Friday 23 July 2010

A Klingon blessing

We’ve been watching reruns of the consistently excellent Frasier. Last night I saw an episode I’d not come across before and it ended with Frasier delivering a blessing at his son’s Bar Mitzvah. The only problem was he delivered the blessing in perfect Klingon rather than Hebrew. You’ll have to watch the whole episode (Star Mitzvah 2002) to understand how it came about, but here’s the blessing. Priceless.



Here is the translation:
The English version:
"My dearest son, each day you redeem me. May your journey be filled with the same joy, wisdom, and purpose you have given mine."

The Klingon translation is:
"puqloDwI' le'qu': Hoch jaj choquvmoH. lenglIj lutebjaj lengwIjvaD bel rap, Sov rap, ngoQ rap je Danobpu'bogh."

A phonetic version of what was spoken on the show:
"Pookh lod wih le koo. Hach jahj cho-koov-moakh leng-lidge loo-Teb-jahj leng widge-vahd bel rahp shoave dah-nobe-poo-boagh."

NB. Klingon is the language spoken by the Klingon warrior people in Star Trek. You can find out more about the galaxy's fastest growing language from The Klingon Language Institute.

1 comment:

Sam Charles Norton said...

Splendid - and I just got my son to listen to the translation :) You might be interested in this: http://io9.com/5582021/how-to-write-the-next-great-alien-language