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A Klingon Christmas Carol

Posted by samzenpus on from the not-so-tiny-tim dept.

Have you always wished that Christmas classics were written in Klingon? If so, then a theater in Chicago has just the thing for you, "A Christmas Carol" in thIngan Hol, the language of the Klingon race. Written by Christopher O. Kidder and Sasha Walloch, the play features English Supertitles, and narrative analysis from The Vulcan Institute of Cultural Anthropology. "The story of Ebeneezer Scrooge is eternal and universal. But that alone isn't what does it. Also, Star Trek has worked its way into the fabric of American pop culture so much, that even those people who aren't Trekkies (or, Trekkers) understand what's going on," Kidder says.

2 of 170 comments (clear)

  1. Re:You might want to double check your work... by qurgh · · Score: 5, Informative

    "taH pagh taHbe' ..." is taken from the Klingon Hamlet. The translation is correct.

    The Klingon translator you used does not translate Klingon grammatically, it just appears to replace Klingon words with English words without respecting Klingon grammar. There are no computer based translation tools for Klingon.

    "Daq taH joq ghobe' Daq taH" means "It survives the site, it waves/flutters, no, it survives the site".

    While "taH pagh taHbe', DaH mu'tlheghvam vIqelnIS" means "To survive or to not survive, now I must consider that question."

    And thanks to Slashdot for covering this, I'm one of the co-translators. This years show was a lot of fun!

  2. Re:You might want to double check your work... by ragdyann422 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Who cares? Folks can laugh as much as they want to. I was just an actor who wanted to do something fun and not really all that into Star Trek going into this. Their laughing at us doesn't change the fact that people came to see our show & had a blast. And it doesn't change how much fun we as a cast had doing it. Is it ridiculous? It could be considered as such. Revlayle is absolutely correct though - publicity is publicity, no matter glowing or groaning. The folks who want to dismiss it will always dismiss it. The others will come see it out of fandom or curiosity. The show itself does the rest. So again I say, if this is lame, I'll raise a glass & say Qapla'. It's not like we don't have a sense of humor about it ourselves.