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Re: Loxian

From:Sally Caves <scaves@...>
Date:Tuesday, March 14, 2006, 17:03
Do you know, Mark, how many people are on the Klingon Institute Committee,
and how many of them collaborated to translate _Hamlet_ into Klingon?  Or
the Bible?  (How much of the Bible)?  How many women were involved?

Sally

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Tuesday, March 14, 2006 11:29 AM
Subject: Re: Loxian


> On 3/12/06, Joseph B. <darkmoonman@...> wrote: >> Klingon (thlIgan) might as well be copyrighted as none but Okrand are >> blessed enough to create new words. > > That's "tlhIngan Hol". And there's no official stance on who's > allowed to do what; there is merely consensus. The particular subset > of the Klingonist community that has grown up around the KLI has > chosen to treat Klingon as a genuine, incompletely-understood > language. (To the degree that it is already complete in Marc Okrand's > head, of course, this is 100% true. :)) > > The Klingonists are linguists studying it, and not even the most > knowledgeable have anything like complete or authoritative knowledge > of it. What they do have, on rare occasions, is access to an > informant (Dr. Okrand, or in the conceit, "Maltz" via Okrand) who can > answer questions. In that situation, I think you'll agree that any > linguist who made up his own words, claiming that they were part of > the language under study, would be a fraud? > > Other fans of Klingon are free to do as they like (short of publishing > anything that claims to be "Klingon" without Paramount's permission, > of course), but neologisms aren't likely to be accepted outside of a > small subset of the Klingonist community. > > > On 3/12/06, Chris Peters <beta_leonis@...> wrote: >> I've been told (I don't know if this is accurate) that Marc Okrand owns >> the >> copyright to the Klingon language. The name "Klingon" is of course owned >> by >> the Star Trek production folks, but the language itself is leased to them >> under license, if I recall correctly. I might be wrong. > > I had assumed that the creation of the Klingon language was work for > hire performed by Dr. Okrand for Paramount, in which case that company > would own everything. But at the very least they have refrained from > doing anything with the property without his involvement; even in the > episodes where the language was butchered, they at least used his book > as a starting point. :) > > The Klingon Language Institute's quarterly journal, HolQeD, is > expressly licensed by Paramount; the KLI had to jump through flaming > legal hoops to get that permission, basically demonstrating that > they're not out to make a profit; they're just a bunch of weirdos who > get off on studying a fictional language. >

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Adam Walker <carrajena@...>