A number of people have contacted me today asking why I haven’t commented on the numerous news stories (click on each link) about a version of Sophos Anti-Virus available in the Klingon language.
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There have even been some furious discussions regarding whether the correct Klingon grammar has been used in the product (trust me, you never want to upset a Klingon’s grandma..) as you can read on klingon.org.
The reason why I haven’t been able to respond to umpteen emails, numerous Tweets on the subject, and whether or not the “-ghach suffix is allowed on a verb without another suffix” is that I’ve been stuck in meetings for most of the day with our legal eagles and various parties.
So, here are the facts – hopefully they may answer some questions:
1) From time-to-time Sophos looks into creating bespoke software for particular groups, rather than make them available to the masses. We were asked by a potential customer to investigate whether it was possible to translate our software into Klingon, and Klingon Anti-Virus was produced as a test by our techies. Although the software is finished it wasn’t supposed to have been made available to the world at large – some of you have noticed that of the text on the webpage was unfinished. We’ve fixed that now, and added some additional information.
2) We translated the software with help from naHQun, a member of the Klingon Language Institute (KLI). I’m sure those of you with a good knowledge of the language will agree that naHQun (who also goes by the name of “Michael”) did a great job.
By the way, naHQun’s next translation project is the Klingon Kama Sutra. Seriously.
3) As the Klingon Anti-Virus software is being widely linked to, we’re not going to remove it for now. You can still grab a copy if you like.
4) Which might well upset some people. Because earlier today Sophos received a rather hard-nosed communication from a certain party seemingly trying to bully us into removing the Klingon Anti-Virus software from our site. We think that’s daft, so we won’t be doing it.
Live long and prosper. Any questions, email [email protected].
