My entry for Nov. Went with a Soviet style vibe just cuz.
November Art Challenge - The Lensman
- Thread starter The Lensman
- Start date
Like it!!
Nice work. With the following exception: I hate HATE HATE when people try to make something feel Russian by making their N or R backwards. At least you only did an N and not an R. Thanks for that. Having studied the Russian language, I'm familiar enough with their Cyrillic characters that every time I see them mixed into English words it hurts my brain as I try to pronounce it in my head the way it's written. My first reading of your poster was something like "Defeyd the Federatioy ... Joiy Starfleet Today."
Anyway. Otherwise I really do love it. And don't sweat the lettering, just cause it causes me mental issues doesn't mean others won't like it.
--Alex
Anyway. Otherwise I really do love it. And don't sweat the lettering, just cause it causes me mental issues doesn't mean others won't like it.
--Alex
Right on. The Cyrillic letter for "N" looks like an H. And the Cyrillic "R" looks like a P. If you really wanted to transliterate "DEFEND THE FEDERATION" into Cyrillic (while keeping it in English), it would probably end up as something like ДЕФЕНД ѲЕ ФЕДЕРАШОН. According to Yahoo! Babel Fish, if you actually translated it into Russian, it would be ЗАЩИТИТЕ ФЕДЕРИРОВАНИЕ (or EASHCHITITE FEDERIROVANIE if I've transliterated it correctly). For JOIN STAR FLEET TODAY (I had to split "star" and "fleet" to get results), I get СОЕДИНИТЕ ФЛОТА ЗВЕЗДЫ СЕГОДНЯ (SOEDINITE FLOTA ZVEZDY SEGODNYA, I think).
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Truth be told, the orientation of the "N" is a function of the specific font that I used for the lettering. Now I have used fonts that have done exactly what you hate, and my thoughts are....they do the job in invoking the Russian "feel". It's just one of those things that, while incorrect, works in the minds of the general public not in the know....which of course would be me.
And while I was only attempting to evoke a Russian "feel", Christopher's post has made me interested in seeing if I can find a Cyrillic font and do one using it.
Alright, I downloaded a Cyrillic font and typed it and while "defend" looks like how Christopher typed it, the rest does not. Here's the image. Is the text accurate or gobbledygook?
Close. Only the character you've wound up with for "th" is actually the Greek letter theta. Russian doesn't have the th sound at all. I once listened to an old Russian woman rant about how English was impossible to pronounce thanks to that sound. Meh.
Transliteration correction: ZASHCHITITYE FYEDYERIROVANIYE. The 3 is a Z and E is usually transliterated as E but is usually pronounced YE.
Correction: SOYEDINITYE FLOTA ZVEZDUY SEGONDYA.
Lensman, the reason why the word "Federation" looks different from your transliteration and Christopher's is that you are using a direct letter for letter approach while he is using a slightly more phonetic approach. ФЕДЕРАШОН is probably the better way to spell it. -ТИOH would be pronounced as lumping together the words "tea-own." Russian doesn't use vowels to soften consonants the way English does. So where we would write -tion the t is softened by the i and the resulting sound is almost a sh sound. (In fact most native speakers of English don't recognize that it isn't just a sh sound.) The Cyrillic character "Ш" is the same sound as sh but in only one letter. So ФЕДЕРАШОН would allow a native speaker of Russian to come up with a more authentic English pronunciation of Federation than would ФЕДЕРАТИOH.
But enough with the Russian language lesson! Let's get back back to neato drawings!
--Alex
P.S. Russian has no J. To transliterate it, usually people use D (Д) and ZH. I don't know how to make my computer type in Russian so I've cut and pasted the Cyrillic from Christopher's post and he didn't use a zh. It looks like two back to back K's, sharing the straight stem.
My final entry looks like this:
It's been a bitch trying to get the brightness right. At the moment, I'm working on one computer, then transferring to another via usb to e-mail and post. It looks fine on the first computer, but then seems too dark on the second one. Hopefully I got my final entry in with a minute to spare (crosses fingers).
Thanks Albertese for the valuable info...I'm still going to do a Soviet poster, one I hope to frame.
It's been a bitch trying to get the brightness right. At the moment, I'm working on one computer, then transferring to another via usb to e-mail and post. It looks fine on the first computer, but then seems too dark on the second one. Hopefully I got my final entry in with a minute to spare (crosses fingers).
Thanks Albertese for the valuable info...I'm still going to do a Soviet poster, one I hope to frame.
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