That's very interesting! Given the Guild's official position was "You can't go to the planet, we don't want you on the planet, and we'll throw every excuse in the book at you to keep you from reaching the planet" -- they well may not have had dedicated linguists!

In which case, well, a botanist probably knows enough Latin to name his new discoveries, and Bretano did have the widest experience with atevi, so why not throw him at the problem? He has the oldest associations, and he's managed to get along despite language barriers once before, so he's probably no worse and likely better than anyone else they could find. :D

Even after the stationers went down to the planet - the shipfolk wouldn't have known that (they come back expecting their station to still be up and running!), and if they didn't have linguists before they left again, they might not have re-introduced the concept afterward. (Out of sight, out of mind; and they wouldn't be intending to talk to any other aliens they happened across in their explorations, so they wouldn't see a need.)

Jase sort of made it sound like it was something Taylor had invented, if my memory helps -- sort of, "he knew there were atevi, so he made us study a bunch of old Earth languages, despite the whole ship speaking one language"?