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'

Oblig

[AarghVark]

Qapla!

Re:Oblig

[cold fjord]

Klingon Grammar Warriors - stricter than even Grammar Nazis.

Today is a good day to conjugate! Qapla'

Re:

[Austerity Empowers]

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

Re:

[jamstar7]

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

You think that's bad, in the original Okuna Klingon dictionary, they prattle on about there being a lack of a verb for 'to be'. Then, in 'Undiscovered Country', Chang rattles on about 'To be or not to be, THAT is the question' and later throws more Shakespear references 'from the original Klingon'. And they wonder why every series has a 'bible' to keep this shit straight...

Re:Oblig

[Samantha Wright]

That just means the translation was a little creative. There are several natural languages [wikipedia.org] 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.

Re:

[Samantha Wright]

That's not an unreasonable construct for a language that has lost the verb in everyday use. In many languages the progressive aspect is denoted by a modification of the copula; if the verb later disappeared, it could till be used on its own as an archaism. In most languages, as long as the audience understands what is being said, you can say just about anything. It's only in modernity that we've tried to standardise our habits.

Re:

[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 Eng

Re:

[Samantha Wright]

You may be excited and horrified to know that the common language of Papua New Guinea, Tok Pisin, does something similar. The horrifying part is that it's a creole based mostly on English—and they mark the past tense with the particle "pinis" after the verb (literally a mispronunciation of "finish".) Many, many languages fit under this isolating scheme, and many of them drop or reduce the value of copulas contextually as a result, although they're also pernicious users of auxiliary (helping) verbs.

Con

Re:

[account_deleted]

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[account_deleted]

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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.

Re:

[Mashiki]

Probably a good thing, because 3 out of 4 of us are Borg.

Re:

[DarkRat]

I thought it was 7 of 9

Re:

[A10Mechanic]

Pity that Slashdot does not let us post pictures.

Re:

[93 Escort Wagon]

Yeah, it's pretty obvious this is Microsoft's big attempt to move into Google's core demographic.

Re:

[LifesABeach]

When it comes to m$_bing, I find myself uninspired. But translating Klingon? That's cool.

Re:

[kahless62003]

jIQochbe'qu' jay'!

Re:

[poetmatt]

Hey, it's only...3, 5 years late! That's practically at the discarded tail-end of innovation!

Ahhh....

[Anonymous Coward]

...I love the smell of desperation in the morning.

Don't get Scroogled!

[Anonymous Coward]

Translate your important business documents to Klingon with Bing instead of those other guys!!

Native Klingon support

[fyngyrz]

The s-meter in my SDR software has native Klingon support. It's one of the easter eggs. I'm imagining people finding it, then actually translating the s-meter readout by going to Bing. Having a little trouble with how they'll encode the input font, but I'm sure MS has it all figured out. Perhaps it's OCR.

I dunno if it's just me, because I'm wacky that way, but... lol.

Re:

[tlhIngan]

The s-meter in my SDR software has native Klingon support. It's one of the easter eggs. I'm imagining people finding it, then actually translating the s-meter readout by going to Bing. Having a little trouble with how they'll encode the input font, but I'm sure MS has it all figured out. Perhaps it's OCR.

What SDR software is that?

And no, there is a romanized way of entering pIqaD [wikipedia.org] (most people use the KLI version). No OCR required, other than transliterating the characters.

Re:

[fyngyrz]

What SDR software is that?

SdrDx [fyngyrz.com]

this was entertaining

[geekoid]

10 years ago when everyone else did it.

Re:

[Barlo_Mung_42]

Everyone? I don't see it listed as an option in the Google translator. Who else does?

Re:

[CastrTroy]

Ok, so it's not on the translator, but you can visit Google's homepage in Klingon [google.com]. It's not as if MS is the first company to use Klingon on the web. Although they may be the first to attempt a translator. The best thing about a Klingon translator is that almost nobody knows how well it really works.

Great

[Alomex]

One more reason not to use Bing.

On a related note, in an effort to be hip Bing employees will now wear bell bottoms to the office.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

they also play old episodes of the brady bunch on 84" screens in the main foyer... what could be more hip than that!?

Re:

[vux984]

One more reason not to use Bing.

Because google is any different?
https://www.google.com/webhp?hl=xx-klingon [google.com]

Its just a matter of time before they add klingon to their translate service.

Re:

[Barlo_Mung_42]

One reason not to use Bing is they added Klingon to the translator? I suspect you're full of beans and weren't going to use Bing anyway. If the Google Translator adds Klingon are you going to switch to Ask.com?

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:

[jamstar7]

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.

Love the way you alluded to Matrix Reloaded.

Personally, I like John M Ford's version of Klingon, called 'klingonaase', 'the tool for the manipulation of the principle of klin'. 'Klingon' in klingonaase translates roughly to 'the one that embodies or possesses klin', aka, the 'warrior spirit'.

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:

[Anonymous Coward]

Dothraki would be a better choice.

Re:20 year old geek chic

[MonsterTrimble]

No common tongue support? Fail.

Re:

[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!

Panem et circenses

[Mister Liberty]

How does it feel being treated like a imp.

Re:

[VortexCortex]

How does it feel being treated like a imp.

Shaka, when the walls fell...

Great!

[ducomputergeek]

Now I only have to be fluent in Javascript and leave Klingon to Bing!

Re:

[robnator]

This is really much funier than most other comments. Sad the /. crowd missed it.

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:

[K. S. Kyosuke]

and the marketing team is still trying to figure out how to make that sound like a must-have feature.

That and easy one; brainprint verification will going to be required for Windows 9 activation.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Esperanto Dating Site

[Grashnak]

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

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.

Re:

[edxwelch]

what? you mean it just makes up words from a made up language!!

Re:

[radarskiy]

-1, Uninsightful

It tried to transliterate, just like it does for any other language. So this is not evidence that Klingon is any less complete than any other language.

Re:

[MobyDisk]

I wasn't presenting evidence that Klingon is any less complete than any other language. That is a simple matter of fact. I was merely demonstrating the consequences of said fact.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klingon_language [wikipedia.org]

Re:

[pne]

Funny that it turns "f" into "tlh". I would have expected "f" to become "ng" instead and for "tlh" to arise from "x" (the "xifan hol" encoding). Ah well.

Indeed doesn't work

[Hemi Rodner]

"Can I get a hug?" translates into "laH Hugh chaw'a'?"
and translating it back to English results to: "Breaks can he suffered him?"

Assuming, ofcourse, that this sentence is translatable. Is it?

Venn Diagram?

[Flere Imsaho]

Are either of the Bing users trekkies?

Re:

[Tablizer]

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

Re:

[GTRacer]

Dang. Posting to correct accidental downmod. Was aiming for Insightful and missed. Seriously Slashdot, why do I have to lose 5 mods because you can't leave the dropdown active?

Not again!

[Blaskowicz]

This joke was already tiring when we were submerged by it on April 2, and now Microsoft trolls slashdot by planting that damn rot13 filter and having people link to it.

so I tried it

[goffster]

but the klingon font it used does not seem to be widely circulated,
which means.... lame

LOLTargs

[Sponge Bath]

I can has gagh?

Another time-travelling Slashdot story?

[wonkey_monkey]

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

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

Re:

[Jaruzel]

As usual, /. completely ignores the fact there are populated regions of land mass elsewhere on this planet other than the American continent.

Global release dates for Into Darkness:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1408101/releaseinfo [imdb.com]

The US are getting it late, it seems.

Re:

[wonkey_monkey]

The US are getting it late, it seems.

Isn't that getting to be often the way? One might naively assume it was some kind of desperate ploy to defeat piracy...

The only country that got Iron Man 3 after the USA (so far) was Poland.

Re:

[oodaloop]

Why do you go to an American website and complain that it focuses on America? If it bothers you that much, go to a website hosted in your own country.

Re:

[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

Re:

[oodaloop]

Strange then that I've lived nearly my whole life in the US and can't remember ever going to a .us site. Slashdot is run out of the US with American editors. It uses American units and American lexicon (color instead of colour, etc). It's not going to have every unit for every country, ever release date for every movie, or every lexicon to appease the global audience. Get over it. This has nothing to do with taking criticism or behaving like a strop, whatever the fuck that is.

Re:

[oodaloop]

Replying again, I looked up .org in wikipedia and it says nothing about it being global. If you have a source for your statement that .org site is global and should not contain US centric content, please post it.

Re:

[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.

Best I can do is a math joke

[tehlinux]

Glory to you and your Householder matrices.

OSS competitor:

[Tablizer]

http://www.wizage.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/tlhingbuntu-splash.png [wizage.net]

iso 639-2 language code

[SonnyDog09]

There is actually a code for Klingon in the iso-639-2 Language Code table.

tlh ==> Klingon; tlhIngan-Hol klingon

See http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/code_list.php [loc.gov] for the full list.

Outnerd Google?

[Andrio]

So when I saw this, I thought to myself "Oh wow, did Microsoft just out-nerd Google? I'm impressed."

But then when it was pointed out that this coincides with the latest Star Trek movie, I realized: "Oh, it's a marketing gimmick. I see."

Everything in normal.

Mission accomplished!

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Ha ha, you assholes clicked on a bing link.