tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Sep 15 13:12:51 1996
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Well-written article in the Toronto Star
- From: Daniel Boese <[email protected]>
- Subject: Well-written article in the Toronto Star
- Date: Sun, 15 Sep 1996 15:49:59 -0400 (EST)
I've recently re-subscribed to the mailing list, and thought that you
might like to read this... Any mis-spellings are my own, not the
article's.
THE TORONTO STAR
Saturday, September 14, 1996
Page K8
How would you say 'Happy 30th' in Klingon?
By Janet I-Chin Tu
SPECIAL TO THE STAR
First, they get prominent roles as the
ultimate bad guys on the original /Star
Trek/ TV series. Then on /Star Trek: The
Next Generation/, Klingons are revealed
as an honorable warrior race with rich
traditions and history.
Now, faster than one can say "tlhIn-
gan maH!" ("We are Klingons!"), their
language is being touted as the fastest-
growing tongue in the galaxy.
Since 1992, more than 1,000 people
in 30 nations have joined the U.S.-
based Klingon Language Institute. In
addition to a Klingon dictionary, there
are audio tapes and language camps,
plus an academic journal and annual
conference dedicated to its study.
/Hamlet/ has been translated into
Klingon an dprojects are under way to
translate more of Shakespeare's works,
as well as the Bible.
Not bad for an artificial language
that sprang from a fictional culture on
a television show, even if that show is
/Star Trek/, which celebrated its 30th
anniversary on Sept. 8.
The Klingon language was created
by linguist Marc Okrand, 48, who
works full time at the National Cap-
tioning Institute in Washington, D.C.
Okrand first came to the attention of
/Star Trek/ producers when they were
looking for a linguist to create a few
lines of Vulcan dialogue for 1982's /Star
Trek II: The Wrath of Khan/.
A year later, the producers called on
Okrand again for the third movie -
this time to create Klingon dialogue.
The foundation Okrand was given:
snippets of guttural sounds created by
James Doohan (as Scotty the starship's
engineer), which passed as Klingon in
the first /Star Trek/ movie, and the dic-
tates that the language sound good as
well as guttural and that it be a real
language with words, systems of word
arrangement, sound patterns and
grammatical structures.
Believing enough /Star Trek/ fans
would be interested in a Klingon lan-
guage book - if only for fun -
Okrand published /Star Trek: The Klin-
gon Dictionary/ in 1985.
Eleven years later, the book has sold
about 250,000 copies and gone through
one revision and at least nine printings.
Okrand also has released two Klingon-
language audio tapes: /Conversational
Klingon/ and /Power Klingon/ (wherein
one learns the proper etiquette for do-
ing business with a Klingon).
This year, he published /Star Trek:
The Klingon Way: A Warrior's Guid/, a
book of Klingon proverbs and quotes,
and served as adviser for the CD-ROM
/Star Trek Klingon/ game.
Okrand regularly receives requests
for more words to add to the current
2,000 - most living languages have
about 200,000 words in common use -
and he tries to incorporate new words
into projects he does for /Star Trek/.
"I thought it would be something
people would look at from time to
time," Okrand says. "I'm surprised and
pleased at the seriousness with which
some people study it."
Getting Klingon language enthusi-
asts together was why Philadelphia
psychology professor Lawrence
Schoen formed the Klingon Language
Institute in 1992.
A friend gave him a copy of /The
Klingon Dictionary/ about six years ago
and he was hooked. Cruising the Inter-
net, Schoen found other people inter-
ested in the language, but no central-
ized forum. He decided, with a few
dozen others, to create KLI.
"It was intended to take up some
time, as a lark basically," he says. "I
didn't think it would really catch on."
But a letter from a KLI member to
/TV Guide/, pointing out the existence of
the group, started the publicity jugger-
naut rolling. Hundreds of people wrote
in, asking to join.
Today, KLI has members on every
continent. They range in age from 9 to
87 and work in occupations including
academia, law, and computer science.
The group has a by-mail language
course to supplement /The Klingon Dic-
tionary/ in teaching vocaabulary and
grammar. And it publishes an academ-
ic quarterly journal, /HolQeD/ (Linguis-
tics), which includes articles such as:
"Clipped Klingon: Addressing pets,"
and "Critique of article, lughbe'lugh-
choHmoHwI'qoq."
The journal is indexed by the Mod-
ern Language Association and is regis-
tered with the Library of Congress. KLI
also publishes /jatmey/ (/Scattered
Tongues/), a Klingon literary magazine.
It has translated /Hamlet/, the first
work in its ambitious Shakespeare pro-
ject, inspiried by a line in the sixth /Star
Trek/ movie implying that the original
Shakespeare was written in Klingon.
The group also is translating The Bi-
ble. Members plan to translate from
the original biblical languages (ancient
Greek and Hebrew, Aramaic) into Klin-
gon and, as with most interpretations
of The Bible, the project has led to a
scholarly rift.
KLI's Bible translation is being done
as a linguistic exercise, with as literal a
translation as possible. But Glen Proe-
chel, 58, a linguist, former KLI member
and director of week-long Klingon lan-
guage camps in Minnesota, is doing a
missionary translation, translating The
Bible into cultural terms more familiar
to Klingon culture.
Despite the academic rift, Shoen in-
sists it's all done in fun, as a hobby.
THE SEATTLE TIMES
--
Daniel Boese [email protected]
aka Deppob