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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)?"
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.
Nah, all they'd have to do is go to the Klingon Language Institute.
In all seriousness, I think this extremely interesting. From my reading of the article, it sounds like the Multonomah County Department of Human Services, by law, has to provide these services, and that means that they have to provide translation services for people who ostensibly only speak Klingon. It's like a totally bizarre collision of law and pop culture. I love it.
Hell, there's probably a research paper in it for someone, focusing on how a phenomenon like Star Trek can have such far-reaching and totally unanticipated effects.
From the onion..
"I know this is my home, but there isn't anything here for me," said unemployed Navajo nation member Leonard Murphy, 22, who dropped out of school at 14 and remembers little of the Navajo he learned in elementary school. "Everyone's leaving, getting off the reservation. Now there's nothing to do here except drink beer and watch Star Trek."
Although it is fairly inaccurate that there are only 1000 speakers (and yes I know it's satire thank you) it's really sad to say that truely affluent speakers of that toungue are becoming quite scarce, my generation is almost 100% non navajo speaking, sure they know a little to some, but they are not affluent speakers of the language..
How do I know this? Well to start with I was raised in Farmington New Mexico which is just outside of Shiprock (basically the Navajo Nation's capital city) and I've had many Navajo freinds through school, only a handful of which spoke any navajo at all, and maybe one or two of which were fluent. Not that I would be able to tell, Navajo is a very unusual language, very gutteral and primitave, although enchanting in it's own right.
I can certainly believe that Klingon was modeled after Navajo, they sound amazingly similar.. And as far as more speakers of Klingon? It's actually possible that there are more casual speakers although I doubt that there are more fluent speakers.. However I could scarcely imagine it being as hard to learn, as most people describe learning it as somewhat,, well.. Painful.
As an aside, the Navajo people are probably one of the most wonderful cultures in the world (especially their family values & strength of their family ties) and I would encourage everyone to learn all you can about these wonderful people.
Yeah, well, you don't need to camp out for weeks to get tickets to a Star Trek movie. In fact, the producers might camp out for weeks in front of your house to get you to go see it.
Just because you sold your soul to the devil that needn't make you a teetotaler. --The Devil and Daniel Webster
if you read the artical you will find that it doesn't cost any money, unless someone does show up needing a translator.
So stop bitching about it.
I live in oregon, and to tell you the truth i prefer my public agencies makeing sure they are prepared for anything (and having fun while doing it:).
Stupid things (or things that seem stupid to others - as an anonymous kid said: "Kids don't do stupid things. They have their reasons.") have been done everywhere and everywhen, but the number of people who suffer from mental problems is big only when there's something wrong with the society. Yes, the hiring of Klingon interpreters is a sign, but it's not "We're doomed, they hired Klingon speakers", but "We're doomed, they need Klingon speakers".
Hell is not other people; it is yourself. - Ludwig Wittgenstein
i suggest you look at your facts
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taxes are very low in oregon
http://www.taxfoundation.org/statelocal03
Measuring Taxes as a Percentage of Income, oregon is ranked 39th. When factoring in federal taxes Oregon then ranks 27th.
During the 1990's, when these liberals that were elected where raising you taxes, taxes overall went down due to restrictions in property tax and the deducation of federal income tax
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.
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
I don't get it. This could be reduced further.
... small/big? live/die? Temporal versions of quantities - some/some time, big/long time.
Why express "two" when you already have "one"?
Why (virtually) antonyms
Seems to be lots of redundancy, ne? Just curious.
it's just doubleplusungood!
My tax dollars (and yours) are paying someone to speak a fictional language... don't you find that a bit wrong?
No? You're drawing an arbitrary line between fictional and real (a lot of modern languages have been edited by a linguist along the line; modern Hebrew being a prime example) and saying that we shouldn't help someone who desperately needs help because the language they prefer to speak is on the other side of that line.
Klingons aren't fucking real.
Klingon speakers are.
These people are mentally divergent,
So was Einstein, and many other people who changed our world. As a matter of fact, genius itself is mentally divergent.
and need help understanding that Klingon's don't fucking exist. They don't need someone to speak Klingon because it will enforce their delusions.
Have you met them, and done a psychological evaluation? If not, how you can say what they need and what speaking Klingon will do to them? Maybe the best we can do is four padded walls and three square meals for the rest of their lives. Maybe they just need some medication, which we can administer if we can just tell them to hold still. Maybe they need someone to talk them out of the corner of the mind they're hiding in, in the only language they understand at the moment.
our public schools are experiencing really shitty funding problems
I can see the effect it had on your language skills, and the wide command (or lack of) adjectives it gave you.
we're hiring figments of peoples imaginations...
I hate to mention this to you, but that's what languages are. No language has any reality outside the mind of a person.
Klingons aren't fucking real.
The language is. To quite a degree. So engaging them in that language is not a denial of reality.
These people are mentally divergent, and need help understanding that Klingon's don't fucking exist.
Perhaps they actually know that. The artcile does not in any way address what reality is or is not being engaged in by delivering services in language that actually exists.
Maybe they are dealing with schizophrenics who resort to speaking Klingon to keep Echelon at bay because the Walt Disney Inc. / CIA / Apple conspiracy is after them and if they speak English they may trigger the floating nano-microphones that hang in the air. That is a 'reality' that a mental-health professional may not want to engage either, but you still want to know if these people are having side-effects when they have started taking their medication.
So was Einstein, and many other people who changed our world. As a matter of fact, genius itself is mentally divergent.
You need to go read some books, Einstein was not mentally divergent. He had a very good grasp on reality.
I can see the effect it had on your language skills, and the wide command (or lack of) adjectives it gave you.
Now I know you're a dipshit, aside from the Einstein comment. People who use "profanity" are of a lessure statute. Yeah.. keep it up.
I hate to mention this to you, but that's what languages are. No language has any reality outside the mind of a person.
Equating any language and "Klingon" is just retarded. People who are this obsessed with a TV show should be put into the next reality based TV show. Put 3 people from each dumbass Sci-Fi show with a cult following, and let them fight to the death. It'd be like watching declawed sloths try to attack each other.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
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.