New Bing Translator Option Lets You Translate... Klingon

We don’t know about you, but it happens all the time to us. We’re busy working and want/need to translate something into Klingon – and we just don’t know how, or we know how but don’t have the time. Well, problem solved. Starting today, Microsoft’s Bing search engine will include Klingon in its web-based translation service (and on Bing’s Windows Phone app). It’s all part of the expansive collaboration between Microsoft and Paramount Pictures. Paramount, of course, will release Star Trek Into Darkness this week and, without giving anything away, there be Klingons in the big-screen adventure.

Fans can count on Bing's Klingon translator to translate text into 41 languages. And if you happen to be a Klingon, or converse a bit in Klingon, words or phrases in the gutteral language may be translated into three dozen-plus languages.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Bing developed the translator with the assistance of both Eric Andeen and Marc Okrand. Andeen is a Microsoft engineer and one of the few people on the planet who can speak fluent Klingon. Okrand, of course, is the linguist and longtime Star Trek consultant who based the language on vocabulary originally created by Star Trek’s legendary Scotty, James Doohan, for Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

"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 L.A. Times. "This was a labor of love from a lot of different avenues."