Marc Okrand facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Marc Okrand
|
|
|---|---|
Okrand in 2019
|
|
| Born | July 3, 1948 Los Angeles, California, U.S.
|
| Education |
|
| Occupation | Linguist |
| Known for | Creating Klingon and Atlantean |
| Scientific career | |
| Thesis | Mutsun Grammar (1977) |
| Doctoral advisor | Mary Haas |
| Other academic advisors | William F. Shipley |
Marc Okrand (born July 3, 1948) is an American linguist. A linguist is someone who studies languages. He is famous for creating the Klingon language for the Star Trek movies and TV shows. He also created the Atlantean language for a Disney film.
Contents
Marc Okrand's Career
Marc Okrand studied languages, especially those spoken by Native American groups. He earned his first degree in linguistics in 1970. Later, in 1977, he completed his PhD at the University of California, Berkeley. His special research was about the grammar of Mutsun, a language that is no longer spoken.
From 1975 to 1978, he taught language classes at the University of California, Santa Barbara. After that, he worked at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C..
Working with Closed Captioning
Okrand then started a job at the National Captioning Institute. Here, he helped create the first closed-captioning system. This system allows people who are deaf or hard of hearing to read what is being said on TV. He worked there until he retired in 2013. He was also involved with a theater group called WSC Avant Bard. This group even planned to perform a play by Shakespeare in Klingon!
Creating Languages for Star Trek
Marc Okrand's work with Star Trek began in 1982. He was helping with closed captioning for the Oscars when he met a movie producer.
Developing the Klingon Language
His first job for Star Trek was to add Vulcan language lines to the movie Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. The actors had already filmed their scenes in English, so he had to make the Vulcan words fit their mouth movements.
After that, Paramount Pictures hired him to create the Klingon language. He also coached the actors on how to speak it. He worked on Klingon for movies like Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
Okrand also created dialogue for the Romulan and Vulcan languages for the 2009 Star Trek movie. However, these parts were not included in the final film. He also helped with Star Trek Into Darkness after the movie was filmed.
Books and Opera in Klingon
Marc Okrand has written several books about the Klingon language:
- The Klingon Dictionary (first published in 1985)
- The Klingon Way (1996)
- Klingon for the Galactic Traveler (1997)
He also created two audio courses to help people learn Klingon: Conversational Klingon (1992) and Power Klingon (1993). He even helped write an opera in Klingon called ’u’, which first showed in 2010. While he speaks Klingon, he says others are even better at it!
In 2018, he developed the language for the Kelpien species. This language was used in the second season of Star Trek: Discovery.
Creating the Atlantean Language
In 2001, Marc Okrand created the Atlantean language for the Disney movie Atlantis: The Lost Empire. He even served as an early model for the main character's face design in the film.
Personal Life
Marc Okrand is Jewish.
See also
In Spanish: Marc Okrand para niños
