I looked up an image of the Aurebesh alphabet and transcribed the text into Latin letters, which made me think that it must've been from the entrance to the jungle habitat in Core Meltdown, since it says:
Dromund Kaas
On the remote jungle world of Dromund Kaas, the Sith have spent a thousand years building their mighty war machine to prepare for an assault on the galaxy.
Appropriate, but also a little disappointing in my opinion. I would've expected them to tell you something about the critters they were keeping in the habitat instead of just a vague note about their home planet. That's kind of like visiting the lions in the zoo and the sign at the enclosure just tells you about the continent of Africa.
Also, my inner language geek couldn't help but notice that the Aurebesh alphabet has separate letters for sounds like "th", yet on the poster they always just use the ones for t and h together. Sloppy!
A quick look at my screenshot folder also revealed this slightly older screenshot I took of posters on the Republic fleet. The ones on the side say:
Fly with the best
Sign up now!
And the one in the middle says:
Protect the Republic
Become a Starfighter pilot
Now I want to go back to Core Meltdown just to check what they have to say about the desert habitat area/Tatooine. And I should really pay more attention to those signs in general, now that I've figured out how easy they are to transcribe.
I find these little gems fascinating, because it speaks to the level of detail that the artists put in to creating the world.
ReplyDeleteThe posters are an example showing that the devs did at least _some_ historical research; they have an Art Deco propaganda-poster style, with the Imperial posters having a more pronounced feel reminiscent of Russian/Soviet propaganda posters than the Republic ones, that enhances the "us vs. them" polarization between the Republic and the Sith Empire. The posters and banners in Justicar territory on Coruscant have a revolutionary "Resist the Republic Oppression" flavor, too.
ReplyDeleteAnd there are the occasional screwups. In the Old Galactic Market area of Coruscant, there are posters that read "Coruscant Market -- Everything in the Galaxy" -- but one of these posters can be seen in front of you on the face of the building wall right before your taxi turns to land at the OGM taxipad (you can see the poster as soon as you make the turn at the WB's spawn point), and it reads "Coruscat" instead of "Coruscant".
I'll have to wait until I get home to see if I have a screenshot of it or go back to get one, but there's an electroposter kiosk on the east side of the crew-skill trainer area on Dromund Kaas that has an extended warning about the life forms on the planet that was entertaining to read.
There are two panels there; the one with the map of the regions has the warning:
Delete"Dromund Kaas is home not only to the great Sith Empire, but also to many vicious beasts who roam the jungles."
"Units operating in the field should be prepared to encounter creatures such as vine cats, sleens, yosusks, and most notably, gundarks, which may cause heavy damage to vessels and instruments which are critical to the glory of the Empire."
The other panel panel is more of an information kiosk, and has the messages:
"Public transit available only to citizens of the Sith Empire."
"All humans travelling with non-humans will need an appropriate clearance."
"You are under constant surveillance. Be on the lookout for suspicious behavior. The Empire is counting on you and you need the Empire. Avoid hubs that you are not needed in and have no direct business in. The empire will remain strong as long as you stay vigilant."
"ALERT"
"Forget the bylaws at your peril."
That's cool; I'll have to keep an eye out for those next time one of my Imps is on Dromund Kaas!
DeleteI notice those all the time..Coruscant, DK, Corellia especially! Love this kind of lore.
ReplyDeleteActually, they're correct in using Trill, Herf and Esk to form the word "The" as opposed to just Thesh and Esk. Thesh is like Theta in Ancient Greek in that it, in its most common form, represents a soft "th" sound (Synthesis) as opposed to the harder sound as heard in "The". That is, unless these posters are using the emphatic form of the word, which is unlikely given their context.
ReplyDeleteAurebesh is a language based off of auditory indicators rather than visual replacements, despite its being a near-literal transliteration of English as demonstrated by your pictures. In the former regard, it is similar to Ancient Greek. I particularly love that they've used a separate character for "ng"; Greek creates this character using two Nu, or "n", next to each other ("Annelos" = "Angelos", for example).
Reminding myself of that makes me wonder what little grammatical clauses exist in Aurebesh; whilst words are, as mentioned above, very nearly exact transliterations, I doubt there'd be much to catch people out. I do hope so, as adding in little things like that would be fantastic and would really add to the depths of this language.
I know "the" doesn't use the "th" sound, I was more referring to the word "thousand", which is on the poster too.
DeleteOh, what a rudimentary mistake to have made... ><
DeleteFor some reason, I just locked onto "The" despite reading "Thousand" in the same sentence. I have no idea how it was that that truly happened; I have a feeling that my own geeking out about Aurebesh (due to its similarity to Greek) caused me to jump several parsecs ahead of my station...
Sincerest apologies! Classicist by nature; even so much as hearing rumours of connections to anything ancient (including language) just gets me into a very excitable and nerdy state; couple that with anything Star Wars and I'm almost irrational with geekdom.
I really need to heed Yoda's advice to Luke about control during Empire one of these days...