Bing Translator Adds Klingon

Today Microsoft made an addition to its Bing translation service: the Klingon language. You can now easily read up on proper grooming habits for your Targ, learn how to perform routine maintenance on your painstiks, and brush up on your Shakespeare. You can also brush up on your tlhIngan Hol by reading your favorite websites through a translation filter. The timing is no coincidence; Star Trek: Into Darkness is coming out on Friday. Qapla'

Comments

9 out of 10

[Anonymous Coward]

9 out of 10 Klingons use Bing!!!

Re:9 out of 10

[Sponge Bath]

9 out of 10 Klingons use Bing!!!

On the internet, nobody knows you're a Ferringhi.

this was entertaining

[geekoid]

10 years ago when everyone else did it.

I have sampled every language,

[Anonymous Coward]

Klingon is my favorite - fantastic language, especially to curse with.. Hu'tegh Ha'DIbaH petaQ bIHnuch QI'yaH!! It's like wiping your ass with a pine-cone, I love it.

Re:I have sampled every language,

[93 Escort Wagon]

It's like wiping your ass with a pine-cone, I love it.

Some of us don't share this particular fetish...

20 year old geek chic

[RichMan]

In response Siri will support -
Valyrian

Re:20 year old geek chic

[MonsterTrimble]

No common tongue support? Fail.

Re:20 year old geek chic

[RabidReindeer]

Dothraki would be a better choice.

I refuse to have anything to do with it unless it supports Rlyeh'an.

Ïa! Ïa! Cthulhu ftagn!

Borg?

[680x0]

I dunno... somehow Borg seems more appropriate for a Microsoft product. :-)

Re:Borg?

[Immerman]

Yeah, but the translation requires that you have a direct neural override implant installed, and the marketing team is still trying to figure out how to make that sound like a must-have feature.

Re:Oblig

[cold fjord]

Klingon Grammar Warriors - stricter than even Grammar Nazis.

Today is a good day to conjugate! Qapla'

Esperanto Dating Site

[Grashnak]

Curses, my new Esperanto dating service, granda_boobs.com, will be totally upstaged!

Re:Oblig

[Austerity Empowers]

Klingon grammar warriors slay the dangling participle, derail the run-on sentence, and annihilate the subject-verb disagreement!

It doesn't actually work

[MobyDisk]

The Klingon language isn't actually complete, so if it encounters a word that has no translation it just makes-up something by adding unpronounceable letters in place of real ones. Unless it starts with a capital letter at which point it knows it was a proper name. Examples:
Microsoft --> microsoft
microsoft --> mIchroSotlht
what stinks is that it isn't smart enough to reverse the process:
mIchroSotlht --> michrosokt

Re:It doesn't actually work

[excelsior_gr]

I guess it is a genuine Microsoft implementation then.

Venn Diagram?

[Flere Imsaho]

Are either of the Bing users trekkies?

Re:Venn Diagram?

[Tablizer]

Is it the black-white guy, or the white-black guy?

Re:I suppose it's easier than improving the algori

[CRCulver]

I suppose it's easier than improving the algorithm, which is just pathetically bad at this point in time.

The algorithm is continually being improved.

In any event, it appears that the algorithm is just fine for an increasing number of people. I work in the translation field, and my fellow professionals and I have seen a significant fall in the amount of contracts companies are sending out. Sure, for manuals, advertising and other stuff meant to be seen by the general public, companies want the kind of polish that only a human being can do. But for e.g. business-internal communication within multinationals, which previously were sent to be professionally translated and would bring us a lot of money, companies would now rather put it through Google Translate for free than hire the expensive services of a translator. The quality isn't good, but it's good enough.

Re:Oblig

[Samantha Wright]

That just means the translation was a little creative. There are several natural languages with no 'being' verb. Even if Okrand (not Okuna!) didn't provide a way of discussing existence in his dictionary, it's silly to think there's no way of doing so in a widely-used language.

LOLTargs

[Sponge Bath]

I can has gagh?

Re:Panem et circenses

[VortexCortex]

How does it feel being treated like a imp.

Shaka, when the walls fell...

Re:Oblig

[AK Marc]

There is no concept of tense in Chinese, but when you translate, you add in the tense as appropriate for the meaning. I haven't ever looked at Klingon as a language, but you don't need "creative" in translation to recognize "I wash clothes ago" means "I washed the clothes" (or possibly "I *already* washed the clothes" depending on context).

But it's all anti-academic when we recognize that it's a false fiction. Klingons aren't real, the language is artificial, and Shakespeare was originally written in English.

Re:Another time-travelling Slashdot story?

[mjwx]

The timing is no coincidence; Star Trek: Into Darkness is coming out on Friday.

Awesome! Uh, except that I already saw it last Friday...

Submitter used Bing to get the release date.

Re:Another time-travelling Slashdot story?

[Jaruzel]

OK I'll bite.

US websites are the ones that end in .US. The ones that end in .org, .com, .net are GLOBAL top level domains and should not contain US centric content.

(Also, there's no tech sites worth shit for the UK because as we all know, the UK *doesn't* have a decent tech industry... :( )

Finally, wtf is wrong with you Americans that you can't accept a single negative comment aimed your country no matter how accurate? I guess tho, once you've grown up a bit, you'll be able to take constructive criticism without throwing a complete teenage strop every time.