tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Mar 12 14:15:46 2007
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Re: Klingon Voice Translator for CES 2008
One thing you might consider when writing this translator: Klingon
uses suffixes to modify the meanings of words, so the 2,800 or so
words the language has actually can be modified to have far more words.
The vocabulary includes some of them, like {ghoj} means "learn" and
{ghojmoH} means "teach", but in fact, {ghojmoH} is actually {ghoj}
("teach") plus {-moH} (causation), so it literally means "cause to
learn".
This implies also that Klingon sometimes splits words in places
English doesn't, like {vIH}, which means "move, be in motion". In
English, "move" is both transitive and intransitive. In Klingon,
{vIH} is intransitive. To make it transitive, you use {-moH}. So when
I move {jIvIH}, that's quite different from "I move the chair", which
is {quS vIvIHmoH.}
As a human translating from English to Klingon, the process I go
through is to freeze the English and study the meaning behind it and
then break it out into the grammatical parts and then try to find,
among the tools of Klingon grammar, the best one to express the
meaning of the English. Sometimes, that means abandoning mechanical
formulae altogether.
As an example, Klingon forms questions by beginning with what would
be the answer and replacing the noun or adverb that is unknown with a
question word. English does much the same with questions like "Who
are you?" or "You will arrive when?" Meanwhile, English has the word
"which" as an adjectival question word. "Which chair do you want?"
There is no equivalent Klingon question word.
If you want to translate "Which chair do you want?" you can only do
something like {quSlIj yIwIv.} That means "Choose your chair." You
can similarly use verbs like {wuq} "decide upon" or {ngu'}
"identify". You must change the question into a command.
Several linguists with programming experience have attempted to write
translation programs in Klingon. None have succeeded. It is very
tempting, but no one has had the luxury of enough time to fully
explore the possibility. I think I could, given enough time,
programmatically translate from Klingon to English, but not the other
way around. English is too free form with too large a vocabulary and
too many subtle differences in meaning associated with the very
flexible word order.
1. Only I hit the baby in the head.
2. I only hit the baby in the head.
3. I hit only the baby in the head.
4. I hit the only baby in the head.
5. I hit the baby only in the head.
6. I hit the baby in only the head.
7. I hit the baby in the only head.
8. I hit the baby in the head only.
5, 6 and 8 have the same meaning. Each of the others are unique in
their meaning. Klingon has no parallels to this. Most word order is
fixed and where it is variable, it does not change the meaning to
vary the word order. There are ambiguities that can be clarified with
word order, but that's just to resolve episodes where a word might
otherwise be ambiguously part of the phrase before it or after it,
unless it is moved away from that union.
But I digress...
Doq
On Mar 12, 2007, at 3:05 PM, Robert Palmquist wrote:
> Not sure if I'm stomping on any etiquette rules here -- I apologize
> if I am. I just wanted to throw this out to the group. My company
> has developed a suite of products for instant language translation.
> As part of the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show (CES - January
> 2008 in Las Vegas), we'd like to include Klingon as one of our
> supported languages. We'll be doing this in partnership with the
> Hilton Hotel's "Star Trek - The Experience," (see http://
> www.startrekexp.com/) for more info). We'll have a Press Event at
> the Hilton, plus have the "Experience" personnel demo products in
> our booth during CES. In terms of copyrights and such, this is
> meant to be a publicity event versus a product that we'll sell on
> the market. If we can get copyright permission, we'll give away the
> software to anyone that's interested, if not, then it'll just be
> for demonstrations and such. If you're interested in helping out on
> the project, there are two items we'd need:
>
> (1) We have a database of about 500 phrases that we need
> translated, plus a voice recording of someone speaking the phrase.
> All told, it's around 4000 words and we pay 7 cents per word. One
> person does not have to translate all the phrases, we can split
> them up. These are general phrases that a tourist would state.
> (2) We'd like to have any source-target data that currently exists:
> source being English words or phrases, and the target being the
> Klingon translation. This can be from the Dilbert strips, the
> bible, or any other source. We'll use it to create a statistical-
> based engine -- the more data the better the engine will be.
>
> With that, we could come up with a basic English <> Klingon system.
> If you're interested, please let me know. Again, we're talking
> about making this happen by January of next year, so there's quite
> a bit of time to put it all together.
>
>
> Thanks,
> -- Robert
>
> Robert Palmquist
> SpeechGear, Inc.
> 516 West Fifth Street
> Northfield, MN 55057
>
> t. 507-664-9123 ext. 210
> c. 612-232-6666
> f. 775-703-6730
> e. [email protected]
> w. www.speechgear.com
>
>
>
>
>