* * * * *
“You've not experienced Shakespeare until you've read it in the original …”
I have a feeling that a limited number of readers may find this interesting,
but I never know—more could find it interesting than I think. In any case,
it's a two part video on an analysis of the play Hamlet. The original Klingon
Hamlet!
Part 1 [1] gives the background story for _The Klingon Hamlet_ [2], giving a
context for how it came to exist in the first place (along with a brief
history of Klingons [3]—not the fictional history of Klingons but the actual
history of how the fictional race of beings known as the Klingons came to
exist in Star Trek), as well as the construction of the Klingon language [4].
It's interesting to note that Klingons consider Hamlet's speech in Act IV,
scene iv to be (heh) the key speech of the play (“O, from this time forth, My
thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!”), not Act III, scene i (“To be, or
not to be … ” or in Klingon, “taH pagh taHbe'”).
Part 2 [5] then goes onto a philosophical digression into translation in
general. It's known in Geek circles that Klingon does not have the verb “to
be,” and thus, the Klingon translation for “to be, or not to be” is literally
“to continue, or not continue.” But there are issues with translating Hamlet
into Spanish (two verbs for “to be”) or Mandarin (many forms of “to be”) and
how difficult it can be to move cultural works across culture.
[1]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gH-E3LsLnaw
[2]
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0671035789/conmanlaborat-20
[3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klingon#Design
[4]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klingon_language
[5]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEPUEVMCmeY
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