tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Mar 20 16:45:31 2007

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Re: Klingon Machine Translation and CES

John Casapiedra ([email protected])



Dear Robert,
I thank you for incorporating my email address into your distribution regarding the KMT project.   I speak fluent Spanish and English and because I have recently retired as an electrical engineer (television/wireless/communications systems) I have recently decided to take up Klingon as my third language since I have so much time on my hands.  Learning Klingon is like learning any other language or for that matter learning mathematics, i.e. what is required most is desire and persistence.   I understand the grammar of Klingon now all that remains is the memorization.

I wish you the best of luck with your project and I promise to follow it as closely as practicable.

Sincerely,

John Casapiedra   formerly IEEE 40270636   Shoreline, WA



----- Original Message ----
From: Robert Palmquist <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]; Joel Anderson <[email protected]>; QeS 'utlh <[email protected]>; DloraH <[email protected]>; Alpha Omicron <[email protected]>; [email protected]; "Qor'etlh valwI'na', buraD tuq" <[email protected]>; "d'Armond Speers, Ph.D." <[email protected]>; Alan Anderson <[email protected]>; H Myers <[email protected]>
Cc: Jeffrey Lenk <[email protected]>; Brian Wheeler <[email protected]>; Gary Reed <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2007 4:30:12 PM
Subject: Klingon Machine Translation and CES


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Sorry for my delay in getting back to all of you - in my spare time I'm
CEO of SpeechGear, so there's generally not a whole lot of extra time to
pull items like this one together. Thanks for the response and offering
to help out. I'll try to track down the Klingon ASR from Dragon...
Hopefully I've included everyone that responded in this email. We're
working with the Hilton's "Star Trek - The Experience" to include the
translator as part of our CES-2008 demos. They'll be providing the
actors for at least part of the show. If you haven't been to CES, it's
on my recommended to-do list. If you are planning to head out their, let
me know. The hope is to get at a minimum a Klingon version of our
Interpreter product and ideally a complete machine translation engine:

 

FOR INTERPRETER:

Attached is an Excel sheet with the phrases to translate. I've deleted
most of the phrases that we use in our standard Interpreter product and
added a few that are more fit for Klingon use (feel free to make
suggestions for me to add to the list). As before, let me know if you
have a PDA (or know someone who does) that runs Microsoft's Pocket PC
OS. If so, I'll send you a copy of Interpreter so you can get a sense of
what this version of the translator will look like (you can also go to 
http://www.speechgear.com/interprete.aspx to get an idea). What needs to
be translated are the entries on all four of the sheets. Just add the
Klingon translation into the column next to the English phrase. Angle
brackets < > in a phrase denote a modifier. For example, in the sentence
"I will see you <day>," the modifier is the day of the week. If you go
to the "Modifier" sheet, <day> it is defined as:

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Saturday

Sunday

later

soon

today

Tomorrow

 

So, the English user could select "I will see you <Friday>?" The Klingon
translation needs a similar sentence structure to the English (if that's
possible), where whatever the English user selects as the Modifier gets
inserted into the translated sentence. For the reverse direction, from
Klingon to English, the Klingon speaker needs to be able to select the
same sentence structure to get a translation. Again, take a look at the
website and I think it'll make more sense. If some particular sentence
just doesn't work, that's fine, just do what you can. We're not in any
rush, so whenever and however much gets done, we'll end up using it.

 

I've been trying to figure out how to get everyone paid for what they do
(7 cents a word), and haven't come up with a good plan. Typically we
have one or at most two people doing the translations, and in that case
they just split up the phrases. Here we've got ten so far. Also, I'd
like this to evolve on its own. Instead of me providing phrases that
hopefully have an appropriate Klingon translation, I think we'll end up
with a better translator if the phrases and categories come from
everyone. One of our developers is looking into setting up the Klingon
phrases on our sever and coming up with an interface that'll allow
anyone to add/delete/modify phrases and categories. That implies some
trust in the community as someone could come in and trash the data
(we'll archive backups). That'll probably take a month before it gets
set up (again, not a whole lot of that free time around here). So, back
to who wants to do what and how to get you paid? If you're willing to
crunch through the phrases for free, I'll donate the funds to wherever
the group feels appropriate (charity, KLI, whatever). If you want to
divide up the phrases into separate chunks, that'll work too. Let me
know your thoughts...

 

Also, we'll need to either develop a Klingon TTS (voice synthesis) or
have someone record wavefiles of the phrase. My guess is that we'll end
up doing the later.

 

FOR THE MACHINE TRANSLATOR:

We need "source-target" data. Ideally, this should be aligned data
(meaning we know which sentence in English maps to what specific
sentence in Klingon). Thanks to those of you who provided some
suggestions as to where to get this. The more the better. The realistic
result that that this isn't going result in a perfect translator - far
from it. The thought is that if there's already source-target data out
there, it'd be fun to give it a try.

 

Sorry for the rambling email. Once we get the web-based editor up and
running it'll be a bit smoother going.

 

Thanks,

-- Rob

 

 

-----Original Message-----

 

On 3/12/07, Robert Palmquist <[email protected]> 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

> 

> 

> 

> 

> 

> 

 

 

 

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] <mailto:[email protected]> 

w: www.speechgear.com

 

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