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)?"

What's next for Klingon?

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.

Re:What's next for Klingon?

40 years down the line, we'll have a movie called "The Windbreakers".

Klingons - breaking wind even the french can't top.

Re:What's next for Klingon?

Nah, all they'd have to do is go to the Klingon Language Institute [kli.org].

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.

Re:What's next for Klingon?

What? You have never been to a Sci-Fi convention? OK, turn in your geek badge as you leave the building.

I just couldn't believe this article when I read it.

What is even worse is I KNOW people (OK, met them once or twice at a convention) that could APPLY for this job. I can just hear them finally justifying their obsession with Star Trek by telling their moms when they come down for breakfast in the morning that they FINALLY have a job, it is a direct result of their obsession with the show, and they can finally move out on their own.

This job posting just HAS to be posted at NorWesCon, RustyCon, and other local conventions. I would LOVE to see the recruiters faces as they try to tell the difference between the insane and the applicant (if such a distinction can be made that is). :)

Perhaps the perfect applicant one of those guys on that DirectTV commercial with the "SuperModels", but I repeat myself.

Re:What's next for Klingon?

"I'm a Wars freak instead. Although my GF is a Trekkie"

Have you considered a suicide pact?

Re:What's next for Klingon?

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.

So... the next world war will be Estonia vs Germany? (/me points at mail address)

This area of the U.S. is called "Ecotopia".

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 [silcom.com], 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.

huh?

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.

Translate this!

That reminds me of the funniest joke in the world [wikipedia.org] [transcript [www.pion.ch]]. The next time Klingons attack Federation space we can have a translation of this joke ready for them. Today is a good day to die!

Damn it!

My investments in starwars language translation were wasted. Well, goodnight C3PO beta4.

What? No Qenya-English interpreters?

Do I need to get myself committed just to give Elvish the status it deserves?

Re:What? No Qenya-English interpreters?

Talk to this [theonion.com] guy.

Obligatory Simpsons quote

COMIC BOOK GUY:
Is there a word in Klingon for loneliness?
(quickly looks in a pocket book)
Ah, yes. GAHR-DAHK!

Re:Obligatory Simpsons quote

I bent my wookie

Re:Obligatory Simpsons quote

The sad thing is that you probably looked that up and it probably *is* "gahr-dahk"

Re:Obligatory Simpsons quote

The even sadder part is that I've spent the last 5 minutes looking to confirm it.

Re:Obligatory Simpsons quote

Actually, I looked it up and something very similar to what he said translates as "the ponytail practices diplomacy" (ghar DaQ).

Which just goes to show you should avoid reading any post on Slashdot that starts with "Actually".

Good for them.

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.

Re:Good for them.-Cap'n Crunch crazy.

"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!

Re:Good for them.-Cap'n Crunch crazy.

BweeepPhsoooooOOOOOOOooo sHOOOOooooooo bweeeeeeeeeep be boooong pshoooooooooooo!

R2D2 is that you? Long time no see. Where have you been all this time?

At least they're not speaking Toki Pona

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 [tokipona.org].

Re: At least they're not speaking Toki Pona

Polish linguist Anna Wierzbicka has done a lot of work with semantic primitives - key concepts that all the other words in a language can be explained with. She says there are about 60 such words, that are present in all languages and can explain all meanings and ideas. Here's the list (in thematic groups):

I, you, someone, something, people, body
this, the same, other
one, two, some, many/much, all
good, bad, big, small
think, know, want, feel, see, hear
say, word, true
do, happen, move
there is, have
live, die
not, maybe, can, because, if
when, now, after, before, a long time, a short time, for some time
where, here, above, below, far, near, side, inside
very, more
kind of, part of
like

Conlangs

studying something like Klingon, instead of some useless subject, like Portugese or Japanese.

Why not?

There are people that like to learn languages to speak and express themselves in those languages with people from other places. That is the people that will learn portuguese, japanese, swedish or other languages with a few million speakers.

But then, there is also another bunch of people that just likes languages. I.e., knowing how they work, why they work like that ... and of course, creating new languages. That's what Tolkien did, that's what Marc Okrand did (he's the creator of Klingon), and that's what many people is doing. It has even a name, and it's conlanging (from CONstructed LANGuages). A wonderful introductory piece is at Boheme Magazine [magazine.free.fr].

The official meeting place for conlangers is CONLANG [brown.edu], a mailing-list that has been going strong since 1991. And for links, you have conlanglinks [conlanglinks.tk], with many resources to know more about conlanging or about languages in general. The audience of CONLANG is very diverse, but I'd dare to say that most of them are either programmers or language-related people (teachers, linguists, etc.)

Conlanging is fun. Really :-) I'm no linguist, but conlanging is something very creative, and for me it's quite like a programming problem: you have some rules (that you create), and have to use them to express all the things that a language can express. And from the time that you express something in your own created tongue, you're hooked %-)

Anyway, I can understand that I'm quite weird and that many people consider this a loss of time. But hey, even Eric Raymond likes it [catb.org]. Basically, if you like RP games and science-fiction and have somewhat of a creative streak, you very well could like conlanging.

My own conlang is named Unahoban, and a quite incomplete and sometimes incoherent grammar is here [fi.udc.es].

BASIC?

I heard about some kid who wrote so much BASIC that he started speaking it.

Does that mean the staff has to learn computer languages too?

Re:BASIC?

I heard about some kid who wrote so much BASIC that he started speaking it.

Does that mean the staff has to learn computer languages too?

Sad to say, but I've actually become able to THINK in binary and yes there really are only 10 types of people in this world, those who think in binary and those who do not... :)

Now, if I could only figure out ascii conversion on the fly I would probably be the first speaker of binary.. (jeez, now I'm probably gonna start working on that... I need a girlfreind or something..)

According to The Onion...

...Klingon speakers now outnumber [theonion.com] Navajo ones.

As for Evlish, don't come crying to this guy [theonion.com] when you need an interpreter...

Re:According to The Onion...

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.

so the percentage of psychos

so the percentage of psychos that are also star trek fans is relatively large on average? ..intersting.. But even the Trekkies didn't camp in front of movie theaters for weeks to see a movie- they can't be too out of it!

Klingon in Unicode

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. =)

hmm

Sounds like they're stooping to the (crazy) patients' level rather than helping them.

Also, if they learn Klingon, will the patients converse with them, or will the patients shut up? I.E. are they just doing it to avoid communicating with the staff?

Re:hmm

Well, "crazy" is a subjective term. I'm not a psychologist, psychiatrist, or any kind of mental health analyst, and I suspect you're not one either. However, attempting to communicate with someone on their terms (reaching out, in a sense) can hardly be said to be "stooping to the patient's level" but rather simply to be trying to communicate, in my opinion.

Is using pictures to communicate with an autistic child "stooping"? I realize that the analogy isn't totally accurate, but it's still a point that should be considered.

... Dear gods ...

There is no way I can express how much this ruins the idea I had that humanity was recovering from the horridness of Star Trek: Nemesis.

How wrong I was.

klingon in demand these days

from mental health hospitals to the NSA, klingon seems to be in demand these days. to quote from TrekToday [trektoday.com], "Lawrence Schoen, founder of the Klingon Language Institute, recently gave a presentation to the National Security Agency on the language, as the "government was curious about the potential for al-Qaeda operatives to communicate through Klingon""...

now that said, i'm disappointed by all these people - the NSA and these mental cases... i mean, if you're going to chose a language, why the heck not chose tolkiens elvish!?

Perhaps they are admitting the wrong people...

"There are some cases where we've had mental health patients where this was all they would speak" Sounds like they had a bunch of drunk Trekies playing practical jokes on them. How possible is it to learn and use this "language" to the point of forgetting your native one?

lay'er down an' smack 'em yack 'em.

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.

Google weirdness - "Jerry Jelusich"

Okay, this is pretty bizarre - the second paragraph in the article:

"We have to provide information in all the languages our clients speak," said Jerry Jelusich, a procurement specialist for the county Department of Human Services, which serves about 60,000 mental health clients.

Okay... I did a Google on "Jerry Jelusich" (note quoting) and it returns only one result [google.com]. However, when looking at the (strangely small) PDF document the Google link points to, the twoword "Jerry Jelusich" doesn't appear at all. Looking at Google's PDF-to-HTML conversion results, however: Google search on Jerry Jelusich result [216.239.33.104], gives the text "These terms only appear in links pointing to this page: jerry jelusich" at the top.

So if the quoted text only appears in links pointing to this PDF... and yet the PDF is the only result for this quoted text... argh, I think my brain is broken *grin*.

On the other hand, googling for "Franna Hathaway", (the other person quoted in the news story) gives heaps of Google results [google.com], most of which seem relevant.

Anyway, it's a strange story already, I just thought that some might find this sort of odd Googleresult to be interesting. ;-)

Pete.

PS. It's not a valid Googlewhack [googlewhack.com] if the twoword is quoted, apparently. Oh well.

I think this is a trap.

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 speak flawless Klingon....

..but with my accent, I'll never be mistaken as a native. I wonder if that disqualifies me for the position?

Bother!

Klingon? Oh, hell, I'd settle for someone who can speak "Girlfriend."

What's next?

$0...4Re +heY g01Ng +0 N33d @ L3Et 5p3aK 1n+erpre+Er nEXt?

As an Oregonian...

As someone who lives in Oregon, this story is *not* going to go over well with the natives. As people may have noticed, the unemployment rate here is the highest in the nation, Oregon has the shortest school year, and even the courts are closed on Fridays. And now Multnomah County (where Portland is) is going to hire a Klingon interpreter after having laid off numerous school teachers, police officers, and others people see as "more necessary" public servants. There's going to be a fight over this... I can't wait to see the outfall.

Re:As an Oregonian...

Maybe the disgruntled civil servants can challenge the Klingon interpreter to ritual hand-to-hand combat... :-)

Re:As an Oregonian...

This is a contract position.

No money will be paid unless the person is actually called to duty.

calm down (translation jobs)

It's not like they're going to hire a full time Klingon translator and pay him/her to sit around all day in case a Klingon-speaking nutcase checks into the mental hospital. The way these translation gigs work is you sign up, they do a little bit of checking of your credentials and then they put your name on a list of people who speak that language. On the occasion that your skill is needed, they call you, you translate (often over the phone, often for just a few minutes) and you get paid for the time spent. If they never get another Klingon speaking patient, you don't get called and they haven't really spent anything (maybe they call you once a year or so to make sure you're still available). If they do get such a patient they call you and pay a few hours (or maybe minutes) of your translation bill which is probably much less than the amount they'd have to pay some doctor or other health professional to find out what the heck is wrong with the poor loon without your help.

So stop freaking out--it's not draining megabucks of your taxes, it's just putting some more phone numbers in a file. It's a completely sensible thing to do if these "Klingon patient" incidents have hapened in the past.

Also, I can tell you, a friend of mine is a translator, and sadly they don't get paid very much.

jumping jesus christ....

If ever there was an indication that the empire is in decline, this is it. During the worst recession in more than 20 years, in the state with the highest unemployment rate, my taxes go to support the hiring of some geeky twit who speaks a made-up language from a second-rate sci-fi TV show.

If I had a shadow of a hope that America might somehow regain its senses and do away with the recent orgy of idiocies it seems to revel in, this has pretty much quashed it. Any society which does something this incredibly stupid is a goner.

Max

Re:jumping jesus christ....

I personally think that the need for a Klingon interpreter in a mental hospital is a much bigger issue to worry about than your $.02 being paid to one. Why do they need a Klingon speaker? Do they really have so many patients who won't speak any other language? OK, they hire a geek who can speak Klingon - but this means that they have other geeks (who else would bother to learn Klingon) in a pretty bad shape in the institution.

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".

is this really necessary?

Couldn't the nurses just translate this simple phrase in to klingon and memorize it:

"You're a dork. No more TV for you. Go outside."

interesting

While I agree that it's a waste of a budget in Oregon, it's fascenating that entertainment is actually creating languages and defining a seperate culture.

Language been an evolving process for thousands of years, actually growing less complex and more flexible as the society grows more complex. (Ancient Greek is EXTREMELY complex where as modern Greek had to adapt). Roddenberry managed to do this in less than 50 years, though I doubt Klingon contains the complexities and flexibility of a modern language.

Society is defined as "A group of humans broadly distinguished from other groups by mutual interests, participation in characteristic relationships, shared institutions, and a common culture" for which Star trek now fits the bill, so we're actually creating societies and cultures within a society and a culture through entertainment, yet we're all still linked to a larger one by our nationality, being a human, etc.

What I'm saying is that the ability to knowingly create a distinct culture is pretty interesting, and it shows society has become incredibly complex and that entertainment and pop culture play such a huge role in our society today that its mind blowing.

Re:interesting

Uh, not quite true. The language was originally created for one of the movies, and was a full-fledged language with its own grammar and syntax, invented by a linguist, not a fan.

It's been extended and promoted by fans, true, but the original language was invented by a linguist.

Klingon? That's too easy!

By the time they find and commit me I will speak only the language I'll have developed. [indulges in a mad laughter]

before you start talking about cost & about el

If you read this artical over at oregonlive.com you will find out that this will cost NO MONEY UNLESS IT IS USED

http://oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/ ba se/news/105256813916000.xml

From the above link
"Multnomah County is looking for a Klingon interpreter -- just in case.

The county doesn't expect to be invaded by the alien warriors from "Star Trek" movies and TV series. But the office that treats county mental health patients wants to be prepared in case a client arrives in an emergency room gabbing in the galactic language.

"We have to provide information in all the languages our clients speak," says Jerry Jelusich, a procurement specialist for the county Department of Human Services, which serves some 60,000 mental health clients.

So if a patient speaks only Klingon, the county must respond with a Klingon interpreter. Officials have decided to include it with about 55 languages, some of which, such as Russian and Vietnamese, are widely spoken, and some, such as Dari and Tongan, are seldom spoken.

In recent years, Klingon has gone from being a fictional tongue to a complete language, with its own grammar, syntax and vocabulary. Jelusich and colleagues took note of a recent article in The Oregonian about a Portlander who sings karaoke in Klingon. Their later research satisfied them that Klingon is for real.

The county would pay a Klingon interpreter only in the unlikely case he or she was actually called into service.

"We said, 'What the heck, let's throw it in,' " Jelusich says. "It doesn't cost us any money."

The county's purchasing administrator, Franna Hathaway, greeted the request with initial skepticism. "I questioned it myself when it first came in. "

But, she adds, "There are some cases where we've had mental health patients where this was all they would speak."

Jelusich says that in reality, no patient has yet tried to communicate in Klingon. But the possibility that a patient could believe himself or herself to be a Klingon doesn't seem so far-fetched.

"I've got people who think they're Napoleon," he says.

Multnomah County Chairwoman Diane Linn could not be reached for comment. Next up: another mythical language popularized by The "Lord of the Rings" films.

"The kids," Jelusich says, "are learning to speak Elvish." "

There are worse...

I've know people only capable of communicating in quotes from Monty Python and/or The Goon Show [goon.org]

Silly Humans!

One thing that always irritated me when they revived the TV version of Star Trek: Picard always addressed Klingons with a boistrous "Qapla'!" ("Success!"), as if it were the equivalent of "goodbye". I'm not one of those people who makes a hobby out of studying Klingon (excuse me, "tlhIngan Hol"), but I do remember an interview with Marc Okrand on NPR. In the usual NPR manner, they asked him to say goodbye in Klingon. He responded that Klingons had no use for human-style politeness -- when a Klingon is done talking, he just leaves.

But perhaps it makes sense. Given Picard's officious know-it-allness, he's probably not the great expert on Klingon culture that he pretends to be! Rather like that guy in Len Deighton's novels who thinks knowing a smattering of Cantonese gives him license to torture Chinese waiters.

And of course, rather than correct Picard, the Klingons would just say "Qapla'" back at him. Easier than ripping his throat out, as he deserves. Silly humans!

120,000$ waste

Oh that's just great. Now a degree in KLINGON has more practical application than my liberal arts degree...

I taught Klingon for money

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.

They can use Google

Google support Klingon, amongst the amazing number of languages that they support: Google in Klingon [google.com]

Translation requested

How does one say "I need to get a life" in Klingon?

Debunked on k5

Seth Finkelstein investigates and finds it's a joke [kuro5hin.org]. Film at 11.