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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.
As for Evlish, don't come crying to this guy when you need an interpreter...
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.
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.
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?
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.
"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!
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.
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.