To me, the single greatest line in any of the eleven Star Trek movies comes in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. It’s when the soon-to-be-assassinated Klingon chancellor remarks over dinner: “You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon.” The fact that it sort of makes no sense only makes it that much better. (Caveat: I haven’t seen Star Trek: Nemesis. After Star Trek: Insurrection I needed a break. A long break.) Fortunately — unless I’m gravely mistaken about a whole lot of things — I actually have read Shakespeare in the original, because I read English pretty fluently. But that’s the only language I can say that about. Even though I have spent literally years of my life trying to learn another language, any other language — and even though I have in the past claimed in several key professional contexts that I speak other languages — I am in fact still trapped inside the bubble of English. (MORE: Is National Novel Writing Month a Literary Threat or Menace?) I ought to at least be able to read literature in French. I went to an enlightened grade school that started us on French in fifth grade, which meant that by the time I graduated high school I had been at it for eight years. In those eight years I managed to crawl through exactly one French novel, L’Étranger by Camus. (I was also shown Diva and Jules et Jim repeatedly, and sometimes they even forgot to stop the projector and we got to see the parts with partial nudity.) When I got to college I simply decided that I could speak French, because I just could not spend any more time in French classes. I went ahead and took courses on French literature, some of them even taught in French. And for about a year I actually was at the point where I could look at a page in French and feel like I was understanding what it was saying, more or less. I read, or at least passed my eyes … Continue reading Shakespeare in Klingon: Literature in the Original and My Total Failure to Read It That Way