By Jim Young
“ram nI’ tay”
Which in the Klingon language means “Festival of the long night”, because fictional alien cultures obviously don’t observe Christmas.
SLIDESHOW: A Klingon Christmas Carol
Having seen Christmas decorations up since before Thanksgiving Day and hearing the cringing sound of carols in shopping malls everywhere, I was looking for a different way to ring in the holiday cheer and what better way than to cover a take on the Charles Dickens classic “A Christmas Carol” as performed by Klingons.
Klingons, for those not fortunate enough to be raised on Star Trek as a child, are aliens from the television series and though the show has been off the air for over 40 years, it continued on through movies and devoted fans everywhere.
A Chicago based theatre company used the language created by philologist Dr. Marc Okrand, who was hired by Paramount Pictures to develop the language and it is the first full-length play ever to be produced entirely in the Klingon language.
The dialogue spoken by the actors is translated and projected onto a screen for the audience to follow along, and although the script is modified to reflect an alien culture, the premise remains the same with an actor playing Scrooge or SQuja’ and a tiny Klingon puppet “tImHom” playing the part of Tiny Tim who brought huge laughs from the audience.
