Ok… Today I took the plunge and delved into the Ostfront by buying an old Tamiya T34/76. Ordinarily, I don’t do Russian junk, but I wanted to do something different than the Western Front/DAK for a change, get some snow that ain’t the Ardennes… The trigger was the new Tamiya “German Assault Infantry in Winter Gear” kit, and this weeks’ Hobby Lobby 40% off coupons (I did one yesterday to get the figs and one today to get the T34, a pretty substantial savings).
I don’t plan on buying any AM stuff (I shy away from that, it ain’t any fun. 'Druther scaratch build)… Question is: What are those slogans I see all over Russian armor? Anyone have an idea on how to translate it? I can’t type Cyrillic into my translator, only copy it, so I gotta make up my own “Russian-sounding” ones like, “Forward!” and, “To the WEST!”, and “Death to Fascists!” ("Отправьте!" and, “На ЗАПАД!” and, “Смерть Фашистам!”)
I’m not sure such slogans are accurate, just a SWAG on my part. So tell me… Any Russian-speakers out there that can translate the more common ones?
I have a book that has a ruskie sherman with (this is how it would be spelled in english)
“Vpred Na Berlin” on it
“forward to Berlin” in capitalist speech. I recommend going to google images, and printing off a cyrilic alphabet, and trying to hash together something resembling their language
I can type whatever I want in English, and the translator gives it back in Russian Cryrillic… The problem is me not being able to translate slogans from the pictures into English in order to type them into the translator. Once I understand the slogan, I can hand-paint or make decals in the Cyrillic. Like what you just said, “Forward to Berlin” is, “отправьте Берлину!”
I tend to draw on first-person experiences in dioramas, the real deal when it’s modern ('76 to 2006, when I retired) and reenactments when it’s WW2. I have a LOT more “research” photos of reenactor stuff, and I don’t do much of my own combat experiences in dioramas, just the funny or mundane, day-to-day, living in the field stuff, as a member of the group Ernie Pyle named, “The Great Un-Washed”…
This one’s a reenactment dio and a semi-historical event… I’m re-creating a moment in “reenactor history” and (fudging a bit with the location, season, and vehicle), where I sprinted 40 meters across open ground, under “fire” and took out a Stuart with a Teller mine to “save” my Kameraden from being over-run… Got the TD badge and Iron Cross for that ‘un… Had I been wearin’ that greatcoat these figures are in, I probably woulda got whacked in ten meters. It’s so heavy that m’ feet woulda stayed in one place too long and the TC woulda capped me outta boredom…
True enough… But I got called on it once upon a time 'bout a hunert years ago with some graffitti I did on a Waffen-SS recruiting poster in my one and only Soviet dio by a guy who DID speak and read Russian… Turns out I wrote the words “Detour Contaminated” in Cyrillic. It was the only example of Cyrillic writing I had at the time, from a Warsaw Pact NBC contamination marker. Thought I’d do a bit more research this time, lol…
