Fortunately, the Multnomah county Klingon interpreter story is an urban legend. The health service was compiling a list of languages for which an interpreter was authorized, should the need arise. For a bit of comic relief, and as it made no difference, they added Klingon to the list. The media picked it up as "county seeks Klingon interpreter" and that's when I saw it, leaving me wondering, "who in the Klingon-speaking community is having mental health problems, why haven't I heard about it, and what are they doing in Oregon?"

Real-life Klingon translation problems do exist; there's a disagreement of philosophy among the members of a translation team right now. One member wants to improve the text in the translation and others insist that nothing be added that the original authors did not specifically put there.

And I agree: Marc did a great job.

Not the first urban legend I've fallen for, unfortunately, thank you very much for pointing this one out.

I'm rather overexcited to have the opportunity to talk to a Klingon speaker and have a few questions:
- It must have been necessary to coin hundreds of words (pertaining to this world rather than Star Trek's); who's in charge of that?
- What sort of documents do you translate into Klingon and why?
- Have different variations of Klingon developed (accents etc)?
- What does "P'TAHR!!!" mean (very guttural "hr", that's how I'd spell it; I've heard it a lot in ST episodes; I suspect it's an insult for non-Klingons)?

On the French side of this blog, Mélanie informs us that you can choose Klingon as the Google interface language. This is how I discovered that you can also have your interface in "Bork, bork, bork!", "Elmer Fudd", "Hacker" and "Pig latin". Funny.

I'm rather overexcited to have the opportunity to talk to a Klingon speaker and have a few questions:

- It must have been necessary to coin hundreds of words (pertaining to this world rather than Star Trek's); who's in charge of that?

Marc is still the only one who coins new words, we get a few each quarter, transmitted through the Klingon Language Institute's quarterly journal, HolQeD. We do lack a lot of terran vocabulary and we make do in a number of ways. We either use words from other languages, generally English, or we describe the concept required to the extent necessary for context to identify it. This exercise is a large part of the challenge of speaking Klingon.

Through use of descriptions, some expressions and words have taken on new meanings, e.g. Duj (vessel) will be understood as "car" and muD Duj (atmosphere vessel) as "airplane."

- What sort of documents do you translate into Klingon and why?

In general: anything and for the challenge and/or the odd freebee. Specifically: Shakespeare plays and sonnets, because of a throwaway line in a Star Trek movie about having to read Shakepeare in the original Klingon. The motto of the Johnson & Johnson company, because the company was busy translating into all their customer languages, and the IT department knew about the KLI, and wanted their own version. A post apocalyptic narrative poem written in the pastoral style: for a first issue of a magazine that never appeared. Subtitles: for a DVD on satellites. Advertising: I remember one for a tool called a stud finder. I ended up with a toolbox as part payment for that one. We're working on translating a number of Hugo-award winning science fiction stories, so that learners of Klingon will have interesting, high quality stories to read. In many cases you'd have to ask the requester why they wanted the translation.

- Have different variations of Klingon developed (accents etc)?

Most people speak Klingon with the accent of their native language, influenced by other languages they have studied. Some American speakers of Klingon find my pronunciation of the o vowel indistinguishable from the u vowel, just as they hear Canadian "about" as "aboot." The German translation of the Klingon Dictionary (the German-English version) contains many errors, such as translating the wrong gloss of a word, substituting a noun for a verb, or even off-by-one errors from the original list. I think most German speakers have access to an errata list, but there may be some that speak with the errors. I have met a Polish speaker of Klingon and can't think of anything I'd consider a dialect about her speech.

- What does "P'TAHR!!!" mean (very guttural "hr", that's how I'd spell it; I've heard it a lot in ST episodes; I suspect it's an insult for non-Klingons)?

petaQ - the last sound is an uvular affricate, so HR isn't a bad approximation if you use the French R. Marc is a little vague on the meanings of Klingon curses. I'd render it as bastard or mofo, but I highly doubt it has either of those literal meanings.

Oops. German-Klingon, not German-English, of course.