Netflix US is to remove Star Trek III: The Search For Spock from its film listings until it is able to provide authentic subtitles for the Vulcan and Klingon diagloue.


The on-demand service thinks it can do the tranlsation work in about a week – and credit to them for trying. It seems most DVDs have simply injected a lot of English dubbing to overcome the problem, hiding behind the suggestion that people don’t like subtitles.

This is not a popular choice among fans – particularly those who’ve actually learnt the language (Netflix could do with finding these guys).

But learning to speak Klingon and Vulcan in a week? That’s a tough challenge.

Netflix could do worse than getting hold of a copy of Marc Okrand’s Klingon Dictionary, first published in 1984, and there are various online Vulcan dictionaries out there too.

From a little bit of Googling we’ve found that ‘kal-toh’ (sometimes Kal-tow) is a Vulcan form of chess and ‘kreyla’ means Vulcan biscuits.

Klingon – well that’s a whole other kettle of fish – ‘yIDoghQo’ means ‘don’t be silly’, while ‘Heghlu meH QaQ jajvam’ means ‘today is a good day to die’.


Yes, we’d need more than a week.