Marc Okrand, Klingon language creator, reveals how he got started on Star Trek
Saavik and Spock reflect in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
The inventor of the Klingon language, Marc Okrand, has given a new interview on the podcast The Fluent Show, in which he talks about the process of creating the Klingon language, and how it really all started with Vulcan.
The Fluent Show is a podcast hosted by Kerstin Cable and Lindsay Williams and is “a podcast about loving, living and learning languages”. In this hour-long episode, Cable interviews Okrand about a range of topics, mostly on the process of evolving an on-screen language into something you could actually speak.
Early in the interview, Okrand tells the tale of how a chance encounter on a film lot ended up being his entree into a relationship with the production team on Star Trek. He said, “I happened to be at Paramount having lunch with a friend [...] who was working on Star Trek II. And they said that they were working with a linguist at UCLA to create some Vulcan dialogue for the film, but there was [...] some logistic issue. [...] And they were worried about how to get this work done. And they told me what was involved and I said, well, I can do that. And that all fell into place partly because being at the right place at the right time.”
What an honor to speak Klingon with you @mokrand1!! Qapla’!#TeamKlingon #KlingonLanguage pic.twitter.com/ftkLmbvu0c
— Mary Chieffo (@marythechief) February 24, 2020
Okrand went on to explain how the scene was meant to work. In the scene in The Wrath of Khan where Spock and Saavik speak to each other in Vulcan, the actors are actually speaking English, Okrand said. It was only in post-production that the producers decided they should speak “Vulcan”. They had hired the linguist from UCLA, Okrand said, “to come over and look at the scene, look at their lips, write down what they’re saying, and basically come up with jibberish, with gobbledygook that sounded different but matched the lips.”
Okrand did it, the dubbed Vulcan dialogue made the final cut, and a year and a half later when they needed someone to flesh out Klingon for Star Trek III, producer Harve Bennett knew who to call.
The rest of Okrand’s Fluent Show interview is well worth a listen, particularly if you’re interested in the development of constructed languages. You can listen for yourself anywhere you find good podcasts, or on The Fluent Show’s website at www.fluent.show.
