Universal Translator ?

[dr_sepheroth]

If it possible to build a computer that could translate a language such as klingon or elvish in to any other language ? I would love to know what the klingon's talk about on star trek.

[Donut417]

7 minutes ago, dr_sepheroth said:

If it possible to build a computer that could translate a language such as klingon or elvish in to any other language ? I would love to know what the klingon's talk about on star trek.

Hard to say. I can tell you that there is software out there that can translate actually real languages. Only know this because It goes along with a project Im working on with school. The issue is I dont think they would support Elfish or Klingon. The fact is translation software exists. You can even check out free solutions like Google Translate or Bing Translate to see if they support those languages. 

[dr_sepheroth]

Surly the analysis of syntax, phonetics and variation of language can be duplicated by a circuit ?

[Donut417]

1 hour ago, dr_sepheroth said:

Surly the analysis of syntax, phonetics and variation of language can be duplicated by a circuit ?

Im not an expert in digital electronics. I just know software exists. 

[Dash Lambda]

To reconstruct a language purely through analysis (As in, you don't consult anyone who speaks it and you don't have any sort of "Rosetta Stone" thingamajig), especially one as abstract as most modern languages (strings of symbolic characters as opposed to representative pictographs), you need a huge sample size and an insane amount of cryptographic talent, not to mention time.

 

The UT's in Star Trek are basically impossible because they're supposed to glean the structure and lexicon of an entire language from a few phrases and both actively and effectively translate that language almost immediately. In reality, you would need to analyze hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of phrases and works in that language to get an accurate grammatical structure and a useful library of meanings.

 

In Star Trek, I believe their justification is that their UT's also perform telepathic scans to figure out the speaker's meaning, which is obviously more fantasy than science.

 

Machine learning has the potential make computers capable of language analysis, and Google's already using it to improve how their translator handles syntax and grammar, but we're a ways off from machines that can decode completely alien languages and we'll probably never have machines that can do that entirely from their word for "Hello."

 

And I think that most of the Klingon in Star Trek is actually just a certain set of gutteral sounds that wasn't supposed to mean anything in the first place.

[dr_sepheroth]

Klingon is a made up language that was invented by Mark Okrand

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klingon_language

 

It should be noted that Mark Okrand also invented the Romulan and Vulcan Language's

[Jake Dalay]

I find it interesting that both of the languages the OP used as examples (assuming he meant Tolkien's elvish) are fictional languages that have actually been delineated in some detail with actual translations for a fairly large number of words.

 

In elvish:

(see attached)

 

In Klingon:

batlhchaj op lo' law' examples (tolkien elvish qej ghaH assuming) fictional Hol 'e' mojpu' delineated pa' je actual mughmeH fairly yIteb mI', mu'mey detail 'op Hol vItu' 'oH 'e' Daj.

 

Ok, well, some of those words didn't translate well into Klingon, and who can say what the hell that elvish is, but I don't exactly know any native speakers of either, eh? =)

[Dash Lambda]

1 hour ago, dr_sepheroth said:

Klingon is a made up language that was invented by Mark Okrand.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klingon_language

 

It should be noted that Mark Okrand also invented the Romulan and Vulcan Languages.

Oh.

I knew there was actually a fairly complete (though limited) language developed for it, but I thought that was mostly just fans.

Well, at any rate, we've had subtitles for decades.

[dr_sepheroth]

Nah it's not just the fans, over 10,000 actors have been trained in the klingon language, around 700 have been trained in how to write in klingon. As for culture, Movies, Music, Songs, Games, Clothes, Cars, Housing it all exists in the style of Klingon and all utilising the same language. There are even different dialects of klingon.

 

As for the number of star trek fans that can speak klingon your talking hundreds of thousands of fans who can speak fluent klingon.