Wednesday, May 14, 2003

US COUNTY SEEKS KLINGON INTERPRETER

This is a great story (or should have been). Multnomah county in Oregon recently advertised for medical health language interpreters to help non-English speaking patients who turn up at county health institutions. Officials included Klingon (yep, as in Star Trek) as one of the langauges for which they needed interpreters on a call-off basis.

"[T]he office that treats county mental health patients wants to be prepared in case a client arrives in an emergency room gabbing in the galactic language."

"[I}f a patient speaks only Klingon, the county must respond with a Klingon interpreter. Officials have decided to include it with about 55 languages, some of which, such as Russian and Vietnamese, are widely spoken, and some, such as Dari and Tongan, are seldom spoken."

The local paper picked up the story and it soon spread to the press wires and CNN.

Trouble is that the story is not true. Or at least, it is half true. Turns out the guys advertsiing the job were having a bit of fun.

We said, 'What the heck, let's throw it in,' " Jelusich says. "It doesn't cost us any money."

Shame.

:: Posted by pete @ 12:59