June/July 2013 Lite Entry - The Unangan Empire

[Diamond]

Wow, this has got my vote for sure.

[Lingon]

Thanks Diamond

Labeling this thing took way longer than I thought. I found a couple of PDFs on the Alaska State Library site, an Aleut dictionary and a list of ancient Aleut names (apparently almost all were forgotten after the Russian missionaries converted the Aleut to Christianity in the 18th century, and no-one knew anything about how their naming traditions used to be until 1992 when an old list of tax payers was found), and took words with appropriate meanings and assigned them to my city dots. Most of the words are descriptive of the city's relation to nearby cities or it's surroundings, and those beginning with Tanak or Ulakidaq are named after people (not real people though, just random names from the list). I also fiddled a little with the roads and added a placeholder shape for the cartouche, to check the composition.

### Latest WIP ###
UnanganEmpire7.jpg

There are a couple of things I'm uncertain about. I made up Unangan names for Russia and Canada to keep it consistent, but maybe I should just write them in English instead, as it's intended to be an English-language map? Also thinking of skipping the translations of the names for seas, bays and straits; I figured these would have English names and that an English-speaking cartographer would like to put them on his map, but it's maybe inconsistent with the city names, which are not translated? Or maybe I should focus on more important things, like finishing the map in the way to few days that remain?

[Diamond]

I dunno, I think the text/labeling is fine as-is. The translations are a nice touch.

You could say that the map-maker didn't want to **** off Unanga because they discovered and exploited their oil early and so are an important regional player. Sort of an arctic Saudi Arabia.

[jbgibson]

You have a decent solution already - putting the English names for those, with Unangan versions larger, above. That's a standard atlas-y way of dealing with widely divergent / multilingual names for the same feature. And you don't HAVE to say "English" in each such subtitle - if the map is for an English-speakking audience, that would be assumed. But it looks fine where you have it that way.

It's beautiful, by the way. I'd lose all motivation to finish my entry, if I were only driven by competition :-).

[Lingon]

Thanks for the feedback! You are right, I should leave the labels as they are. Moving on to the cartouche then!

[WillP]

Very impressive map, Lingon. One question: What is the meaning of the large triangle in the center?

[Lingon]

That will become the cartouche It's just a placeholder shape I put in to see how it would flow with the landmasses, I wasn't sure it was going to look good with a big text block dead center, but after testing with the placeholder, I think it will. I'm going to paint it by hand separately and paste it in over that triangle, and put a legend inside. Oh, and thanks

[Lingon]

Here we go:

### Latest WIP ###
UnanganEmpire8.jpg

I kept it plain and undetailed to not take so much attention from the map, and to save some time Couldn't stop myself from including the little smiley face though, it's a common feature in Aleut/Unangan imagery and it did fit rather nicely There are a couple of things in the cartouche that will be explained by the timeline, which is next. It'll also tell why Russia is called USSR on the map. Oooh, the suspense…

[Caenwyr]

Yup, you sure have my vote!

[- Max -]

Not convinced by the place of the cartouche, it distracts the attention from the map imo. Otherwhise that's a nice map overall.