tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Feb 16 22:19:22 1994

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News Clipping



The following news clipping comes from the New York Times and the Los
Angeles Daily News and is provided for the personal use of the members of
this list.

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type: NYT (Copyright 1994 The New York Times)
priority: Regular
date: 02-17-94 1023EST
category: Entertainment and Culture
subject: BC AUDIO BOOKS LADN
title: TAPES TAKE TREKKERS TO NEW UNIVERSE
text: 

By KATE SEAGO
c.1994Los Angeles Daily News
       LOS ANGELES -- reH Suvrup SuvwI'`a': A great warrior is always
prepared.
       And if that warrior is a fan of the television and film
phenomenon ``Star Trek,'' he can now be prepared to speak Klingon
at the next Trekker convention.
       Just in case you've missed the ``Star Trek'' universe, a few
explanations are in order. Klingons are a warrior race who were the
bad guys in the 1960s TV series and in early ``Trek'' movies. Now,
with the hit TV show ``Star Trek: The Next Generation,'' the
Klingons have become part of the Federation (the good guys), and
Trek fans have embraced them anew.
       Marc Okrand, the linguist who created the Klingon language for
``Star Trek III'' and subsequent projects, said last week that
``Klingons have become a major force in `Star Trek' fandom.'' Now,
using two audiotapes patterned after real-life foreign-language
tutorials, fans can learn the vocabulary and syntax that Okrand
created. ``I go to conventions, and people are speaking Klingon,''
Okrand said.
       ``Conversational Klingon'' (60 minutes; $11) and ``Power
Klingon: Mastering the Language of Warriors'' (60 minutes; $12),
both from Simon & Schuster Audio, follow the familiar pattern of
tapes used to learn more terrestrial languages: a narrator -- in
this case, Michael Dorn, who portrays the Klingon Worf in ``Star
Trek: The Next Generation'' -- explains the phrase to be learned;
and a language expert, here Okrand, speaks the phrase and explains
proper inflection and the fine points of grammar.
       Except for a few words of Klingon on the second tape, Dorn (who
declined to comment for this story) does not read Klingon phrases.
       ``We wanted to make him the teacher because he's identified with
the Klingons,'' Okrand said.
       Okrand said that he and Dorn recorded separately, with Okrand in
New York and Dorn in Los Angeles, where ``Star Trek: The Next
Generation'' is filmed. ``In fact, one of my favorite things about
recording both of the tapes is where it was done: It was recorded
in Carnegie Hall. I think that's neat. It was a little room in the
back, but it still was Carnegie Hall.''
       Okrand said each tape took a day to record, and he found it
interesting as he learned the technique.
       ``Some of the things the producer picked up on were things I'd
have picked up on... like I put the emphasis on the wrong word, so
it threw the meaning of the sentence off. But there were other
things; like, I have a tendency to talk very fast, or I would slur
words together.... Little things to make sure it came out very
clearly, so people could understand it. There are a lot of things
to think about.''
       And he said he had to learn to catch the rhythm of lines written
on the second tape by co-writer Barry Levine: ``When it was lines
originally written by me, I knew exactly where I wanted to put the
stress. It was a totally different process.''
       The ``Conversational Klingon'' tapes, written specifically for
audio, were an outgrowth of Okrand's book ``The Klingon
Dictionary.''
       ``Conversational Klingon'' is a tourist guide, giving phrases
commonly encountered by travelers. For example, there is this
advice on shopping, as read by Dorn: ``There is no haggling. There
is also no browsing. A common saying among Klingon merchants is,
`Buy or die.''' (Okrand demonstrates the phrase.) ``If a merchant
says this to you, spending a few credits to buy the first thing you
see is probably a good idea.''
       ``Power Klingon'' has the flavor of instructional materials
released in the late 1980s to teach Japanese to American
businessmen. Okrand said that is intentional; that along with
maintaining the Klingon persona, the producers ``also had a notion
of Japanese samurai warriors going around greeting each other.''
       Phrases -- some of which are reprinted in an included booklet --
include curses (``Your face looks like a collapsed star!'') and
toasts (``May you always find a bloodworm in your glass!'').
       Humor is a big part of both tapes, and Okrand said, ``I think a
reason the Klingons have caught on is that they are these ferocious
primal types, but they're also funny. In order to be a good
Klingon, you have to take yourself very, very seriously, to the
point of being funny to someone on the outside. And so in
describing the Klingons and their language, you can say some not
very serious things in this pseudo-serious tone -- and it comes off
as being funny.''
       Okrand, who holds a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of
California, Berkeley -- ``and not studying Klingon or Vulcan,'' he
joked -- works full time creating closed captioning for television.
He began his association with ``Star Trek'' with the second film.
``In the original TV series, they never spoke Klingon,'' Okrand
said. ``They referred to it; there's even an episode where they say
`Everyone in the galaxy is learning Klingonese.'''
       James Doohan, the actor who portrayed ``Scottie'' in the
original series, had created a few lines of Klingon dialogue for
the first film, ``Star Trek: The Motion Picture,'' and Okrand built
on that beginning. ``They had in mind to make some language that
was strange and otherworldly. The primary concern was the
phonetics; they wanted it to sound really good -- and it does. It
doesn't sound like any Earth language at all.''
       ``Due to a series of coincidences and flukes, I was in L.A. when
they needed someone to create four lines of Vulcan for `Star Trek
II,''' he explained. ``I thought that was the end of my connection
with `Star Trek.'''
       But Okrand was called back to create Klingon dialogue for the
third, fifth and sixth ``Star Trek'' movies, and also has worked on
``Star Trek: The Next Generation.''
       ``When I got involved in `Star Trek III,' I went back to `Star
Trek: The Motion Picture' and listened to those lines, wrote them
down phonetically,'' Okrand said. ``I wrote down the subtitles, and
said, `This is the start. Here is a sentence that means something.'
       ``I imposed a grammatical structure on it. If there was a
three-syllable phrase, I didn't know whether that was one, two or
three words, so I decided arbitrarily.
       ``So I had a list of some sounds, and a list of some words, and
a primitive idea of how the grammar works. And I just expanded on
that.''
       Okrand said that there are no real-world language words or
grammatical structures used in Klingon, but that his background
includes studies in American Indian, Chinese and Southeast Asian
languages.
       Klingon, the language invented as part of a film script, has
taken on a life of its own outside ``Star Trek'' fandom. Okrand
said there are electronic bulletin boards on CompuServe and on
Internet devoted to the language, and it's popping up in academic
circles, too, in linguistics classes and language labs.
       ``I know several classes where it's incorporated into the class,
where they play a little bit of the tapes, or a video of the movies
and then have the students transcribe it, to learn how to
transcribe phonetically.''
       And some ``Star Trek'' fans have immersed themselves in the
language. Okrand said a Klingon Language Institute now exists, made
up of Trek hobbyists and amateur and professional linguists. Okrand
said the Institute publishes a quarterly journal, and has sponsored
a Klingon palindrome contest. Efforts also are under way, said
Okrand, to translate Shakespeare and the Bible into Klingon, and he
regularly receives requests for new vocabulary and grammar.
       Why translate the Bible into Klingon? ``I don't know why,''
Okrand said with a laugh.
       Now that Okrand has created the language, ``Star Trek'' fans and
linguists insist he play by his own rules. ``With Klingon, there
wasn't anyone to say I said it right or wrong, because I invented
it. Now there are people all over the place who know about it.''
       Said Okrand: ``I wouldn't say I'm fluent; I'm conversant. It's
like anything else; if you don't use it all the time, you forget
stuff. I don't speak it every day -- although there are people who
do.''

       

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