Communication skills in the absence of language fluency?

[Subversive]

I read the character survival guide snippet from Horror On The Orient Express to my players, and because it listed foreign languages as particularly useful, all of them ended up creating polyglots.  What's more, because English isn't listed as one of the languages it would be valuable to have, one of them created a Turkish character with just 11 percent in English.  Yeah, I know, he says, "pigeon English."  Well, first off, I suspect 11 might not even be enough points for "pigeon," but the other thing is that he is putting 75% into Charm.  Well, OK, language fluency isn't always needed for charming someone (for persuade or fast talk probably, but charm and intimidate not so much), but I'm not sure it will work in every circumstance though.  Or am I just being silly?  Of course, while I haven't made it through all the books yet, so far it seems to me that in every situation where one might need a foreign language skill, there are always translators available.  So unless there is a dramatic change later on in the campaign, I guess I have accidentally over-stressed the desirability for the different characters to have down all the different languages listed collectively.

I'm a new game master, and while enjoying it overall, so far my least favorite part is conflict with the players during character creation.  But I guess I will need to:  
1) let the players know that while foreign language skills may be helpful, they also aren't crucial; and
2) tell my player that if he wasn't to use charm with pigeon English, that I think there might be circumstances where it might not work and I am going to need him to act it out every time.

But I am very open to other thoughts on the subjects.

[nclarke]

Cap any Interpersonal skill (Charm/Fast Talk/Intimidate or Persuade) test with the language percentage. E.G the player of the Turk may have 75% in Charm but as far as Charming someone in English goes it's 11%. Combined skill rolls is on page 55.

Also check out the Languages section on pages 66/67

The minimum to communicate is 10% - simple ideas.  Anything sophisticated like changing someones impression of you or changing their mind needs to be 40% or higher as 30% allows "transactional requests" - How much is this meal or similar.