tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Feb 01 14:38:27 1998
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Re: STVI dialogue
On Sun, 1 Feb 1998, Mark E. Shoulson wrote:
|This has probably already been asked, but does anyone have a decent
|transcription of Uhura's murdering of tlhIngan-Hol in ST VI: The
|Undiscovered Country? Where she's pretending to be "condemning" stuff for
|Rura Pente? Just wondering.
Need you ask? Here is the scene from my own transcript, including comments
and alternate sources:
STAR TREK VI: THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY
The translations in parentheses are the (subtitles) as they appear in
the movie followed by the [closed captions] in brackets, which was
helpful in places where there were no subtitles. Angle brackets indicate
<uncertainties> in the transcription due to muttered dialogue,
background music or sound effects. I have added excerpts in {curly
brackets} from J.M. Dillard's novelization which may reflect an earlier
version of Nicholas Meyer & Denny Martin Flinn's screenplay (story by
Leonard Nimoy, Nicholas Meyer and Denny Martin Flinn) used by the
novelist in her adaptation.
Crossing the Klingon border at Morska Outpost:
Kesla: <morska jIH> ("dialect" ??)
(This is listening post Morska.)
[morski ge] (what I heard)
Kesla: Dujvetlh 'oH nuq? rIn.
(What ship is that? ...over.)
<dujvetz oh nook? reen.> ("dialect" as heard)
[Dujvetlh 'oH nug? rIn.] (captions)
{"What ship is that? Identify yourselves."}
Uhura: tongDuj Ursva maH. jav Hogh maH Qo'noSvo'. rIn. [sic!]
(We am thy freighter...Ursva... Six weeks out of...Kronos.
[Over.])
{According to the novel, she was speaking in an "odd,
archaic dialect."}
Kesla: nuqDaq ghoS? rIn. ("dialect")
(What is your destination? Over.)
[nugDaq ghoS? rIn.] (captions)
<nookdak gos? reen.> ("dialect" as heard)
{"Whither are you bound?" (responding in the same dialect)}
Uhura: rura' penteDaq Soj Doch <yuS> vIqIch. rIn [sic!]
(Rura Penthe. We is condemning food...things and supplies.
Over.)
{We is condemning food...things and...supplies to Rura Penthe.
Over.}
[rura penteDag...] (captions)
(She meant vIHIj "I'm delivering.")
Kesla: ghewmey SuqQo' ("dialect")
(Don't catch any bugs!)
{i.e. "Good luck in avoiding border officials!" (smuggler's
code according to the novel)}
In her autobiography _Beyond Uhura: Star Trek and Other Memories_ (New
York: Putnam's, 1994), Nichelle Nichols has this to say about her
experience learning tlhIngan Hol (pp. 293-4):
"Before we began filming, a great deal of preparation went into writing
a speech for Uhura to deliver in Klingon. Of course, with her being a top
linguist, it should have been a snap, especially since the professional
linguist who developed a Klingon language wrote it and taped it for me to
learn phonetically. Ever since Star Trek IV, there had been a lot of
pressure to retain some humor wherever possible, so midway through, Uhura's
perfect, dramatic speech was scrapped. In its place is a scene where the
Enterprise is hailed and questioned by a Klingon vessel, leaving it up to
Uhura to convince them that the crew is Klingon and on a mission of mercy.
[Writer/director Nicholas] Meyer envisioned Uhura at her console,
surrounded by piles of musty old books, desperately paging to find the
correct words. At first I protested: Books in the twenty-third century? On
the Starship Enterprise? Maybe something on CD ROM, perhaps. Even
microfilm! But Meyer, who knew me well enough by then, replied wearily,
"Nichelle, just don't question me on *this*."
"I stopped myself, and stifled a chuckle. It was the last movie, after
all. Forget the fact, which Trekkers would not permit us to do anyway, that
Kirk had known enough Klingon in the third film to get himself beamed
aboard a bird of prey. Or that the Klingons had so thoroughly mastered
English that throughout our dinner, Christopher Plummer's General Chang
spouts Shakespeare (which he insists is best appreciated in the original
Klingon) at the drop of a gravity boot."
[J.M. Dillard explained the need for books in her novelization by having
Valeris and her co-conspirators sabotage the Universal Translator and
erase all Klingon linguistic data from all the Enterprise's computers. It
also seems Meyer later changed the passing Klingon vessel to a stationary
Klingon border outpost after he filmed this scene on the Enterprise
bridge (or Nichols misremembered the explanation given the actors at the
time).]
Voragh