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March 14, 2004
Shaka, When the Walls Fell
If you ask me the greatest episode of Star Trek, I would say that without question it was 'Darmok', starring Paul Winfield. Paul is dead now but he will long be remembered by me as the great Tamarian officer.
Finally, Rapheal Carter has put together The Darmok Dictionary which finally does the episode justice. If there was ever an allegory perfectly apporpriate to the African American angle into multiculturalism it is captured in Darmok.
The thing to note about this translation is that it's impossible to sum up the meaning of the phrase in a single word; it's a quite complex comment on an entire situation. The other phrases that we can reliably translate can, in fact, be summarized in a word or two--"Shaka, when the walls fell" means "failure." But the example of "Darmok" hints that this simplicity is an illusion, born of our limited knowledge of the language. For a Tamarian, "Shaka" would connote not just "failure," but a specific failure, in specific circumstances which you and I can't know. Consider Counselor Troi's example, "Juliet on her balcony." Dr. Crusher glosses this as an image of romance--true enough; but of course the phrase connotes much more than that. We are aware that the love of Romeo and Juliet is star-crossed; that it will end in tragedy; that it is love at first sight; that it is the love of youth and not of maturity; that the scene alluded to is a clandestine second meeting between the two lovers; that in it, Romeo is looking up at the Juliet's tantalizing backlit silhouette, while she sees him unclearly against the darkness; and so on ad infinitum. Every Tamarian phrase should be presumed to be this rich, though the richness is hidden from us.
His interview with Terry Gross back in the '89 was exerpted this past week. Cool guy. It's amazing that I didn't know that he was on Julia. That's something I should have known.
Posted by mbowen at March 14, 2004 11:10 AM
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