The Klingon Language Version of the Bible is an experimental relexification of the World English Bible. It is not properly a translation, but a demonstration of what a tlhIngan Hol (Klingon Language) Bible would look like.

Why a Klingon Bible?

Once anyone hears of a project to make a Klingon Bible, the question that comes up is "why?" Certainly there is no need for such a version, as there is a need for a Bible in English, Spanish, German, or any other "real" language. There is no person who would only be able to access the scriptures in Klingon.

But in the study of artificial languages, translating standard works of literature like the Bible is often done, and for two reasons. First, it is a way to exercise and develop the language, and second, it helps to develop a body of literature in that language. This literature can then be used and referred to by people learning and using the language.

For some, there can be other benefits. Though this kind of translation might seem frivolous, the work of producing such a translation can have devotional value even if the translation is never used. The effort of reading the scriptures and considering their meaning for a translation cannot fail to benefit the translator by helping him or her develop a deeper understanding of the text.

The Klingon language community has produced at least three efforts in this direction. The Klingon Language Institute organized a long-term project to translate the Bible. Currently on hiatus, this project has yielded only a few books, for example, the Gospel of Mark. In addition, the Rev. Glen Prochel published a book, Good News for the Warrior Race: Vaj SeghvaD De' QaQ (now out of print), which presents the gospels and other selected scriptures in parallel with a Star Trek English paraphrase.

Lastly, the project presented here, the Klingon Language Version, is actually a relexification of the World English Bible and serves as a demonstration of what a complete Klingon Bible would look like. A table of the most frequently occuring words (used more than 100 times) was translated, word by word, into Klingon. This table was used to transform the Bible into Klingon. Though it is not a grammatical Klingon text (actually it is more of a pidgin-Klingon, mixing English vocabulary and grammar with Klingon) it does provide vocabulary which can be used in doing a proper Klingon translation.

Bruce V. Bracken, author of Üqoi, writes

I didn't know if you knew of this, but last Wednesday, I saw Blade Trinity, and noticed that Esperanto was used in a couple of scenes: the first was at a police station, where signs were written in English and Esperanto (e.g., Police Station and Policejo); the second instance was of a character watching an episode of Star Trek in Esperanto, with English subtitles. Kirk was in the scene, of course. ;)

Update, 12/27/04. Ansric writes in, "As I understand it, all the Blade movies have Esperanto in them, and the footage of Shatner is from Incubus. (See this AUXLANG post for more info.)"

I was very pleased to find your list of calculator words when in a hurry to generate a suitable word the other day. (I was also surprised that there seemed to be a scarcity of such lists on the Internet.) Since the middle 1970s when calculators appeared in schools, I have used these words in math lessons to teach factorization in a fun way. We would identify letters from digits, then compile a list of words: The record for a homework assignment approached 150 words, and I have known a pupil to generate nearly 100 in a 40-minute lesson.

I always understood that it was that started it all, and I assumed that it had begun in a letter to a magazine or newspaper.

Having factorized the word, my pupils would then incorporate the factors into a story. I remember that the story about 'LEgO' was a poser because the leading zero would not display in the number '0637'. In the end the castle that the handsome prince had built (with his factors) fell, divided into 100 pieces. It was made of....?

Much has been written here at Langmaker and on other sites, notably the Conlang community at LiveJournal, disparaging the ancient and noble letter K. Tolkien didn't like it and banned it from his Elvish languages. Many have labeled it harsh or ugly.

I like the letter K for a number of reasons which I will gladly enumerate:

1. It is very ancient, being included in the Phoenician and Etruscan alphabets (to name only two).
2. It is very runic. There is nothing like three neat straight lines for simplicity and ease of scribing or hacking with your handy knife, axe or deer antler. (This appeals to my masculine side.)
3. It is visually representative of the sound it represents. To me the | segment clearly symbolizes the closing of the glottis and the < segment neatly symbolizes the aspirated explosion of air bursting forth from the depth of one's throat. Put them together |< = K.
4. K for kool!

As for C, surely this confused and overused consonant deserves a rest. Does it sound like an S or a K, or even a CH? Is it followed by an A, O or U or by an E or an I (or an IE or EI)? People have even resorted to one of the most inelegant jottings - the cedilla - all in an attempt to clarify which of the numerous sounds of C they wish us to utter.

For all my aspirated glottal plosives, give me a K any day.

You are quoted as saying, "The community of hobbyists is a large one, with approximately 40,000 people in the United States having invented their own languages and some 250,000 having used model languages such as Esperanto, Quenya and Klingon." I and several others are curious as to how you arrived at this figure. That is, how do you know about how many conlangers there are in the US? Is this just purely an estimate, or is it based on some research or facts, or...something?

Just for some pointless fun, I decided to see if I could calculate the physical size of Jorge Luis Borges' supposedly infinite 'Library of Babel.'

Borges states that the number of books in the library is equal to 25^(40*80*410). This is roughly 1.956*10^1834097. Borges also states that the number of books per gallery of the library is 640. Let us assume that one gallery is 7m x 7m x 2m high, therefore one gallery has a volume of 98m^3.

Therefore, in one cubic light year of space, there is room for 8.64*10^45 galleries.

Therefore, the total volume of the library is roughly 2.26*10^1834051 cubic light years, or 1.2*10^1834018 times the volume of the known universe.