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The story behind Azbuka
Dave Farey tells of the inspiration behind Azbuka
The idea for Azbuka started with an old wall sign in the Strand which read SPRINKLER STOP VALVE.
Like all good sign spotters I took a photograph. Later when I was in
Prague the street signs jogged my memory and again the camera came out.
On comparison, the signs from the Strand and Prague were not that
similar, but enough together as an idea for a functional 21st century
sans family.
The name Azbuka is Russian and translates as
Alphabet. Already it's being dyslexically misinterpreted as Bazooka,
and there is something about bad translation from English into and
another language and back to English that is sometimes endearing and
sometimes alarming. ‘Take my advice or I’ll spank you without pants’
from a Japanese subtitle, and ‘Fatty, I will hurt your thick face with
my instep’ is somehow more sinister in translation than the original.
The slogan for Coors Beer ‘Turn it Loose!’ ended
up as ‘Suffer from Diarrhoea!' in Spanish; while Pepsi’s ‘Come Alive
with the Pepsi Generation’ came back from the Mandarin as ‘Pepsi brings
your Ancestors back from the Dead’.
There are also double take statements in plain
English which cause pause for thought. ‘Women dead in High Street,
every Thursday’ from a local newspaper billboard. Or from St. Columba’s
announcements ‘Don’t let worry kill you, let the Church help’.
The following Gaelic poem, written in the 6th Century by St Columba is about his struggle with ink and paper:
Is scíth mo chrob ón scríbainn,
ní dígainn mo glés géroll,
sceithid mo phenn gulbán cáelda
dig ndáelda do dub glégorm.
Bruinnid srúaim n-ecna ndedairn
as mo láim degduinn desmais,
doirtid a dig for duilinn
do dub in chuilinn chnesglais.
Sínim mo phenn mbec mbráenach
tar áenach lebar lísgoll
gan scor, fri selba ségann,
dían scíth mo chrob on scríbbon.
My hand is weary with writing,
my sharp point is not thick,
my slender quill pen juts forth
a beetle-hued draft with bright blue ink.
A steady stream of wisdom springs
from the well coloured by my neat fair hand,
on the page it pours the words
in ink from the green skinned holly band.
I send my little dripping pen
unceasingly over all the books of great delighting
to enrich the possessions of men of art,
when my hand is weary with writing.
Article by Dave Farey
