I'm unable to find the reference, but I believe Steve said in one of his posts on Diplomacy from earlier versions that you WILL eventually be able to communicate with an NPR. If I remember correctly, Communication is influenced by the NPR Xenophobia stat, your race's Xenophobia stat and Translation Skill stat and your diplomatic team skill.
You can see your race stats on the right side of the CTRL-F2 View Race Stat window, accessed from the main menu bar. You can even change it in SM Mode if you've started with your random race at -26 Translation Skill, like mine did.