[spoilers] Lucas and his tattoos

[Byatil]

(04-03-2011 10:57 PM)binkie Wrote:  

(04-03-2011 09:24 PM)Byatil Wrote:  

(04-03-2011 08:58 PM)BoHenley Wrote:  Groan...or worse, tell me it's not Maya's phone number...

I damn well hope not

If it's supposed to be a phone number... how exactly is it represented? I seem to remember a Russian-speaking forum member commenting that it "didn't mean anything" in Russian, and was just a random assortment of letters or something similar? Does anyone know exactly what the tattoo says? It seems odd that they'd put it there and then refrain from explaining its significance.

Cyrillic alphabets, like semitic alphabets, have numerical and valuative determinations for letters and letter groups. In the case of the Russian cyrillic alphabet, really quick and superficial research suggests the following:

Д - Good (numeral value 4)

Ж - Live [instructive, as a verb] (no numeral value)

The character in the middle of the wrist tattoo is unclear in pictures I can find. In some cases, it appears to be a charcter resembling Ц - which could have a meaning relating to hunting or foraging (and no clear numeric attribute) - and in others it appears to be more like Л - which indicates people, and has a numeric value of 30. I'm not sure whether this is a result of wrongly applied transfers, or of a lack of communication as to the communicative intention of the tattoo.

I don't speak Russian, by the way, so feel free to ignore any and all of the above

And the tattoo is applied in the order "ДЖЦ"?

DZHTS (or DZHL if we assume the last character to be Л rather than Ц) is the translation google provides for the "phrase" (if we can call it that...) which I'm assuming could be an acronym if that is the intended reading of it. If it is supposed to be a number of some description, could the numbers 4 and 30 be combined into any recognisable phone number? DZHL could possibly be a numerical code: 4, 26, 8, 11. Or if we use DZHTS: 4, 26, 8, 20, 19. Assuming we use the latter numerical code, it is possible it could be some form of phone number, as the final 2 digits required would presumably be an area code?

I'm more inclined to believe that the translation was supposed to be along the lines of "Good, Live, Hunt" or something similar. It ties in with "Whilst I live, I hope/breathe", the fact that Lucas/John was trying to be "good" (searching for redemption in the case of John, or simply working to make Britain a safer place in the case of Lucas), and "hunt(ing)" could refer to his job.

Or of course, it could have several meanings If only they'd just tell us!