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A Klingon Christmas Carol
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.
Because Dickens' A Christmas Carol is the universal aspect.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
You lost me at "in Klingon". Lame.
Eh, you probably don't have any honor anyway....
It claims that a human female was somehow involved in this.
How do they explain Tim's (presumably) Klingon parents not shooting his lame, shorty, sickly butt out the nearest air lock as soon as his illness manifested itself?
And for that matter, why doesn't Klingon Bob or Ebenezer's nephew simply challenge Ebenezer to bat'leth deul, cut his head off, and take over the company? Just sayin'....
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Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
The whole Christmas Carol story is about the spiritual redemption of a man who spent his entire life in pursuit of wealth sacrificing his "soul" in the process and not helping his fellow man.
A Klingon would consider the sickly, weak and poor to be not worthy and therefore should be killed. A Klingon would have killed Tiny Tim or Tiny Tim would have died a honorable death in battle - maybe as a suicide pilot or something.
If anything, a Klingon Christmas Carol would have Bob Cratchit haunted and the ghosts would have convinced him to kill Tiny Tim and take over Scrooge's operation by kicking his ass.
When are we going to see Bohemian Rhapsody done in the original Klingon?
Translated to English: "Mama, I killed a hyoo man, put a batleth in his head, gave a twist and now he's dead. Mama, now my life's begun! More honor to our house has no one done!"
in thIngan Hol, the language of the Klingon race
Wait, does this mean that every time says "only complete nerds speak the klingon language.'", I can correct them by saying "actually, it's 'thlngan Hol'"? Fantastic!
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
I'm just a Klingon from a dishonored family.
He's just a Klingon from a dishonored family. Just stab him in the heart, so he can reach Stovokor.
Sorrry, couldn't resist, you inspired me.
-- A computer without COBOL and Fortran is like a piece of chocolate cake without ketchup and mustard
"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!
Already done. Threw together an initial translation in 2001, concentrating on translation and syllable matching but not rhyming anything.
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Reckoned if any language had a translation for "Mama, I killed a man, Put a gun against his head, pulled my trigger. Now he's dead." Klingon would.
It's published on the net, but I reckon it's rather rough. I may consider returning to it and cleaning it up.
As slashdotting my own site ain't too brilliant an idea I'll not provide a direct link, but include some of it below.
Ahem:
teH'a' yInvam pagh
tojbogh pa'Daq jIHtaH'a'
mujon pumbogh puH
ghu'vam vItvo' vIHaw'laHbe'
mInDu'lIj poSmoH
chalDaq yInuD 'ej yIlegh
loDHom mIpHa' jIH, chovup vIneHbe'mo'
jIpo' 'ej nom jIvIHlaH
HoSchugh SuS pagh pujchugh SuS
chay' HoS SuS? vISaHbe'! jIHvaD SuS HoS vISaHbe'law'
-jIHvaD
SoSoy. qen loD vIchotpu'
nachDajDaq HIch (vI)vIHmoHpu'
chu'wI' chu'chu'pu', DaH Heghpu'.
SoSoy. qen taghpu' yInwIj
'ach DaH yInwIj naQ vIpolHa'chu'pu'
tlhoy paS, pawlI' HeghwIj
jIHeghvIpmo', bIr pIpwIj
DaHjaj 'oy'law'taH porghwIj
jIHvaD veqlarghHom poltaH veqlargh 'e' vISov
jIHaw'nIS neH - naDevvo' jIHaw'nISchu' neH
pagh vISaH 'e' vItu'
'e' leghlaH vay'
pagh vISaH 'e' vItu'. jIHvaD, pagh vISaH 'e' vItu'
Correct me if I'm wrong, qurgh.... but I believe Christopher Plummer didn't like the way the literal translation sounded... so it was re adapted "To continue or not to continue". ~Jen~ Klingon Christmas Chicago cast member
This is, in fact, what the show is. A direct translation wouldn't work. Here's the official description of the show from our website:
"Scrooge has no honor, nor any courage. Can three ghosts help him to become the true warrior he ought to be in time to save Tiny Tim from a horrible fate? Performed in the Original Klingon with English Supertitles, and narrative analysis from The Vulcan Institute of Cultural Anthropology.
The Dickens classic tale of ghosts and redemption adapted to reflect the Warrior Code of Honor and then translated into tlhIngan Hol (That's the Klingon Language)."
-- Forest (Sound Design/KCC Twin Cities for 3 of the years the show has run and light design the other year)
Go Badgers! -- #include "std/disclaimer.h"
Yes.
The original line was yIn pagh yInbe', but Plummer didn't like the way it sounded, so Okrand went back and tried again with taH pagh taHbe', which Plummer accepted.
It's also been said that a stitch in time saves nine, and that curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back. Neither of those are any more universally true than your aphorism.
"If you build it they will come," worked great as a tagline for a Kevin Costner movie. As a product strategy, it's a recipe for shitty sales and a slow death from customer apathy.
So let me get this straight. Our goofy little Klingon show is lame. We had massive coverage in the Chicago area in all of the major papers (Trib, Sun-Times, Daily Herald) and had tv spots on WGN twice. We got the front page of the Wall Street Journal which lead to coverage by the BBC World Service, CBC, London Times, & Daily Telegraph... and then last night we got mentioned in Conan O'Brien's monologue.... and the night before that we got mentioned in Jimmy Fallon's monologue.... Quite frankly, if this is your definition of lame, then I don't want to be anything but lame for the rest of my life.
You seem stuck on the notion that "explaining heart surgery to someone" requires that they have gone through 8 years of medical school & residencies & internships before you can even begin. It doesn't. Teaching someone to perform heart surgery isn't required for them to understand what it is, and what function it serves.
That's a very simplistic point of view and not what I was referring too and the nature of the discussion is inhibiting the actual discussion because an analogy that is easy to understand will not do justice to the subject.
The best I can do for an analogy is starting a car in the winter. Under normal circumstances, it should start up. If however, there is a problem, then there is a whole host of possibilities. Is it spark or gas? Is it a computer issue? Is it cranking? Battery? Fuel filter? MAP sensor? Choke? one or more of these system? Remember, when its cold, these have to work more or less right, or it will never start.
If you called me and said, "I can't start my car, can you help me?" It is very unlikely that, unless you know cars well enough, that no amount of explanation of what to listen or look for will do you any good. You don't have the knowledge or experience to understand. Different engines can sound differently with similar problems, but a knowledgeable ear will hear whether or not the spark plugs are igniting the gas sporadically. It is almost impossible to describe the subtle difference, but if you've diagnosed a few engines that you'll begin to pick up on the subtlety.
I know this is a low-tech example, but it is one that most people are familiar with. I could not tell you on the phone how to start your car. Unless you know about cars yourself, you have no hope in diagnosing the problem. I could tell you to check or replace X,Y,or Z, but I wouldn't actually be explaining it to you. You would be a part swapping monkey, not actually knowing why you were testing X,Y,or Z with regard to the situation in front of you.
In reality, a good mechanic can usually get the car started, sometimes with starter fluid if necessary, and tell you exactly why it won't start. It would be impossible to explain that whole process to you. I might say, you need new spark plugs and say that they are worn. I might say your ECM error was 300 on the engine, which means you need a new distributor cap.
Computer programs and operating systems are 10s of thousands of time more complex than a car engine. When things are broken, I can explain what you need to do, but don't have any illusion that you will understand the explanation of "why" unless you have some background in the subject.
It's funny that our knee-jerk reaction is to ridicule interest in the Klingon language, but the fact remains that nerd-deity Tolkien also created his own languages for Middle Earth.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
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.
How does one say "Do not feed the Trolls" in thIngan Hol/Klingon?