Convention Fans:
Meeting Marc Okrand - Creator of the Klingon Language

I'm a huge fan of the Klingons from Star Trek. I think Martok is one of the best characters from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. I own a slew of Klingon based novels. I play a Klingon in Star Trek Online (Federation faction though). And I even have a Klingon tattoo. So when I saw that one of the guests for Farpoint 2010 was Marc Okrand, I was super excited.

Who is Marc Okrand? He's the man that created the Klingon language.

Now, before I get into that, I want to address a quick technicality. The first phrases of Klingon, which were use for Star Trek: The Motion Picture, were actually created by Jimmy Doohan, who played Scotty. However, Marc Okrand is credited with creating the language as a whole, including all of the grammar rules, etc. He also wrote "The Klingon Dictionary."

Okay, now that we have that out of the way!

Okrand is a linguist by profession, with a specialty in "dead languages", particularly Native American ones. But how does a linguist get tapped to create an entire language for a major science fiction franchise? He was simply at the right place, at the right time.

He told the story of how get got the gig to a small gathering at Farpoint 2010. It goes something like this: Paramount was working on Star Trek: Wrath of Khan, and they decided that a scene between Saavik and Spock (that had already been filmed) should be done in Vulcan. But to avoid having to reshoot the entire scene, they wanted someone to come up with "Vulcan" words that would fit the English lip movements already filmed. The studio had been trying to get someone from UCLA to do it, but they were up against a tight schedule, and it wasn't working out.

That's where Okrand came in. He happened to be in California for business, and ended up with a few free days. He was visiting a friend, who happened to work for Harve Bennett (one of the writers for Wrath of Khan). At lunch with said friend, it came to Bennett's attention that Okrand had a background in linguistics, and asked if he could create the Vulcan for the redubbing. Okrand agreed. The rest, as they say, is history. Okrand was eventually brought back to work on creating Klingon for Star Trek: The Search for Spock and Undiscovered Country, did more Vulcan work, and even worked all the way through to the 2009 Star Trek movie (doing Romulan and more Vulcan).