tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Aug 17 17:49:58 1999
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Re: Klingon Translator
>Mailing-List: contact [email protected]; run by ezmlm
>From: [email protected]
>Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1999 19:55:42 EDT
>MIME-Version: 1.0
>
>Download the Klingon Translator at:
><A HREF="http://www.dallas.net/~cpinette/startrek/software.html">
>STAR TREK LANGUAGES</A>
>http://www.dallas.net/~cpinette/startrek/software.html
While you should definitely take a look at the pojwI', I want to reiterate
pagh's warning, in strong terms.
For one thing, do NOT think of the program as a "translator." There ain't
no such animal: there are no programs that can produce automatic
high-quality translations of arbitrary text between any two
non-trivially-related languages (the qualifier is for some wiseacre out
there who'll show me a pig-latin translator). In fact, a man named
Bar-Hillel proved that such a thing isn't even possible, back in 1960
(sorry, Star Trek, but a Universal Translator just isn't going to happen).
All of which is besides the point; if you don't believe me, read
Bar-Hillel's paper yourself, but even if he's wrong, and with all due
respect to Holtej, pojwI' is *not* a general-purpose translator. At best,
it's a very powerful dictionary, capable of looking up even affixed words
and supplying translations of the affixes as appropriate. It will NOT do
the job of teaching you Klingon, or generating Klingon for you from
English. Maybe it can break down simple Klingon sentences into an English
gloss you could understand, but in that capacity it will only diminish your
opportunities to learn to read on your own.
I personally never use pojwI', and have only played with it on rare
occasion to see how it works and what it can do. And it IS a cool program,
make no mistake. But if you want it to translate for you, you're in for a
surprise, and if you use it to make sense of Klingon posts for you, then
you'll have a difficult time ever learning Klingon for yourself.
So how to learn? What everyone else says. Read the messages here.
Preferably ones from recognized good speakers, like charghwI' and
ghunchu'wI' and pagh and SuStel and so forth (though guys, check your
prefixes a little!) You can't understand it all? Fine. Understand a
little. Try a few sentences. Not many, don't try to write your life's
story (unless you have a very boring life), but write a sentence or two.
Learn two or three sentences (or better, sentence-structures) and make them
your own. Keep adding to your little stock of sentences, and understand
WHY they mean what they mean, and soon you'll be making up your own
sentences with your own meanings. Learning words comes from that: you see
words in their natural habitat, in sentences, and the meanings become
better associated in your mind (I also found writing all the words down
helped me learn them).
So go out there and learn.
~mark