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Klingon Interpreter Needed In Oregon
myrashka writes "CNN has a report of a position available for an Klingon-English interpreter by a mental health office in Oregon (how apropos). Could this be the start of the next hot job market (perhaps they'll need Nebari-English interpreters next)?"
And I suppose in the next World War, we'll be using Klingon-speakers in our radio communications so that the Germans won't understand.
Oh cruel fate, to be thusly boned! Ask not for whom the bone bones; it bones for thee. -Bender
It's nice to know that people spend a whole lot of good time religeously studying something like Klingon, instead of some useless subject, like Portugese or Japanese. I think I will spend the next few years of my life learning how to speak fluent Modem.
I heard about some kid who wrote so much BASIC that he started speaking it.
Does that mean the staff has to learn computer languages too?
Nothing to see here; Move along.
As for Evlish, don't come crying to this guy when you need an interpreter...
so the percentage of psychos that are also star trek fans is relatively large on average? ..intersting..
But even the Trekkies didn't camp in front of movie theaters for weeks to see a movie- they can't be too out of it!
(\_/)
(O.o) This is Bunny. (> <)
Well, maybe this will bolster the legitimacy of the previously-rejected proposal to allocate a block in the Unicode standard for the Klingon alphabet.
I'm guessing that in the mental health cases, sometimes, there has to be a written record of what the patient says -- so it could be construed as a real world need for a Klingon representation. =)
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
now that said, i'm disappointed by all these people - the NSA and these mental cases... i mean, if you're going to chose a language, why the heck not chose tolkiens elvish!?
seeing as I can speak Mimbari (Anlashok training) and I even know some Narn.
Maybe one day there will be an opening for a programmer who's fluent in English.
"I think I will spend the next few years of my life learning how to speak fluent Modem."
Will that be phone, wireless, or broadband?
"There are some cases where we've had mental health patients where this was all they would speak" Sounds like they had a bunch of drunk Trekies playing practical jokes on them. How possible is it to learn and use this "language" to the point of forgetting your native one?
Nurse : Can I get you something?
Mental Patient 1: S'mo fo butter layin' to the bone. Jackin' me up. Tightly.
Nurse : I'm sorry I don't understand.
Mental Patient 2: Cutty say he cant hang.
Jive Translator : Oh nurse, I speak jive.
Nurse : Ohhhh, good.
Jive Translator : He said that he's in great pain and he wants to know if you can help him.
Nurse : Would you tell him to just relax and I'll be back as soon as I can with some medicine.
Jive Translator : Jus' hang loose blooood. She goonna catch up on the`rebound a de medcide.
Mental Patient 1 : What it is big mamma, my mamma didn't raise no dummy, I dug her rap.
Jive Translator : Cut me som' slac' jak! Chump don wan no help, chump don git no help. Jive ass dude don got no brains anyhow.
I'm guessing that in the mental health cases, sometimes, there has to be a written record of what the patient says
Transliteration of Klingon into Latin letters (the letters used for most western and central European languages) suffices for now. Notice that the kli.org web site gives its examples in Latin letters.
Will I retire or break 10K?
How about ants? ;)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Maybe one day there will be an opening for a programmer who's fluent in English.
Do people still use the Pick OS?
Will I retire or break 10K?
I remember a Saturday Night Live Skit where William Shatner once belittled the Trekies and told them to move out of their parents basement. Maybe in some cases, this was a bad idea... Really, living here in Georgia, it is beyond my life experience that the state would cater to such a bizarre whim as speaking "Klingon".
HenryJamesFeltus.com
At least they're not speaking a constructed language that may hold the record for fewest words in a human-experience-complete language: Toki Pona has 120 words.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Maltz!! Chonnnnnnnnnnng e cheu!!!!!
Okay... I did a Google on "Jerry Jelusich" (note quoting) and it returns only one result. However, when looking at the (strangely small) PDF document the Google link points to, the twoword "Jerry Jelusich" doesn't appear at all. Looking at Google's PDF-to-HTML conversion results, however: Google search on Jerry Jelusich result, gives the text "These terms only appear in links pointing to this page: jerry jelusich" at the top.
So if the quoted text only appears in links pointing to this PDF... and yet the PDF is the only result for this quoted text... argh, I think my brain is broken *grin*.
On the other hand, googling for "Franna Hathaway", (the other person quoted in the news story) gives heaps of Google results, most of which seem relevant.
Anyway, it's a strange story already, I just thought that some might find this sort of odd Googleresult to be interesting. ;-)
Pete.
PS. It's not a valid Googlewhack if the twoword is quoted, apparently. Oh well.
The more the World changes, the more it stays the same.
They're trying to round up the last two dozen or so Star Trek fans out there and submit them for "rehabilitation" ... probably every fan made Star Wars movie ever made, 24/7, for 2 weeks, and the funny one (the Imperial Stormtroopers Cops episode) isn't included.
uber alles, huh?
vaj HabHa'taH'a' je 'usDu'lIj joj
"I think I will spend the next few years of my life learning how to speak fluent Modem."
Will that be phone, wireless, or broadband?
Why you little wise-ass, I oughtta BweeepPhsoooooOOOOOOOooo sHOOOOooooooo bweeeeeeeeeep be boooong pshoooooooooooo!
..but with my accent, I'll never be mistaken as a native. I wonder if that disqualifies me for the position?
I am NOT a man!
I am a free number!
Klingon? Oh, hell, I'd settle for someone who can speak "Girlfriend."
My
Limekiller
(perhaps they'll need Nebari-English interpreters next)?
Don't be silly. They would just inject the patient with translator microbes if they ever had that sort of situation.
$0...4Re +heY g01Ng +0 N33d @ L3Et 5p3aK 1n+erpre+Er nEXt?
Currently on the ballot is a measure that will add percent and quarter income tax to cover schools, health care (like speaking Klingon), and public safetly. This ballot measure covers only residents of Multnomah County (same place that has the job opening.)
Maybe instead of increasing our income tax to pay for schools and basic services, we should stop paying for crap like this.
Heres a live interperater:h tml
http://www.darktrekvoyages.net/klingonDictionary.
Speaking at Defcon 12 - Credit Card Networks Revisted: Pen
As someone who lives in Oregon, this story is *not* going to go over well with the natives. As people may have noticed, the unemployment rate here is the highest in the nation, Oregon has the shortest school year, and even the courts are closed on Fridays. And now Multnomah County (where Portland is) is going to hire a Klingon interpreter after having laid off numerous school teachers, police officers, and others people see as "more necessary" public servants. There's going to be a fight over this... I can't wait to see the outfall.
IAAL
How much do you get paid for this, and what kind of nutcase surplus causes an actual demand for Klingon interpretation?
||| I still can't believe Parkay's not butter.
I'm beginning to wonder if he was the one they comitted... ;)
If ever there was an indication that the empire is in decline, this is it. During the worst recession in more than 20 years, in the state with the highest unemployment rate, my taxes go to support the hiring of some geeky twit who speaks a made-up language from a second-rate sci-fi TV show.
If I had a shadow of a hope that America might somehow regain its senses and do away with the recent orgy of idiocies it seems to revel in, this has pretty much quashed it. Any society which does something this incredibly stupid is a goner.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
|\|008! j00 r 73|-| 5uX0r120r2463. w00t! 1 4r3 t3h 133720r2 (4u53 j00 r 73h 5u>0r2.
Health Admin: "I'm sorry, we're squeezed for cash, so you'll only be able to see your psychiatrist once every three months... But rest assured, he'll have a Klingon interpreter standing by each and every time."
Patient: "[in Klingon]Phew..."
------
If you thought this was funny, visit Stinky Shorts just to see how mistaken you are.
At least Fark posters usually credit Slashdot when they get a story from there - this one was most definitely found on Fark and posted on Slashdot. At least give credit where it's due, but I guess crediting the source has never been Slashdot's style. =/
Not flamebait, not insightful, just the truth.
~Berj
Its not so strange to have to translate klingon...if you want to find a devloper who can read ircd code AND kernel code.....chances are your gonna be looking for a translater too
:)
Just make sure its not a woman...most of these people havent left the basement in 5 years and the only woman they have seen is on the porn sites...a real one might cause a penial explosion
Couldn't the nurses just translate this simple phrase in to klingon and memorize it:
"You're a dork. No more TV for you. Go outside."
Actually, I heard this on some talk radio station while cruising the AM dial. Yes. I am a dork. But the music stations in vegas SUCK...
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Nothing against Fark, but it's one of the main links on CNN's home page right now. I mean, come on. This is not buried in obscure local news.
I live here in Portland, Oregon. This area of the U.S. is called "Ecotopia". Traditionally, people have come here who are more idealistic about the environment, and about everything. (For an explanation of Ecotopia, see the book, The Nine Nations of North America, by Joel Garreau.)
In a way, it makes sense. Mental patients are often extremely rigid. Some won't communicate at all. If the only way to communicate with a mental patient is in Klingon, that might be better than not communicating. The problems of dealing with a mentally ill patient are often far more difficult than hiring someone to speak Klingon. The expense of dealing with someone who won't communicate at all can be huge.
The state requires that hospitals hire translators for people who don't speak English well. This is because mistakes in communicating about medical things can easily be life-threatening. This is more true because people who don't speak English well often try to avoid going to hospitals, so when they do go to one, they are often VERY sick. Some of my friends have worked as translators.
Portland is more international than Georgia. There are many people from all over the world here. We have more than 8,000 Hmong tribespeople from the mountains of Vietnam here in Portland, for example. So, there are often adjustments to the special requirements of people from other cultures. As a volunteer, I've taught English to Iranian women, for example. It was interesting getting to know them; Iranians are far different than you would guess after you have read U.S. government information about Iran. The 100 or more Iranians that I've met are gentle and friendly and concerned about family. The Iranians I've met are light years away from being terrorists.
NZ TV Listing Star Trek Comedy starring Kim Basinger and Bruce Willis. A workaholic is set up on a business blind date with a woman who when drunk, loses control and becomes a wild party girl. Directed by Blake Edwards. Ok, off-topic, but where else can I post this? And I'm sure some /.er can quote the episode that will make this on-topic...
Recycle PCs and build a wireless community network www.hillsborough.org.nz
You don't appreciate the beauty of the Japanese language because you are not fluent enough in it to enjoy rich traditions associated with it, duh. This reminds me of a joke I heard years ago:
What do you call a person who speaks three languages? Trilingual.
A person who speaks two languages? Bilingual.
And a person who speaks only one language? American.
Perhaps with the job description they could also specify someone who's never been with a woman because they'd get two for the price of one...
You! Have you ever kissed a girl?
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
While I agree that it's a waste of a budget in Oregon, it's fascenating that entertainment is actually creating languages and defining a seperate culture.
Language been an evolving process for thousands of years, actually growing less complex and more flexible as the society grows more complex. (Ancient Greek is EXTREMELY complex where as modern Greek had to adapt). Roddenberry managed to do this in less than 50 years, though I doubt Klingon contains the complexities and flexibility of a modern language.
Society is defined as "A group of humans broadly distinguished from other groups by mutual interests, participation in characteristic relationships, shared institutions, and a common culture" for which Star trek now fits the bill, so we're actually creating societies and cultures within a society and a culture through entertainment, yet we're all still linked to a larger one by our nationality, being a human, etc.
What I'm saying is that the ability to knowingly create a distinct culture is pretty interesting, and it shows society has become incredibly complex and that entertainment and pop culture play such a huge role in our society today that its mind blowing.
"In a Democracy, people get the kind of government they deserve." -Winston Churchill
... that oregon will hit the taxpayers up for what, another 50-70k per year for mental patients who want to speak a language made up for TV. W.T.F? If people want to check in to a private institution, at their own expense, and speak only klingon, more power to them but do the rest of us need to pay for this crap?
thus endeth the rant...
At the bottom of the endless pile of paper work which characterizes all regulation lies a gun.
Alan Greenspan
Sadly, now a degree in Klingon probably now has more practical application than a degree in liberal arts.
I should have listened to my parents...
"In a Democracy, people get the kind of government they deserve." -Winston Churchill
Why not?
There are people that like to learn languages to speak and express themselves in those languages with people from other places. That is the people that will learn portuguese, japanese, swedish or other languages with a few million speakers.
But then, there is also another bunch of people that just likes languages. I.e., knowing how they work, why they work like that ... and of course, creating new languages. That's what Tolkien did, that's what Marc Okrand did (he's the creator of Klingon), and that's what many people is doing. It has even a name, and it's conlanging (from CONstructed LANGuages). A wonderful introductory piece is at Boheme Magazine.
The official meeting place for conlangers is CONLANG, a mailing-list that has been going strong since 1991. And for links, you have conlanglinks, with many resources to know more about conlanging or about languages in general. The audience of CONLANG is very diverse, but I'd dare to say that most of them are either programmers or language-related people (teachers, linguists, etc.)
Conlanging is fun. Really :-) I'm no linguist, but conlanging is something very creative, and for me it's quite like a programming problem: you have some rules (that you create), and have to use them to express all the things that a language can express. And from the time that you express something in your own created tongue, you're hooked %-)
Anyway, I can understand that I'm quite weird and that many people consider this a loss of time. But hey, even Eric Raymond likes it. Basically, if you like RP games and science-fiction and have somewhat of a creative streak, you very well could like conlanging.
My own conlang is named Unahoban, and a quite incomplete and sometimes incoherent grammar is here.
My weblog in spanish
By the time they find and commit me I will speak only the language I'll have developed. [indulges in a mad laughter]
If you read this artical over at oregonlive.com you will find out that this will cost NO MONEY UNLESS IT IS USED
/ ba se/news/105256813916000.xml
http://oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?
From the above link
"Multnomah County is looking for a Klingon interpreter -- just in case.
The county doesn't expect to be invaded by the alien warriors from "Star Trek" movies and TV series. But the office that treats county mental health patients wants to be prepared in case a client arrives in an emergency room gabbing in the galactic language.
"We have to provide information in all the languages our clients speak," says Jerry Jelusich, a procurement specialist for the county Department of Human Services, which serves some 60,000 mental health clients.
So if a patient speaks only Klingon, the county must respond with a Klingon interpreter. Officials have decided to include it with about 55 languages, some of which, such as Russian and Vietnamese, are widely spoken, and some, such as Dari and Tongan, are seldom spoken.
In recent years, Klingon has gone from being a fictional tongue to a complete language, with its own grammar, syntax and vocabulary. Jelusich and colleagues took note of a recent article in The Oregonian about a Portlander who sings karaoke in Klingon. Their later research satisfied them that Klingon is for real.
The county would pay a Klingon interpreter only in the unlikely case he or she was actually called into service.
"We said, 'What the heck, let's throw it in,' " Jelusich says. "It doesn't cost us any money."
The county's purchasing administrator, Franna Hathaway, greeted the request with initial skepticism. "I questioned it myself when it first came in. "
But, she adds, "There are some cases where we've had mental health patients where this was all they would speak."
Jelusich says that in reality, no patient has yet tried to communicate in Klingon. But the possibility that a patient could believe himself or herself to be a Klingon doesn't seem so far-fetched.
"I've got people who think they're Napoleon," he says.
Multnomah County Chairwoman Diane Linn could not be reached for comment. Next up: another mythical language popularized by The "Lord of the Rings" films.
"The kids," Jelusich says, "are learning to speak Elvish." "
...they're just trying another approach on what the monkeys were typing.
Go permanent? In your dreams and my worst nightmares.
FP in Klingon?
I've know people only capable of communicating in quotes from Monty Python and/or The Goon Show
Just look here.
There's always a webcomic refrence. Always.
*honk*
This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things
We are terribly sorry
to be forced to interfere, gentlemen,
but we cannot permit you to harm yourselves.
As I stand here,
I also stand upon
the home planet of the Kalifornian Empire
and the home planet of your Federation, Captain.
I'm putting a stop to this insane war.
No one has been unemployed. No has been killed. No one has died here in uncounted thousands of years.
It is true that in the future,
you and the Kalifornians will become fast friends.
You will work together.
Your emotions are most discordant.
We do not wish to seem inhospitable,
but, gentlemen, you must leave.
Yes. Please leave us.
The mere presence of beings like yourselves
is intensely painful to us.
That of us which you see
is mere appearance...
for your sake.
It would be good to see some of the region's very special Native American languages get some PR out of this wave.
But perhaps it makes sense. Given Picard's officious know-it-allness, he's probably not the great expert on Klingon culture that he pretends to be! Rather like that guy in Len Deighton's novels who thinks knowing a smattering of Cantonese gives him license to torture Chinese waiters.
And of course, rather than correct Picard, the Klingons would just say "Qapla'" back at him. Easier than ripping his throat out, as he deserves. Silly humans!
When you waste^H^H^H^H^Hinvest your time learning the Klingon language, just remember that Paramount owns it, and you'd better use it in ways they approve of or else risk their ire.
I would say it would be better, and far more interesting, to spend that time learning Navajo or some other real but endangered language. Unfortunately these languages do not have the monied commercial hype behind them. Paramount just loves the free publicity generated by the Klingon-speaking geek image.
sorry that post is not available any more. It got outsourced to Bangalore.
It's not like they're going to hire a full time Klingon translator and pay him/her to sit around all day in case a Klingon-speaking nutcase checks into the mental hospital. The way these translation gigs work is you sign up, they do a little bit of checking of your credentials and then they put your name on a list of people who speak that language. On the occasion that your skill is needed, they call you, you translate (often over the phone, often for just a few minutes) and you get paid for the time spent. If they never get another Klingon speaking patient, you don't get called and they haven't really spent anything (maybe they call you once a year or so to make sure you're still available). If they do get such a patient they call you and pay a few hours (or maybe minutes) of your translation bill which is probably much less than the amount they'd have to pay some doctor or other health professional to find out what the heck is wrong with the poor loon without your help.
So stop freaking out--it's not draining megabucks of your taxes, it's just putting some more phone numbers in a file. It's a completely sensible thing to do if these "Klingon patient" incidents have hapened in the past.
Also, I can tell you, a friend of mine is a translator, and sadly they don't get paid very much.
It's probably best to keep the squeaky koosh toys away from the Klingon-speaking patients.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
Hamlet in Klingon
BweeepPhsoooooOOOOOOOooo sHOOOOooooooo bweeeeeeeeeep be boooong pshoooooooooooo!
R2D2 is that you? Long time no see. Where have you been all this time?
- We are the slashdot. Resistance is futile. Prepare to be moderated -
Mod this guy down because he STILL doesn't understand what 2nd grade students are taught. The possessive form of the word it DOES NOT require an apostrophe. "it's" is a contraction of the words "it is" or "it has".
Ah, the old classic.
http://www.megatokyo.com/strips/0009.gif
Maybe if you told Google to check its Klingon-language archives you might have better luch.
Is anyone else worried that this is a ploy to drag all those who speak klingon out, so the psychiatrists can round up more patients?
seems a bit suspicious to me.
You people are losers. You can't even tell you people are making fun of you.
I live in georgia, and although I don't live atlanta metro right now, I did for 15 years. Who told you that there aren't widely diverse cultures and languages spoken? I can take you to generic waffle houses just a few miles apart where in one all you will hear is mostly african dialects(like somali,ethiopian,etc), drive a few miles, various asian, another few miles pure normal bubba, another few miles spanish, then another few miles pure ebonics that can be as incomphrehensible as to classify as a foreign language. There's an area outside atlanta so completely asian it's called "chambodia" a mix of "chamblee" the suburb and cambodia. There's a huge mix, people from all over the planet live here, you will definetly hear different languages spoken when you go out to the store, etc.
Sounds more like typical regional bias "elitness" to me. Everyone's pet area is "the best" or "well, WE have such and such and THEY don't and....." and everyone else's area is "weird and has such and such a stereotype attributed to it". That's just bogus man, typical jingoism.
Here's a sterotype buster for you. I used to live in rural vermont for awhile. Some of the most inbred brain dead redneck hillbillies I ever met lived there,beat the pants off some of the good ole boys around here where I live now in north georgia with just sheer lameness, along with pleasant people, and people who could hold up their end of a conversation without effort. Now you wouldn't think that because of the "understood stereotype" of various regions, but really, regional bias based on false claims is just as bogus a junk science as any other loon concept.
After seeing the same episode over and over and coming home last Friday to see the Enterprise replaced by an "Eco-Challenge" special (?), I'm wanting to lock _everything_ Star Trek related in an institution, too.
But, erm, what if those Klingons flee by teleporting?
ever piss off a fellow computer fan in the 80's?
and after he sets his modem to call your house, 99 redails?
you learn how to whistle the 300 baud tone, it connects,
then stops auto dialing
I can whistle a 300 baud carrier tone..
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Interesting. I was just making assumptions, because of the original poster's reply, who seems to live in an area of Georgia that is not ethnically diverse.
My Russian teacher in highschool (didn't learn a damned thing from him) had a very heavy Texarkana drawl that infected and inflected his Russian and slowed normally stacatto Russian down to a rate even Shrub Jr. would consider ponderous:
"Yaaa punneee-mayouuuu paaaaroooz--zzki?"
Nevertheless, that teacher formerly held a job as a diplomatic Russian translator. I'm sure an Oregon mental hospital would set lower standards than the US State Department, yes?
These mental cases learned Klingon, they obviously knew another language before......... I say if they keep playing their games, give them a beating and put them in solitary confinement for a week.... then we'll hear them scream in goddamned English to get out^.^
Oh that's just great. Now a degree in KLINGON has more practical application than my liberal arts degree...
"In a Democracy, people get the kind of government they deserve." -Winston Churchill
Mod parent up!
I know I am probably going to get flamed for this but don't you think that is has gone too far when public money is spent on something like this? I mean while we are at it why don't we just employ translators for every factious language, hell I had a secret language when I was 3 maybe they can employ someone to translate that.
It said "windows 98 or better" so I installed Linux
Mod parent UP!
I submitted this also, and I got it directly from CNN. I almost never look at Fark.
Actually, Bubba was raised and still spends alot of time in "Chambodia" in Georgia, and lives in Athens, also with plenty of different kinds of people. Being a blue collar Bubba with dark complexion, I am often addressed first in Espanol where I grew up, which is fine with me. I was merely stating I cant believe the state would cater to someone speaking an imaginary language.
HenryJamesFeltus.com
Incidentally (I just took a linguistics class, forgive me), these are the "important" words that linguists use to show how different languages are related. Other less important words tend to change more drastically between languages, but when dialects morph from their parent language it's the important words that change all at once with predictable vowel shifts and consonant substitutions.
Family trees of languages have been created this way. One scientist (I can't remember his name) did it for native American languages (North and South) all by hand in notebooks!! He showed that there were actually only a handful of major native American language families for both continents(!), which is pretty neat. You could see how computers could be useful for this kind of work.
----- rL
The position is "on-call". No Klingon patients, no money spent.
What you are seeing is the inevitable incorporation of myth into society. Today one of these looneys may write a story. A thousand years from now there may be millions of people around the world gathering in places of worship to read and explain these stories to a new generation.
Go ahead and laugh. Or rant. You may be living in Camelot right now. President Bush slaying evil dragons?
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
In the late 80s and early 90s I was interested in artifical languages: Esperanto, Volapuk, the loglan/lojban thing, and so on - the head of my thesis committee was a linguistics professor, and so I spent a lot of grad school doing linguistics-oriented work. I spent about a year studying Klingon at the time.
Around 1994, a friend called me at work asking if I'd gotten the job, but I had no idea what he was talking about as I hadn't read Sunday's want ads. Apparently the local community college had advertised for instructors in the Continuing Education department, and in the list of twenty or so things (auto repair, Indian cooking, etc.), they'd listed "Klingon language and culture". So I called, found the head of the con ed department was a Star Trek fan and wanted to see if there was anyone around who could teach the class. She hired me by the end of the phone call for an evening class. The class was offered under the foreign language section of the continuing education divison, not the pop culture section.
Interesting sidenote: community colleges here are part of the county/state government, so salaries are set by law and aren't negotiable. Since I had a master's degree in a relevant field, my per-hour pay for teaching Klingon was higher than what I was making per-hour as a technical writer.
I taught for one semester, once a week. Some of the students who showed up seemed disappointed I was actually teaching a language, as some had signed up thinking they'd spend the entire time talking about that week's episode of Star Trek: Deep Space 9. The ones who stuck with the class surprised me at how fast they learned. There weren't enough pre-registrations to offer the course a second semester, so we only did it the one time.
Im sure there will be tons of jokes now.. but mental illness is not a joke..
And that poor person is ill, not a clown.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Google support Klingon, amongst the amazing number of languages that they support: Google in Klingon
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Apparently, it's just that the exact message changed. :)
-- MG
Here ya go my brutha.. come in from the dark
now this is a good chance for some of you out of work java programmers in portland to stop hanging around the nudie bars (some of the best in the country -- IMO) and pad that old resume....
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
So using only those 60 or so words/phrases say "water".
Can not be done.
I am sure none of you went to see Daddy Day Care, but some of us really do talk to girls and girls like to see movies like that.
One of the kids in the movie would only speak Klingon and of course the boys mother had no idea what he was say nor did anyone else. Of course Eddie Murphy's character eventually hired a guy to work at the Day Care that happened to be into Star Trek. This guy (Marvin) could speak Klingon so him and the boy communicated.
Weird how Klingon speak is becoming so popular nowadays.
Actually anyone who finds this good is a fuckin dork.
How does one say "I need to get a life" in Klingon?
I knew a bright middle aged man who at various times in his life retreated into the world of novels, and actually believed himself to be one of the characters in the novels. He's tried to kill himself 3 times so far. Sometimes he has this terets (sp) kind of thing and acts like the devil or a demon is possesing him. He spends every free dollar on books and has more books than many small town libraries. He's big, gentle, and quite insane.
some geeky twit who speaks a made-up language from a second-rate sci-fi TV show.
Star Trek, though its originality wore thin over the years, stood by a lot of really positive social/racial/acceptance/exploration messages. Okay, so some people take its details a little too seriously. But show me another TV show that has a spin-off culture that is half as benevolent, fun-loving, and reasonably intelligent.
except for the climbing, of course. Climbing is good there.
No gods, no demons, and no masters. Secular Humanism!
How is the parent a troll?? Offtopic maybe, but it's true that none of the Sept. 11th terrorists were Iranian.
klingon karaoke.
my favorite is bad to the bone
I once had a dream about X86 Assembly speaking aliens... sad thing was, that once past the data section... I already knew everything they were going to say!!!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Only in Oregon would the government create a job for a Klingon intrepreter.
Dolemite
___________________
Save the World! Use a Quote!
How is the county government going to know if the Klingon Speaker is legit? Who's going to test the potential candidate on how well they know Klingon.
Things that make you go hmmm....
Dolemite
________________________
Save the World! Use a Quote!
So using only those 60 or so words/phrases say "water".
The Toki Pona word for water is telo .
Will I retire or break 10K?
"Mi moku jan."
Correction: mi moku e jan == "I eat people". (The direct object takes an 'e' particle after verbs other than preposition-type verbs.) But for Bob's sake, I hope you mean that in the sexual sense.
"And close is all you ever get in that language."
Close is all you ever get in any human language, save perhaps Lojban.
"It isn't very specific"
That's because Toki Pona speakers learn more by doing than by saying. For example, pali e tomo la (when building a house), instead of having measurements, they learn in person what is mute pona (enough).
"sounds goofy"
toki Inli li nasa sama ala sama? Isn't English just as goofy?
"at least with Klingon you sound as if your tearing apart small animals."
Small animals or small people? I'd almost imagine the Morlocks of The Time Machine by H. G. Wells speaking a language reminiscent of Klingon.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The county must have some staff who are partially capable of understanding/identifying Klingon. Otherwise, they wouldn't have known the mysterious language was Klingon.
;)
How close is Klingon to other known languages?
2003-05-11 00:33:28 Trekkie Job (articles,humor) (rejected)
./ editors, be honest.
Sun May 11, 1:04 Timothy rips off the article and posts it.
Come on
you know, to communicate with people with acute mental problems who understand only things like ...
frist psot, beowulf in soviet russia all yer base are grits
anybody?
...should just be killed. As painfully as possible.
We'll stop this little bit of nonsense just as quickly as it started.
You kill one of these "patients"...pretty soon, you've either killed them all or they've been broken of this hideous habit.
Either way, problem solved. n'est pas?
Where have you been all this time?
Watch the documentary. It's also available on DVD.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
I wonder what would happen if someone said "I plead the 5th in Klingon" in court, but no one would understand but then somehow the case end up as a mistrial because no one properly understood what the defendant was saying?
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Seems that you have an anger problem.
Why settle for second best when you can write in the klingon alphabet? If there has to be a written record of what the patient speaks, and the patient for some reason only speaks klingon, then we may assume that he also reads it.. and at least here there is a rule that says that a patient can demand to see his papers - and then they better be in a launguage he understands.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
Just because the word is used to terminate a conversation does NOT mean that it is the same as goodbye (which literally means 'God be with ye', as does the Spanish 'adios' or the French 'adieu' - not the sort of thing a Klingon would say at all.)
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
Ah I recognize that as a U.S. Robotics 56K modem. Only the U.S. Robotics modem had the unique "boooong" sound. The Rockwell modems had kind of a graaabgragragraga instead.
This is retarded. Put the guy on a short yellow bus and push it off the pier.
This guy is just yanking the chains of the system.
Some people know how to work the system, this guy is justing taking it off on a different angle..
He wants *special* attention. That's all there is to it..
Another anger problem
Seth Finkelstein investigates and finds it's a joke. Film at 11.
If you speak English clearly and grammatically, and don't use slang or colloquial expressions, and are willing to contribute a lot of intellectual energy, you are highly qualified to help someone with his or her English.
Everyone who learns a language goes through a phase where they need to practice speaking with a native speaker. It's sometimes called conversation class.
I'm in that phase now, trying to learn Brazilian Portuguese. I know the grammar. I know a lot of vocabulary. I just need to continue practicing. Practicing means spending a lot of time alone with attractive Brazilian women; you can, no doubt, appreciate how difficult this is for me *grin*.
I never learned a word of Farsi (the language spoken in Iran). I have a book on it, but, being realistic, it requires a huge investment in time and energy to learn any language, and at the time it was not safe for an American to spend much time in Iran.
It all got started because I was spending Saturday mornings at a place where volunteer teachers and prospective students would meet. One Saturday I arrived and the coordinator assigned me a very attractive (married) Iranian woman. I was at that time 100% ignorant about Iranians. I thought they were Arabs; I knew something about the Arab culture. (I never worry about meeting an interesting married woman; for sure she has single friends who look a lot like her.)
After about 20 minutes of trying to communicate with my Iranian student, I realized something was very wrong in my understanding. She was too passionate and emotional and warm and friendly to be Arab. I asked her and she said Iranians were Persian, not Arab. (Arabs reading this: Don't complain. Arabs are not as passionate as Persians. Check it out. Italians are more passionate than Americans; I have never seen an American become upset when someone says this.)
When someone is first learning a language, he or she can talk about family and culture and personal likes and dislikes better than other subjects. This was excellent for me, because I wanted to understand her.
I found that the Iranian culture is very sexist; Iranian women, in a hidden way, think they are superior to men. (If you live in the U.S., and pay attention to social things happening below the surface, this will probably sound familiar.) I have a high tolerance for people thinking that they are better than me, so I was able to cope with that. Besides, I think, maybe they are better than me in some ways.
She was upper class Iranian, and class means a lot more in Iran than it does in the United States. Mostly, crazy elements of culture work against everyone, but sometimes cultural craziness actually helps particular people in particular situations. Since I was not part of the Iranian culture, I was culturally insignificant to her. Since I was a man, and she already had a husband, I was irrelevant to anything an Iranian woman thinks is important. So, I would ask many, many questions about personal things, and, since she did not know enough about English to talk about anything else, and since she was interested in the subjects of the questions, she would answer them. I was irrelevant in her social system, so she would be more frank with me than she would with another Iranian. She would also accept me being frank with her.
Through her I met other Iranians. I began socializing with them. I began helping another Iranian woman student, too. Iranians in Portland have huge parties to which everyone is invited. I like parties.
Ideas about teaching English conversation classes: 1) Pick a student who is interesting. I usually picked attractive women. 2) Pick someone who is well educated; it's more fun to talk to them, generally. 3) Talk about things that are of central importance to people, such as the feelings of women toward men, or the difficulty of finding someone suitable to marry.
Another time, I began hanging around with a very attractive 19-year-old Korean woman named Go-oon. I told her
OK, I know this isn't polite, but this post needs to be at the top! I wouldn't have bothered reading so far if I'd seen it first....
Too bad poster was AC, they deserve some credit.
Make cheese not war 8:)
Interesting, and sounds true. Portland, some parts of it, is quite different from other parts of Oregon.
I should probably say that I didn't invent the term "Ecotopia", Joel Garreau did. At one time, Oregon was passing a lot of ecology laws, and deserved the term maybe more than it does now.
This is ludicrist. No one raises their child to speak only Klingon. I mean, if all they watch on TV is Star Trek, they are still going to pick up a human language, if not from the longue-wagging manner of some Trek characters, then at the very least will get something out of commercials! It sounds to me like the mental institute is a real sink-hole for taxpayer dollars for this to become noteworthy. Were I a mental health professional, I'd just ask the patient to help me learn Klingon.
Check out the facts here:
7
"Every once in a while, in order to remind myself of the quality of information typically reported, I trace down the source of a particularly ridiculous story. The "Klingon Language Interpreter" myth, which is spawning now, provides an amusing case study of the process of pack journalism."
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/5/11/7032/1834
seriously though, think about it, someone with problems,
has a psychotic break with reality deep enough that they refuse to
communicate in the language they learned as children
slipped into a TV fantasy so deeply, that the state wants to hire a translator.. to help them
and you love it?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
You all can laugh about this all you want, but it's not going to be funny when the Klingon mental patients overload our already delicate social services structures! Isn't there some treaty against intergalactic versions of the Mariel Boatlift?
Finally a solution to the free software problem that will work for geeks.
1) Give away software for free
2) create and learn fake alien languages in spare time
3) Profit!!!
We always knew Comcast was corrupt, here's the proof: http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1909890&cid=34545432
Very, very stupid.
How do I know?
I worked for Network Behavioral Healthcare for several years.
Yeah, that's the county agency that runs mental health in multnomah county. Actually, it's cascadia mental health now, I think. In any case, I talked to a lot of patients, clinicians, administrators, etc.
I never heard a word of klingon.. staff, patients, no one word of klingon unless uttered by my geeky boss.
So unless Jeff has had a mental break down and now will only adminster the the network in klingon, then it's pretty stupid.
Maybe speaking Klingon is not a delusion. Maybe speaking Klingon is a defense for people who have suffered too much pain in English. Anyway, remember that speaking Klingon is rare, and the government would pay for it only if there were no other way to communicate with a seriously mentally ill patient. That communication would almost certainly reduce the cost of treatment, not raise it.
Right on the money, I am impressed!
Okay, you're the manager who posted the job listing looking for Klingon speakers, now all of these cunning linguists are filing into your office and you have to interview them. How do you make sure that they really have the skills to pay the bills? How can you tell if they can really speak Klingon and not faking it, when you don't speak Klingon yourself?
I guess this question applies to any translation job situation, so if someone here is enlightened about this, please reply.
Heh, whoever gets the job should get a "Speaker to Geeks" nameplate for their desk.
How about a little juice to encourage communication in a human language? Surely even Oregon can afford that unless they spent the electricity bill on aromatherapy for streetpeople.
(I'm actually not a shock advocate at all. I used to live in Portland and really wanted to move back, but the last few years have made the rampant craziness even more so, and I'm angry about it.)
Read:7
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/5/11/7032/1834
Hoax...urba legend...load of crap. But on CNN?!? What is the world coming to?
What a fucking waste of time and money.
More complete story: http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/storyprintfriendl y/0,1887,188522,00.html?
There is going to be a sudden boom in Klingon Language Studies in Oregon. This means out-of-state academics and such. More money in circulation. A pickup in the economy and the immediate rebound of US economy from recession into a Klingon based cultural and economic renaisance. And besides, people might actually start reading Shakespeare again. ;>
Wrong.
It is a sign of cultural vitality.
Something that doesn't go down too well, once one starts to get older, and mental paths fossilize.
Just a theory.
if (
me.acceptsLanguage(CODE) &&
me.acceptsLanguage(KLINGON) &&
!me.acceptsLangauge(ENGLISH)
) {
&(me.do) = discussion.ask(WHAT);
}
"apropos" means "being both relevant and opportune"
it is not a smart person word for "appropriate"
But then, I live in Portland, so maybe the dictionaries are localized specially for us...
adeu,
Mateu
"And we're happy here, but we live in fear, we've seen a lot of temples crumble..." - Concrete Blonde
That's from the Oregonian's original write-up of this story. Once again pack journalism has played the telephone game and utterly missed the most important fact of the story.
The first time I heard the "boooong", I was afraid that something besides a 56K connection was being made. I didn't recognize it!
-Paul Komarek
If there's a hall of fame for trolls, the curator must be furiously polishing a pedestal in eager anticipation of the arrival of said bureaucrat's marble bust.
Build stuff. Stuff that walks, stuff that rolls, whatever.
Walt Disney Inc. / CIA / Apple conspiracy
Disney and Apple getting together? Horse hockey. It's one of Hollywood's worst kept secrets that Apple CEO and Pixar CEO Steve Jobs hates Disney CEO Michael Eisner and would rather lose Nemo.
Otherwise, you have a valid point. Can somebody translate the preceding paragraph into Klingon for me?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Now where is the +1 Fucking Impressive Geekiness moderation option when you need it?! Agh. ...or should that be "braaaaaakk graabgragagragagboooong chsssssssshhhhrr"?
The SMH is also running the story here .
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
They're not trying to hire a full-time Klingon translator. They're just trying to compile a list of people who might be available as needed. It's a linguistically diverse county.
The county's RFPQ (pdf) lists the main languages they're looking for: American Sign Language, Arabic, Cambodian, Cantonese, Farsi, Korean, Laotian, Mandarin, Romanian, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Somali, Spanish, and Vietnamese.
Much further down, on page 45 of 54, there's a form that applicants can fill out. It lists other languages that the county would be interested in finding translators for: Afrikaans, Afghan, Amharic, Armenian, Bosnian, Chamorro, Chinese, Czech, French, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hmong, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Klingon, Mien, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Samoan, Swedish, Tagalog, Tao Chiew, Tigrinia, Thai, Tigre, Togan-Isle, and Yugoslavic. Then there's a place to list other languages they haven't listed (there are hundreds of others, after all).
So, yes, you're free to apply and offer your services as an interpreter between English and Esperanto, Elvish, Lojban, Tamarian, or Perl. But they won't be paying you any money unless they actually find themselves in a situation where they need a translator.
Multicultural government building a rolodex of translators. Nothing more to see here. Move along, folks.
I found this article very interesting in fact. Klingon is indeed a language with a fully developed grammar and a vocabulary big enough to communicate in it. Just because it's an invented language (a conlang), that doesn't need to mean you couldn't talk to people in it; Esperanto is the best example. And when there are native Esperanto speakers, why shouldn't there be some people fluent in Klingon?
:D
Speaking of Esperanto, a few weeks ago, the World Esperanto Youth Organisation (TEJO) asked me to translate their website into Klingon and that translation is now available at www.tejo.org together with 23 other languages.
So, at least a volunteer Esperanto-Klingon translator has been needed, hehe...
law'bej tlhIngan Hol jatlhlaHbogh ghot. mamaw' 'e' Har ghotpu' law', 'ach wIbuSHa' 'ej laHmaj wIDubtaH /Star Trek/ wIparHa'qu'be' 'op maH; Hol'e' wIghojtaH 'e' wIparHa' neH.
...Paul
tlhoy
There are definitely many people who can speak Klingon. Many people think we're crazy, but we ignore them and continue to improve our abilities anyway. Some of us don't even like Star Trek that much; we just like learning the language.
If it's not important, you can probably find it in...
Project Galactic Guide (
And yet another anger problem! Unless this poster is actually being literal. Unfortunately, insults and bad language are hardly ever literal.
read the oregonian article ( http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ss
for those of you with short attention spans, the title should be enough to tip you off that it's a joke and written tongue in cheek: "If you need someone to Klingon. .
If I didn't suck, I'd be employed.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.