Universal Translator Working..please stand by.. (a translation of Palinese to Standard English)

[ddeclue]

Obscure 21st Century Earth language spoken in arctic area of North American continent known as "Palinese". Derivative of standard North American English, 20th century. Some elements of "valley girl" Californian dialect are evident... translation working please stand by..

Palinese:

"Sitting here in these chairs that I’m going to be proposing but in working with these governors who again on the front lines are forced to and it’s our privileged obligation to find solutions to the challenges facing our own states every day being held accountable, not being just one of many just casting votes or voting present every once in a while, we don’t get away with that."

Standard North American English: (what Palin was TRYING to say)

"As a sitting governor it is both my privilege and obligation to find solutions to the challenges facing my state every day. I am held accountable and forced to make hard decisions by the citizens of Alaska. I cannot simply be one amongst many casting a vote nor can I simply vote "present" from time to time. I cannot avoid difficult choices in the manner in which Obama has."

Translation complete..

Doug D.
Orlando, FL

[RevCheesehead]

1. Thank God.

Is this the same translater that once said "Ugly. Ugly bags of mostly water." ?

[ddeclue]

2. Yes...

Unfortunately the Universal Translator will accidentally inflate the apparent intelligence of some of those whose communications it translates.

In this particular case it added about 65 IQ points or alternatively about 450 points on the Verbal section of the Scholastic Aptitude Test.

:rofl:

[RevCheesehead]

8. 'tis a shame we didn't have it around for dubya.

Then again, I really didn't want to hear anything he had to say.

[ddeclue]

9. The universal translator was not quite so necessary as it is with Palinese.

W-speak is a language derivative of standard English in which subject verb agreement is non standard and often times inconsistently applied from sentence to sentence as in:

"Is our childrens learnin?"

Also note the non-standard manner of indicating plural vs. singular in this sentence.

Like in some other derivative languages spelling becomes phonetic and distorts from the original spelling based on local accent. In the cast of W-talk, it derives from the middle Texas region and final hard consonants are often times omitted.

Other features of W-speak include conflation of popular metaphors and aphorisms often in jumbled or misquoted form. These are best translated to standard English by use of context and careful observation of other more lucid statements by the speaker.

W-speak features the use of "campy" shorthand nicknames in place of pronouns or proper names. It is believed that this is a coping exercise by the speaker in an attempt to deal with an inability to remember names.

W-speak often times employs the use of interjective words, phrases or sentences which tend to disrupt the normal flow of thought in standard English. The best approach to translation of these interjectives is to ignore them during the main translation and then translate them separately as a form of subtext to the main dialogue.

W-speak tends to be spoken largely in the first person singular - the third person objective form is rarely exercised in W-speak.

Stylistically, W-speak also attempts to employ humor in expressing the message but to be properly employed, the humor used must require that only the speaker has the necessary information to find the statement humorous. The W-speaker must then laugh in a half hearted manner at the joke to complete the technique. Expert W-speakers follow the laugh by a smirking facial expression.

While W-speak is difficult for the average speaker of North American English to comprehend it is not impossible and with 8 years of daily exercise it is quite possible to become quite proficient in understanding and translation of W-speak in an interactive manner. It should not be necessary to translate W-speak with a universal translation system.

Constrasting W-speak with Palinese, it becomes quite clear that a universal translation system of some sort is the only option for tranlastion of Palinese if one hopes to understand and speak it in real time. As such it is classified as requiring a much higher degree of technical skill for manual translation than W-speak.

[RevCheesehead]

14. "heh-heh-heh"

:rofl:

[Delphinus]

15. Oh,

you are good!

[TheDebbieDee]

7. That episode was on last Sunday on Sci-Fi Channel!

I lol'd when the collective grains of sand said that!

[ddeclue]

12. "Darmok and Jalad At Tanagra"

:rofl:

[Berry Cool]

3. I am glad someone has found the Rosetta Stone

that will cut through all that verbal diarrhea.

[ddeclue]

5. Trying to understand Palin does make me feel much like these Star Trek characters in this scene:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RDzuJVV5jw

:rofl:

[ddeclue]

17. I put the Rosetta Stone in because I wanted to see

how long it would take someone here to recognize it.

Good job!

:)

Tranlating Palinese is much easier than writing and debugging software which is what I do professionally. I've had a lot of world travel and foreign language exposure and am reasonably fluent in Spanish and can get by in German and French if necessary (i.e. tourist level skills). All of these help in being able to speak Palinese. Palinese is much easier to learn than Korean. I spent three months there in 1998 and all I learned was a few phrases and their alphabet.

Right now I'm about to close out my visit to England for business and I'm reminded that there are subtle language differences here as well.

Doug D.

[greenmutha]

4. Thank you!

Trying to decipher Palin's "word salad" makes my head explode! :crazy:

And may I just say - DUzy! :applause:

[BumRushDaShow]

6. LOL

:rofl:

[merh]

10. do you have a link to her actual statement

I have to give it to one of her fans and ask the fan to please decipher it (that always pisses them off ;) ).

[ddeclue]

11. I first saw it here in another thread by LynnTheDem:

LynnTheDem got it from Mother Jones:

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2008/11/what_just_happened.html

[merh]

13. thank you kindly

:)

[Gabi Hayes]

16. this is good, too...just before the snip quoted in OP:

BLITZER: Another question. What are your new ideas on how to take the Republican Party out of this rut that it’s in right now? Give me one or two new ideas that you’re going to propose to these governors who have gathered here in this hotel.

PALIN: Well, a lot of Republican governors have really good ideas for our nation because we’re the ones there on the front lines being held accountable every single day in service to the people whom have hired us in our own states and the planks in our platform are strong and they are good for America. It’s all about free enterprise and respecting the ...

BLITZER: Does that mean you want to come up with a new Sarah Palin initiative that you want to release right now.