“taH pagh taHbe’. DaH mu’tlheghvam vIqeInIS.” – the translation of which, as speakers of Klingon will know, is “To be or not to be; that is the question.”
The Klingon Shakespeare Restoration Project has received considerable attention from academia – see for example: ‘Adapting Shakespeare for Star Trek and Star Trek for Shakespeare: The Klingon Hamlet and The Spaces of Translation‘ (Studies in Popular Culture, vol 32, no. 2, pp. 35-55.)
The author, Dr. Karolina Kazimierczak (Researcher at the Academic Urology Unit, University of Aberdeen, Scotland.) explains -
“The Klingon translations give evidence of how the popular culture, with its re-enactments or reinterpretations of the official or high culture texts and practices, helps to uncover the mechanisms of cultural and linguistic alienation and re-appropriation, while posing the boldest challenges to its audience’s ability to suspend disbelief.”
Further reading:
Shakespeare in the Original Klingon: Star Trek and the End of History, by professor Paul Cantor, at the Department of English, University of Virginia (Perspectives on Political Science, Volume 29, Issue 3, 2000)
Dr. Nick Nicholas’s Klingon page (University of Melbourne, Australia) who kindly provides the audio quote linked above.
