doesn't matter if I'm a native English speaker, or Dutch or French speaker, we can all appreciate the sound and vibe of Klingon. It's always in translation cause nobody is truly fluent and its invented. But they could go one better than that with sign, cause they have more base material to work from and it's less tapped. They could just all go Martha's Vineyard or Old French there, and it'd still probably work, like some form of archaic version or a Shakespearean redux vernacular of the sort we often see in use in FR.

For me though the moonshot element is that if they could pull off some basic version of sign language that works believably and isn't all strained, then it becomes easier to imagine Astarion using his dagger, or sleight of hand that actually looks it, monks doing the hand dance or warlocks with hex fingers, increases the likelihood of some rando Tief or Gale throwing up a a well timed shaka like 'most excellent' lol. I could picture where it might go. I'd anticipate some counters like, it'd cost too much and take too long, though I don't kick around on boards like these to muse on Larians budget or resource management zots. Like whatever, they shouldn't do it because it's easy but because it's hard. The moonshot, cause that's what get's it to the next level. I think Khalid was the first RPG character I can recall with a stammer, but it was played for laughs and passe like 1999 vs The King's Speech, but when there's nothing any representation at all gets a plaudit right? So they could try for it and have some safety net there or some slack just for attempting and having the ambition, as it's something that hasn't been done yet. The more cinematic the game gets the more gestural animation seems like forward progress. Right now the games are still at the level of dubs in cartoon. I always prefer watching manga in Japanese with English Subtitle, or German TV in Deutsche with English Subtitle (even though they are masters of the dub) you just get something in the audio that could never be translated anyway which is the sound. They could do the same with gesture I think, since the game is still heavy on transcription and reading, it would be cool to see that acclimated into the mix. Especially if they pass it off smooth, like not front and center but just having a companion character that worked that way. I'd love to see them aim high and do a D&D game that had like its own language team, the same way they have teams for other stuff, just to deep dive. It was always one of the more interesting features of the intelligence attribute, to choose what languages or secret tongues you got to speak, to have that informed by fantasy race or background with additional options besides common there. Lot of places they could go with it.