tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Apr 17 10:08:10 2002

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing



[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]

Re: Alphabet/ new(old) klingon



At 09:14 2002-04-17 -0400, you wrote:
>This is what we refer to as /par Hol/ (short for Paramount Hol)

On a similarly gripey note: every so often, one of the series needs people 
who speak an alien language that's not autotranslated into 
English.  Example: a few weeks back, the Menk:
   http://www.startrek.com/library/ent_episodes/episodes_ent_detail_122511.asp

So a writer or whoever goes and makes up some lines of not-English for the 
aliens to speak, fine, but then they cast apparently monolingual Americans, 
who then enunciate the not-English with perfect American vowels.  (Almost 
as bad as the time I took Swahili with a bunch of people with thick 
Southern accents.  Fine vowels for English, but carried over into Swahili, 
it was like nails on chalkboard.)

Since Paramount casts and shoots the Star Trek series in L.A., you think 
they could manage to scare up some people there who would could do 
non-English phonetics, so that not every bit of Alienese will sound like 
Berlitz in space.  One is tempted to use the word "sloppy" in such cases.

But then, it's free television, and you get what you pay for.

--
Sean M. Burke    http://www.spinn.net/~sburke/



Back to archive top level