[Tlhingan-hol] paq'batlh text for Bing

[Robyn Stewart]

Reason #1: Improving the worst Klingon on the net, as well as the best.

You know how when a friend or relative sends you greetings in “Klingon” or you come across a web page or a press release that someone has “translated” with Mr. Klingon and you just want to reach through the Internet and [TE/KI]LL them?  Or when a TV show has characters speak “Klingon” but they haven’t bothered to do any research so it’s word for word English and you have to hurt your brain to understand it? Imagine if that were replaced by clumsy, mechanical but recognizable Klingon, of the sort turned out by a reasonably intelligent beginner who has done a first readthrough of TKD?

 

It’s still going to need work by an expert to be good Klingon, but it will be closer to Klingon than to gibberish.

Reason #2: Publicity

Internet person plays with Bing Translator: “Wait, I can translate in and out of Klingon? Klingon is real?  There’s a link here .. <click> new message to mailing list ... ‘qavan guys, bing mughwI' vItu' DaHjaj. tlhIngan qar Hol?’” (That’s the actual output from the public version of Bing for “Hi guys, I found the Bing translator today. Is Klingon really a language?” The private one continues to improve, but I have a few more things to fix up before it replaces the live one).

 

Reason #3: Language preservation

Klingonists are articulate and computer savvy, yet speak a language that s very unlike English. Every problem with the engine that I find and every improvement that they make based on my input is a problem that an eighty-year old speaker of a vanishing First Nations language doesn’t have to contend with to share her knowledge and preserve her culture for her people. In Canadian First Nations communities the strongest correlation with a low suicide rate is not employment, not health, not educational attainment but knowledge of the cultural language. This work is transferrable to save languages and lives.

 

Reason #4: Practice

Same reason every IT-minded beginner makes his own parser. It’s a fun challenge to my skills as a teacher and a Klingon speaker to tailor examples that the machine can learn from. 

 

Reason #5: Fun 
Same answer as you would give to someone who said, “Why are you working so hard to attain skills in a language that isn’t spoken anywhere?”


Reason #6: Transference
To drown out my fury that I spent almost of my Klingon time last year working on an online course that no one can take. Do you object to that too, on the grounds that if more people learn to speak Klingon it will dilute the status of your rare skill?

- Qov



From: lojmIt tI'wI' nuv [mailto:lojmitti7wi7nuv at gmail.com] 
Sent: March 19, 2015 4:01
To: tlhIngan Hol mailing list
Subject: Re: [Tlhingan-hol] paq'batlh text for Bing

 

Why are we working so hard to make our skill with the language obsolete?

Sent from my iPad


On Mar 19, 2015, at 3:40 AM, Robyn Stewart <robyn at flyingstart.ca> wrote:

I’ve just realized that the paq’batlh text is not included in the Bing corpus. If anyone has English and Klingon parallel text in electronic form, this would be a great asset to the engine.  The ideal form would be two files, one English, one Klingon, one sentence per line aligned line-by-line, but whatever you have will help. 

I already own the paper version, and the sentences will not be available to Bing users: they are digested by the engine, so sharing should not be a copyright violation.

- Qov

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