tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Feb 07 14:15:26 2001

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Re: Simpsons

My entry is at the bottom of this group.
Unless you are interested in the mechanics of Stenography, skip this
message, as it is long.

      Qor'etlh

> "Fiber (Philip) wrote:
> >There was something in one of the simpsons comics where they used
klingon
> >for - we can translate. I think I still have it. And they gave
credit to
> >the KLI probably Mark Okrand too, I forget, it was soo long ago.

> "Worf, Son of Mogh (Worf Rozhenko)" wrote:
> : Well, I taped the entire episode, Anyhow, grab it at
> : http://www.worf.net - it's right there. I'll see if there's any
closed
> : captioning on the tape later to see if there's any clues.


Patrick Masterson jatlh:
> Sorry to ruin all this Simpsons-translating fun, but unfortunately
the
> "Klingon" the Comic Book Guy said wasn't Klingon. I watch with the
closed
> captioning on, (I'm not deaf, I just like being able to read what's
being
> said) and the caption shows the nonsensical "Garlll dak!"
Apparently the
> producers figured they could pass off any guttutal-sounding
utterance as
> Klingon. But we know better, don't we?

QIS jatlh:
> The fun's not ruined yet.  Captioning is done by a private company,
NOT
> by anyone associated with the show.  The typist undoubtedly just
wrote
> down what they were hearing, much the same as we have been doing
here.

 Here's an interesting thing to note about the entire process of
Closed-Captions:
Marc Okrand is a manager in a facility where this is done for a
number of networks. He showed me how it is done on a sort of machine
like the old 'Steno.' This is the same sort of phonetic keyboard that
is used in many Courts. It has a very small keyboard composed of
counds commonly used in language. There are not enough to make up
even the English Alphabet (24 characters).

Certain sounds are made by striking combinations of those keys, and
there are even some sounds that stenographers 'misspell.'  ;-)  Some
key-combinations even represent entire phrases.

A stenographer just sits, listening to what they hear, and
transcribes the sounds.

There is then a very sophisticated (and proprietary) computer program
that sort of 'spellchecks' all of the output, and creates an
approximation of English. When they come accross foreign sounds, in
an English language program, it remains untranslated. The phonetic
symbology remains.

IOW: The language may be correct, but the Closed-Captions WOULD NOT.

Of course, for foreign language programming one would use an
interpreter. Very few Klingons who will do this.
I think 'anghal & HoD Qanqor supported the Sci-Fi channel once.

This means, that unless MOs Office transcribes it, the tlhIngan Hol
will not be correctly interpreted.
Even then, that is unlikely, as he is a supervisor, and not usually
doing grunt work.

Bottom Line: The Klingon MAY be correct, but the Closed Captions
certainly are NOT.

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