Two Kinds of People (re: The Klingon Hamlet)
Categories: Entertainment , Science Fiction & Fantasy
The two kinds of people, those who say when they hear about The Klingon Hamlet: (1) "Yeah! Great idea!; (2) "Well, I guess anything that encourages people to read Hamlet can't be that bad of a bad idea."
The premise is that for the first time Hamlet or (Khamlet) , by William Shakespeare (Wil'yam Shex'pir) has been published in its original Klingon, after many years of being available mostly in English (aka "Terran"). The English Hamlet--not one of the dumbed-down versions--is included across from its corresponding Klingon page, so if you're a student reading Hamlet and want to annoy your teacher, you should buy or check out this book.
Or you can check out one of the many real Hamlets in the library or buy one for a song.
The real fun of the book is the notes on the Klingon language in the 30 page appendix. The book points out English translation errors--for example, "Wittenberg" should really be translated as "Vulcan." "To be or not to be" should really be "It [he?] either continues, or it [he?] doesn't continue."
Reading Hamlet in Klingon, for me, is sort of like reading it in Pig Latin--sort of doable, but not completely engrossing. But the appendix is very funny.
________________________________
I'm reminded of Nabokov's Pale Fire, where a deranged professor, Charles Kinbote, exiled king from the imaginary country Zembla (which seems kind of like Albania), writes "scholarly" notes on the last poem of a recently deceased colleague, an esteemed poet.
Kinbote annotates the poem, proving that it is really about the decline of Zembla. The deceased poet's family and others try without sucess to get the poem away from Kinbote, so it may be appreciated by normal readers and scholars. In Pale Fire, we get to learn a little Zemblan--another similarity between Pale Fire and The Klingon Hamlet.
We do have other books in or about Klingon:
- Her Klingon Soul, by Michael Jan Friedman (fiction)
- Let's Trek: the Budget Traveler's Guide to the Klingon Worlds (art and music)
- The Klingon Gambit, by Robert Vardeman (fiction)
- A Klingon Dictionary, by Marc Okrand (art and music)
There are also many Star Trek compilations in the Films and Recordings Department.
__________________________________________________________
Interestingly, Melvil Dewey has classified The Klingon Hamlet right next to Estruscan dictionaries, which come right after the Hawaiian phrase books.
