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I took rather a bit of heat from the readers for leaving this set of pages in the original Russian, but my colleague in Moscow went to such lengths to write a nice bit of Russian script for the Federate soldiers here, that I felt it was unkind to him to start translating it back into English. My take, of course, is that you don't really NEED to know Russian to get the gist of the scene, and a huge part of the story is about what the "good guys" do and don't know about their enemy, and vice versa. As a result, when it's important that the reader know what's "really" going on, it's in English (for example, notice that the Russians dream in English? Yes...) Here, I just wanted to convey a message that "The Federates are crammed in a bomb shelter, and they're taking it very seriously." But for Russian readers, there's the added bonus that they ARE actually speaking real dialogue here.

So anyway, I had one reader declare that he would never read my comic so long as I had untranslated Russian in it, and that I could "try again" when I was "ready" to use English. Well, okay. But personally, I prefer it like this. After all, watch the movie A Bridge Too Far - do you really "miss out" when the scenes with the Germans come up? Not really. And in real life, there are no subtitles. It took a leap of faith for the readers to get on board with this, I admit, but the vast majority supported me, I'm happy to say.

Description
I took rather a bit of heat from the readers for leaving this set of pages in the original Russian, but my colleague in Moscow went to such lengths to write a nice bit of Russian script for the Federate soldiers here, that I felt it was unkind to him to start translating it back into English. My take, of course, is that you don't really NEED to know Russian to get the gist of the scene, and a huge part of the story is about what the "good guys" do and don't know about their enemy, and vice versa. As a result, when it's important that the reader know what's "really" going on, it's in English (for example, notice that the Russians dream in English? Yes...) Here, I just wanted to convey a message that "The Federates are crammed in a bomb shelter, and they're taking it very seriously." But for Russian readers, there's the added bonus that they ARE actually speaking real dialogue here.

So anyway, I had one reader declare that he would never read my comic so long as I had untranslated Russian in it, and that I could "try again" when I was "ready" to use English. Well, okay. But personally, I prefer it like this. After all, watch the movie A Bridge Too Far - do you really "miss out" when the scenes with the Germans come up? Not really. And in real life, there are no subtitles. It took a leap of faith for the readers to get on board with this, I admit, but the vast majority supported me, I'm happy to say.