Get ready, Trekkies! Soon you’ll have another tool to use when trying to learn the language of Star Trek’s most popular warrior race.
On Tuesday, May 14, the Klingon language will be added to Internet search engine Bing’s translator as part of a marketing partnership between Microsoft and Paramount Pictures. The addition comes just in time for the release of Star Trek: Into Darkness, which opens in the United States on May 17.
“We have people who understand the deep science of linguistics and we also have people who are passionate about the Star Trek franchise,” Craig Beilinson, director of communications for Bing, told the Los Angeles Times. “This was a labor of love from a lot of different avenues.”
People will be able to translate Klingon phrases into one of Bing’s 41 offered languages and vice versa. The translation was developed with the help of one of the few people who speak Klingon, Microsoft engineer Eric Andeen, and linguist Marc Oakland, who originally developed the language off some ad-libbed words by James Doohan as Scotty in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
“Recognizing Klingon language on the Bing translator, along with other elements of this partnership, truly underscores the pop culture relevance of the film,” LeeAnne Stables, executive vice president of worldwide marketing partnerships for Paramount, said.
The translator won’t be the first online way to learn Klingon. The Klingon Language Institute has offered online resources for learning about the linguistics and culture of the alien race since 1992. For those of us who just need a quick phrase translated however, we finally have a way to do it! Qapla’!
If you have no idea what that means, now you know where to look.
H/T L.A. TImes | Photo via Engadget