tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Jun 18 12:38:35 2004
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Re: [Marketing] "BBC News - Microsoft to launch in Kiswahili"
On Friday 18 June 2004 08:37, Whil Hentzen wrote:
> On Friday 18 June 2004 01:53, Craig A. Adams wrote:
> > Hi All, Alex, Deepankar,
> >
> > It is most interesting MS's track record for announcing
> > language support.
> >
> > (Almost) Every time OOo announces a new language, MSFT is not
> > far behind in announcing the same language.
> >
> > This has happened for Zulu, Northern Sotho, Kiswahili and other
> > languages around the world. I do know that MSFT are battling to
> > actually deliver language support.
>
> Do you have the dates for each of these? It would be interesting
> to keep track of this over the next couple of years.
>
> And how is the Klingon language project coming? Anyone know the
> current status? It would behilarious to have some super-serious
> bureaucrat in Redmond launch a Klingon initiative just because
> it's become a 'checklist item' for Office (competing in language
> support with OOo.)
Hi Whil,
Gerry Singleton and I have been working on the ooklingon language
project with the Klingonist community, with Gerry and the community
actually doing most of the work and me just basically trying to
build interest for the project within the Klingonist community.
There is a unique problem with Klingon: Paramount has IP claims in
certain aspects of the Star Trek franchise. While I personally do
not believe that it is possible to claim IP rights in a language,
out of an abundance of caution it has been my personal interest in
steering clear of stepping on Paramount's toes or handing them even
a colorable claim.
For that reason, I personally have not be interested in working on
localizing Klingon outside of the perview of the Klingon Language
Institute (KLI). The KLI is a community of scholars who are using
the Klingon language as a means to instigate interest in
linguistics. Plus, of course, they like the Star Trek saga, as do
I.
The KLI has negotiated a license with Paramount for use of certain
rights claimed by Paramount.
Klingon is also a tough language, and as with any community, the
localization of Klingon absolutely cannot succeed without the
participation of the community. Language is, of course, a
breathing entity, not a static collection of words, and any mere
aggregation of words without the involvement of the community will
certainly fail.
For those reasons, Gerry Singleton and I have been trying to
interest the Klingonists at the KLI in taking on the project and
running with it. We are both members of the KLI, and I would
recommend that anyone interested in pursuing this localization
should join the KLI, a worthy group.
So far, the ooklingon project has been a private project, and
interested community members need to subscribe at the link below,
and then get approved. Again, we have decided to make it a private
project because of Paramount's potential IP rights, and our ultra
sensitivity to their IP claims. The link is below:
http://www.pathtech.org/tlhIngan-Hol/
A number of words have been transcribed, and the project to localize
OOo to Klingon has begun, but there are some unique challenges to
the localization of Klingon:
The Klingon community is widely dispersed. Unlike every other
localization project I can think of, Klingonists are uniquely
international, and very much NOT nationalistic, meaning that the
Klingonists have no unique geographical and linguistic ties other
than their mutual interest in Klingon. Klingonists have no
national economy; no national holiday; no national capitol; no
national chamber of commerce; no national parliment, etc. They
have no central governance, and are a collection of diverse local
groups.
While those groups are highly active, the groups are intensely
involved with their own activities, and while the community has
expressed some interest in localizing OOo to Klingon, there has
been a difficulty balancing that very large task with the other
tasks which are part and parcel of the groups' ongoing activities.
The bottom line is that the localization of Klingon is proceeding at
a much slower pace than that which is characteristic of a typical
OOo localization which has the benefit of an actual central
geographical nation state.
For anyone who is interested in linguistics, I would recommend that
you drop by the KLI site linked below. Like OOo, the KLI is a very
international group, and the first thing that I notice when I go
there is the 27 or so national flags atop their home page.
/