![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
webofevilI photocopied this story at the time but only found it again recently. The traditional WSJ woodcut portrait is from the original.
From The Wall Street Journal, 13 June 1994:
Star Trek Fans Translate Bible Into Truly Alien Tongue; Spats Arise Over Efforts
Citing deep philosophical differences with fellow scholars, Glen Proechel has resigned from his Bible-translation group.
“We have very, very different goals,” says Prof. Proechel, a language instructor at the University of Minnesota. The rift will result in two translations of the Bible for a civilisation that, until now, has lacked The Word in its own language: the Klingon language.
Klingons, for those who’ve been off the planet for the past 30 years, are a fictitious alien race from television’s “Star Trek” series. Prof. Proechel is now working alone on his Klingon translation, a paraphrase of the Good Book. Rivals are writing a literal translation.
Star-Struck Enterprise
“It’s not going to make any sense,” Mr Proechel says of the literal Klingon version. “It will be describing things that don't exist in their culture.”
But Klingon literalists disagree. “You don't mess around with the Bible,” even if the warriorlike Klingon vocabulary is void of Biblical concepts like mercy and compassion, says Dr. Lawrence Schoen, a linguist and literalist translator.
Klingons, and Star Trek, have been on television since 1965. But it was in 1984 that a linguist invented an official Klingon language for the movie “Star Trek III: The Search for Spock”, and it has been used in subsequent movies and TV episodes. For reasons that might escape some humans, Klingon has been picked up by avid earthling students, religious and otherwise.
The second annual Interstellar Language School, including a festival of Klingon poetry readings, will take place next month in Minnesota. There are Klingon newsletters, Klingon Internet conversation groups and audio cassettes with titles like “Conversational Klingon” and “Power Klingon”. Weddings have been performed in Klingon. An estimated quarter-million copies of The Klingon Dictionary have been sold.
Hyper Pace
“Klingon is the first artificial language to be adopted by popular culture,” says Dr Schoen, a professor of psycho-linguistics at Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia and founder of the non-profit Klingon Language institute. The three-year-old KLI, which claims 750 members, is working on several Klingon projects, including language correspondence courses and translations of all Shakespeare's works. (It will soon publish a Klingon “Hamlet”.)
Speaking Klingon, Dr. Schoen says, “is no more bizarre than sports trivia, or knowing the details of engines of cars that haven’t been manufactured in 20 years”.
The KLI, based in Flourtown, Pennsylvania, is heading the Klingon Bible project, which could take up to five years. It involves 10 scholars, led by a graduate of Yale Divinity School. They are getting help from a Lutheran Bible group; far from seeing the project as blasphemous, the group hopes it will draw attention to the challenges of translating the Bible for real people.
The scholars are translating directly into Klingon from Greek and other original Biblical languages. Among the hurdles: the fact that the Klingons have no word for “God” or “holy”, says Prof. Proechel. Conveying even basic concepts has proven difficult. “Their mode of thought is quite different,” he says. “Things that are part and parcel of the Judeo-Christian faith—forgiveness, atonement—don’t fit into Klingon thinking.” (Klingon thinking does, however, allow for words like choljaJ, a pony-tail holder, and butlh, a phrase meaning “dirt under fingernails”.)
Asterisk Swarms
Until recently, Prof. Proechel was part of the team but he has since strayed from the flock. He is working on what he calls a “retelling of the New Testament in the world which the Klingons understand”. For instance, there are plenty of lambs in the Bible, but none in the Klingon world, so he uses the word targh—a vicious, ugly, piglike animal. “But it is the most important animal to the Klingons, so it gets the message across,” he explains.
But that’s where the rift developed. Literalist scholars object to such substitutions, however in tune with Klingon culture they might be. “A targh bears about as much resemblance to a lamb as a charging rhino does,” says Kevin Wilson, general editor of the ELI Bible project. It is “not a pretty or docile animal”, says Mr. Wilson, who favors a more descriptive translation that means small farm animal.
The problem is that there are only 2,000 words in the Klingon vocabulary. With so few words to choose from, translators often disagree on the Klingon term closest to the meaning of the original. Consider the second line of the Lord’s Prayer. The literal camp uses the Klingon, “ghoSjaj wo'llj, gaojaj Dochmey DaneHbogh” and translates it literally, “thy kingom come, thy will be done”. Prof. Proechel’s Klingon reads, “pongllj quaj(ij, wo'llj ghoSjaj”; he translates it, “May thy name be honored, may thy empire come.”
Cosmic Interpretations
The Bible has undergone other unorthodox translations, of course. The American Bible Society says it has been translated into 337 of an estimated 6,000 languages and dialects spoken on Earth. There are also rap translations, feminist versions, Cajun editions and a multimedia version in an MTV-like format. There are two versions of the Gospels in Esperanto, a turn-of-the-century language whose inventors hoped would become a universal tongue. (It hasn’t.)
“A multitude of curious things have been done with Scripture,” notes Gerald Studer, president of the International Bible Collectors Society. Mr. Studer has over 5,000 versions of the Bible, including the Gospels written in Liverpool slang, the New Testament supposedly corrected by spirits and the Book of Psalms written on 166 pages of animal skin. He eagerly awaits the Klingon translation.
Klingons may not be particularly articulate, but Klingon’s earthly scholars are quite picky about the Klingon language.
Like the French government, they are dead set against polluting the alien tongue with earthly borrowings. “We are sort of like the Academie Francaise”, the French agency charged with guarding the purity of French, says Dr. Schoen. “We’re doing what we can to keep it pure.” When faced with the need for a new Klingon word, translators are encouraged to simply recast the sentence using some of the 2,000 existing words. At last summer’s Klingon language camp, for instance, players at a softball game had to work around Klingon’s lack of equivalents for “safe” and “out”. The solution: yln, which is Klingon for “alive”, and Hegh, Klingon for “dead”.
When things get really desperate, scholars turn to Dr Marc Okrand, Klingon’s creator. Dr Okrand has studied native American tongues, Chinese and Southeast Asian languages, but says Klingon's “collection of grammatical elements is unique. This is not an Earth language.”
Officially, the Klingon dictionary is limited to words acquired through interviews with a Klingon prisoner named Maltz captured in the 23rd century, says Dr Okrand, who works att the National Captioning Institute in Falls Church, Virginia. But, in a pinch, Dr Okrand can beam up a few new phrases. “From time to time,” admits Dr. Schoen, the Klingon purist, Dr Okrand “has agreed to review our wish lists and discover new words”.
From The Wall Street Journal, 13 June 1994:
Star Trek Fans Translate Bible Into Truly Alien Tongue; Spats Arise Over Efforts
Citing deep philosophical differences with fellow scholars, Glen Proechel has resigned from his Bible-translation group.
“We have very, very different goals,” says Prof. Proechel, a language instructor at the University of Minnesota. The rift will result in two translations of the Bible for a civilisation that, until now, has lacked The Word in its own language: the Klingon language.
Klingons, for those who’ve been off the planet for the past 30 years, are a fictitious alien race from television’s “Star Trek” series. Prof. Proechel is now working alone on his Klingon translation, a paraphrase of the Good Book. Rivals are writing a literal translation.
Star-Struck Enterprise
“It’s not going to make any sense,” Mr Proechel says of the literal Klingon version. “It will be describing things that don't exist in their culture.”
But Klingon literalists disagree. “You don't mess around with the Bible,” even if the warriorlike Klingon vocabulary is void of Biblical concepts like mercy and compassion, says Dr. Lawrence Schoen, a linguist and literalist translator.
Klingons, and Star Trek, have been on television since 1965. But it was in 1984 that a linguist invented an official Klingon language for the movie “Star Trek III: The Search for Spock”, and it has been used in subsequent movies and TV episodes. For reasons that might escape some humans, Klingon has been picked up by avid earthling students, religious and otherwise.
The second annual Interstellar Language School, including a festival of Klingon poetry readings, will take place next month in Minnesota. There are Klingon newsletters, Klingon Internet conversation groups and audio cassettes with titles like “Conversational Klingon” and “Power Klingon”. Weddings have been performed in Klingon. An estimated quarter-million copies of The Klingon Dictionary have been sold.
Hyper Pace
“Klingon is the first artificial language to be adopted by popular culture,” says Dr Schoen, a professor of psycho-linguistics at Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia and founder of the non-profit Klingon Language institute. The three-year-old KLI, which claims 750 members, is working on several Klingon projects, including language correspondence courses and translations of all Shakespeare's works. (It will soon publish a Klingon “Hamlet”.)Speaking Klingon, Dr. Schoen says, “is no more bizarre than sports trivia, or knowing the details of engines of cars that haven’t been manufactured in 20 years”.
The KLI, based in Flourtown, Pennsylvania, is heading the Klingon Bible project, which could take up to five years. It involves 10 scholars, led by a graduate of Yale Divinity School. They are getting help from a Lutheran Bible group; far from seeing the project as blasphemous, the group hopes it will draw attention to the challenges of translating the Bible for real people.
The scholars are translating directly into Klingon from Greek and other original Biblical languages. Among the hurdles: the fact that the Klingons have no word for “God” or “holy”, says Prof. Proechel. Conveying even basic concepts has proven difficult. “Their mode of thought is quite different,” he says. “Things that are part and parcel of the Judeo-Christian faith—forgiveness, atonement—don’t fit into Klingon thinking.” (Klingon thinking does, however, allow for words like choljaJ, a pony-tail holder, and butlh, a phrase meaning “dirt under fingernails”.)
Asterisk Swarms
Until recently, Prof. Proechel was part of the team but he has since strayed from the flock. He is working on what he calls a “retelling of the New Testament in the world which the Klingons understand”. For instance, there are plenty of lambs in the Bible, but none in the Klingon world, so he uses the word targh—a vicious, ugly, piglike animal. “But it is the most important animal to the Klingons, so it gets the message across,” he explains.
But that’s where the rift developed. Literalist scholars object to such substitutions, however in tune with Klingon culture they might be. “A targh bears about as much resemblance to a lamb as a charging rhino does,” says Kevin Wilson, general editor of the ELI Bible project. It is “not a pretty or docile animal”, says Mr. Wilson, who favors a more descriptive translation that means small farm animal.
The problem is that there are only 2,000 words in the Klingon vocabulary. With so few words to choose from, translators often disagree on the Klingon term closest to the meaning of the original. Consider the second line of the Lord’s Prayer. The literal camp uses the Klingon, “ghoSjaj wo'llj, gaojaj Dochmey DaneHbogh” and translates it literally, “thy kingom come, thy will be done”. Prof. Proechel’s Klingon reads, “pongllj quaj(ij, wo'llj ghoSjaj”; he translates it, “May thy name be honored, may thy empire come.”
Cosmic Interpretations
The Bible has undergone other unorthodox translations, of course. The American Bible Society says it has been translated into 337 of an estimated 6,000 languages and dialects spoken on Earth. There are also rap translations, feminist versions, Cajun editions and a multimedia version in an MTV-like format. There are two versions of the Gospels in Esperanto, a turn-of-the-century language whose inventors hoped would become a universal tongue. (It hasn’t.)
“A multitude of curious things have been done with Scripture,” notes Gerald Studer, president of the International Bible Collectors Society. Mr. Studer has over 5,000 versions of the Bible, including the Gospels written in Liverpool slang, the New Testament supposedly corrected by spirits and the Book of Psalms written on 166 pages of animal skin. He eagerly awaits the Klingon translation.
Klingons may not be particularly articulate, but Klingon’s earthly scholars are quite picky about the Klingon language.
Like the French government, they are dead set against polluting the alien tongue with earthly borrowings. “We are sort of like the Academie Francaise”, the French agency charged with guarding the purity of French, says Dr. Schoen. “We’re doing what we can to keep it pure.” When faced with the need for a new Klingon word, translators are encouraged to simply recast the sentence using some of the 2,000 existing words. At last summer’s Klingon language camp, for instance, players at a softball game had to work around Klingon’s lack of equivalents for “safe” and “out”. The solution: yln, which is Klingon for “alive”, and Hegh, Klingon for “dead”.
When things get really desperate, scholars turn to Dr Marc Okrand, Klingon’s creator. Dr Okrand has studied native American tongues, Chinese and Southeast Asian languages, but says Klingon's “collection of grammatical elements is unique. This is not an Earth language.”
Officially, the Klingon dictionary is limited to words acquired through interviews with a Klingon prisoner named Maltz captured in the 23rd century, says Dr Okrand, who works att the National Captioning Institute in Falls Church, Virginia. But, in a pinch, Dr Okrand can beam up a few new phrases. “From time to time,” admits Dr. Schoen, the Klingon purist, Dr Okrand “has agreed to review our wish lists and discover new words”.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-07-03 10:57 am (UTC)Revolve
Good as New
I love that shit.
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2008-07-03 12:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-03 12:18 pm (UTC)Which, I notice, is not of Lt Cdr Worf from the popular TV serieses TNG and DS9, but his grandfather, Col Worf, from the popular fillum Star Trek Something: Somethingsomethingsomething. Shall I just die now and save everyone the bother?
Truly Old News ...
Date: 2008-07-03 12:56 pm (UTC)I suspect Sun Tzu's The Art of War, Robert Greene's The 48 Laws of Power, von Clausewitz' On War and Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince are likeliest to be next to land on the Klingon grammarians' desk.
Do the same people who laugh at the idea of a Klingon, Esperanto, Lojban or Lolcats translation of the Bible also consider it amusing that the same book appears in a host of other languages, is available right around the world, and that the English language version to which they refer came from Latin and Greek sources, themselves derived from Aramaic and Hebrew?
Historically, when the first presses appeared and the Bible was translated into "common" English, scorn and ridicule were at that time heaped upon those who sought to translate the Latin version into the familiar vernacular English language form we know today. Even the Latin Bible itself, the translation made by Jerome at the command of Pope Damasus I, is known as the "Vulgate" from versio vulgata, or "common version."
There's nothing empty or demeaning about learning languages, or devising new ones. After all, the concept of language is regarded as one of the signature hallmarks of sentience, along with tool use and reasoning.
Re: Truly Old News ...
From:Nothing amusing
From: