tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Apr 26 11:21:43 2002
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Re: Quote from Khamlet
juDmoS:
>Actually, maybe not... see, the "taH pagh taHbe'" quote was actually used in
>the movie... Christopher Plummer quoting Shakespeare from the original
>Klingon.. and the genesis of the Shakespeare Restoration Project, to boot...
Two stories from Klingon tradition:
In a brief interview during UPN's "Star Trek 25th Anniversary Special",
Marc Okrand talked about how he had to invent the verb {taH}. I didn't see
the show, but as I understand it Okrand had originally translated the line
as {yIn pagh yInbe'}, but when it came time to film the scene actor
Christopher Plummer (Chang) didn't think the line sounded "Klingon" (i.e.
guttural) enough, so the director asked him to rewrite it on the spot with
the cast and crew waiting. Okrand later reported at a qep'a' that when
they sprang this on him, he said to himself that no matter what, there was
no way he was going to put a copula (i.e. "to be") into Klingon, especially
not NOW and so he quickly adapted the existing verb suffix {-taH} into a
separate verb {taH} "continue, go on, endure" - complete with a guttural
/H/ that Plummer could emphasize for effect.
And in KGT (p. 194) we read about the dangers of not enunciating Klingon
properly:
"There is a story, perhaps apocryphal, of a non-Klingon actor who
attempted to
play the lead in the original Klingon version of Shakespeare's Hamlet
but was
shouted off the stage when he began the famous soliloquy by saying,
{taQ pagh
taQbe'} ("To be weird or not to be weird"), rather than the correct
{taH pagh
taHbe'} ("To be or not to be; literally", '[one] continues or [one]
does not
continue')."
I wonder... Which actor did Okrand have in mind when he wrote this? <g>
--
Voragh
Ca'Non Master of the Klingons