tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Feb 16 07:13:36 1996
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new vocabulary in "ST:K" CD-ROM set
- From: [email protected]
- Subject: new vocabulary in "ST:K" CD-ROM set
- Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 10:13:28 -0500
I am working with the script of the Language Lab in the forthcoming
"Star Trek: Klingon" CD-ROM set. There are about 20 new words in it,
which <Do'Ha' jay'!> I am not allowed to make public before the
product's release date. That is scheduled for April 8. There may be
more new vocabulary than that in the Interactive Episode (which is on
2 CD-ROMs of the set, the third being the Language Lab), but I don't
have access to that.
The Language Lab script is by Marc Okrand. For each entry (there are
a number of phrases and sentences as well as separate words), the
user will see and hear a video clip of Robert O'Reilly as Gowron
saying the entry, see the word, and see a picture if relevant. The
user then will be able to click on a button to practice his or her
own pronunciation with a Dragon Systems-built recognizer, receiving
audio feedback by Marc Okrand on specific errors (such as using
English "h" instead of Klingon "H").
Okrand coached O'Reilly through the taping session. I have the audio
of those clips. His pronunciation is in general pretty good, good
enough so that many of the differences from Okrand's could fairly be
attributed to legitimate differences in accent within the official
dialect, personal style, and emotion/force of pronunciation
(prolonged vowels and such). There are some systematic and individual
clunkers, but O'Reilly deserves our respect for the effort and
attention he gives to Klingon. Okrand certainly thinks highly of him
for this. Many of us on this list are professional or amateur
linguists and/or polyglots, with a knack for languages and maybe
years of training and practice in producing un-English speech sounds,
and we should bear in mind that most people, including most actors,
don't have these advantages. O'Reilly is also operating at an imposed
disadvantage: Okrand told me he said, during the taping session, "As
long as I'm wearing these teeth, this is the best I can do!"
Unfortunately, I didn't get those audio files till after recording
the pronunciation models that the user's speech will be matched
against, and so I wasn't able to match the corrections fully to
O'Reilly's pronunciation where he differed from our understanding of
what's correct. I have, however, been able to make some adaptation by
editing the list of corrections.
De' gho ghom chu' yIloS 'ej yInej!
marqem, tlhIngan veQbeq la'Hom -- Heghbej ghIHmoHwI'pu'!
Subcommander Markemm,
Klingon Sanitation Corps -- Death to Litterbugs!
Mark A. Mandel
Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 965-5200
320 Nevada St. : Newton, Mass. 02160, USA : [email protected]