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