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.

Re:Not a Kilingon story.

[Korin43]

You might find this description [chitheatreaddict.com] interesting. They didn't just translate the words into Klingon, they also made the story more Klingon. From the link: "Most notably, Scrooge (here, SQuja’ — pronounced Sk-OOO-JA!) is suffering from a lack of courage and honor, rather than compassion and humanity. He’d rather hide out in his hole, grumpily counting his gold, than fight in battle."

Re:You might want to double check your work...

[qurgh]

"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!

Re:If it's a retelling based on Klingon culture...

[fgodfrey]

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)

Re:You might want to double check your work...

[ragdyann422]

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.