Bronze Cyrillic Plaque

April 25, 2011 by Samantha Catalyst

Alex staging plaque

I find myself fascinated by the crypto-symbolism of sense making created by Cambridge Energy Research Associates or CERA. As many of you know, CERA is an energy consulting firm and global leader in providing advisory knowledge to decision makers on energy development. It is headed up by the charismatic energy guru Daniel Yergin. I first met Dr. Yergin while working as an energy lobbyist under Alaska Governor Tony Knowles. But that’s another story. CERA has 11 offices across the world so whenever we visit a destination with a CERA office we like to check in.

In Moscow, Russia, we visited Vitaly Yermakov at the CERA office. I have quite a bit to write about that meeting. But before going there I want to pause on the curiosity of this bronze plaque that identifies the Moscow office.

Please take a close look at this plaque, and you will come to understand what is so interesting about the intersection of anthropology and energy expertise. First of all, the plaque is glued to the entrance of a Moscow office building. And, as you can see from the empty holes on each corner — in fact, the plaque was created specifically to be bolted to the building. The use of bolts has a long history and predates the use of glue, which is relatively recent. That is, a bolted plaque provides a narrative about historical time. Unlike glue, which hides between the plaque and the building, bolts provide visible evidence of attachment in a material way that captures the viewers attention.

It’s not unusual to see a bolted bronze plaque in Russia. Together, the bolts, the bronze metal and the plaque —together— establish the mark of a reputable institution in the eyes of the pedestrian, and this process of marking applies widely from hotels to universities. Take a look here:

“European University in St. Petersburg” as engraved in the Cyrillic alphabet.

Bolts, bolts, bolts (admission: in the lower image, the plaque uses screws).

Nevertheless, you get the message. Using a bolt is Meaningful as evidenced — both, by the drill holes in the plaque and the visibility of bolts actually used to secure the plaque to the building.

So why are there no bolts on the CERA plaque?

It is certainly tempting to suggest the answer has something to do with the building itself, the materials used, etc. — a kind of materialist functional answer. Uh-huh. I thought about that one. So why is it then, that the bronze plaque, directly located to the left of the CERA plaque — have bolts?

Bolts and No Bolts By Comparison

Thus… this peculiar feature of marking energy expertise raises the question: why are there no bolts on the CERA plaque in Moscow?

Can you imagine? The presence and absence of bolts on a Moscow plaque as the basis for developing a theory of the role of Western energy consultant expertise in Russia? At any rate… let’s take a look at the sense-making surrounding the various types of lettering…

Notice that the hotels are written using a Latin alphabet and communicating in the English language proper. That makes some sense. These are expensive hotels often catering to tourists from Western Europe and the US. The only example of a purely Cyrillic alphabet belongs to the plaque announcing the European University in St. Petersburg. And that makes sense, in part, because they are already somewhat estranged by their institutional title and affiliation as a “European University in” Russia — so identification in purely Russian language would seem to soften the dissonance between their institutional identity and the requirement for presenting themselves as, well, a Russian institution (a European-ly Russian institute).

Then, there’s the bronze plaque above — “ЖУРНАЛ DER SPIEGAL” — indicating the German Newspaper Der Spiegal, written in both Cyrillic (ЖУРНАЛ) and Latin (DER SPIEGAL) alphabets.

Okay, this is going to sound a little nutty:

First, notice what the Der Spiegal plaque has in common with the hotel and university plaques. They are all using UPPER-CASE FONTS for ALL letters. By contrast, the CERA plaque capitalizes only select letters of words: (1) the beginning of each word; (2) acronyms in Latin and Cyrillic; (3) the first letter of each acronymic letter in cyrillic that spells out the company IHS.

That’s weird to me. Another thing: Notice please, that the CERA plaque has written in Latin alphabet the acronym “CERA”. And this acronym has a direct Cyrillic alphabet translation in the acronym “КЭРА”….

….By contrast, however, the acronym in Latin alphabet “IHS” is not translated into a Cyrillic alphabetized acronym, but instead, into the words “Aye Aech Es” by use of the Cyrillic alphabetized letters “Ай Эйч Эс” — This raises the question: why on earth do the words “IHS” when translated into the Cyrillic alphabet lose their direct translation as an acronym but appear on the plaque as a string of words (“Ай Эйч Эс”) that provokes an English pronunciation of the company?

Let me drive the point home: the acronym CERA produces a sound pattern in spoken English as “SERA”. By contrast, the acronym КЭРА produces a different sound pattern, that if heard by an English speaker, would sound like “KERA” — There is a difference in the sound pattern of the English versus Russian lettering, even though both acronyms refer to one and the same company. The plaque allows a Russian speaker to pronounce CERA as “KERA” (and not “SERA”) in the Russian language. Yet, this same plaque demands that a Russian speaking pedestrian create the sound pattern “Aye Aech Es” (Ай Эйч Эс) for the acronym IHS as it would be heard when speaking in English.

As a reminder, we’re looking at the representation on a bronze plaque in Moscow of an energy consulting firm — through their choice of lettering to create an image of the company for the pedestrian, and asking the question, why is it that the acronym “IHS” must remain pronounced in English through the cyrillic lettering “Ай Эйч Эс” — when a direct font translation if printed in Latin script would be rendered “CERA An Aye Aech Es Company”.

Now we have three puzzling questions surrounding CERA’s bronze plaque in Moscow:
(1) Where are the bolts?
(2) Why is there a mix of upper-case and lower-case lettering?
(3) Why is the acronym “IHS” rendered as words printed in Cyrillic, when the acronym “CERA” — in Latin alphabet is rendered as the acronym “КЭРА” in Cyrillic alphabet?

It is worthwhile to note that this staging of the — IHS/Ай Эйч Эс and CERA/КЭРА –formula is not a unique event to the plaque alone, but represents an aesthetic of form, a rationality of self-presentation as seen duplicated on business cards. Here is the Russian language business card of a CERA expert working in Washington, D.C. — notice the presence of “КЭРА/Ай Эйч Эс” on the very bottom of the image.

IHS CERA in Cyrillic type

On the English side of the business card, the Latin alphabet is pure and simple “CERA — An IHS Company”

Returning to the Russian side of the business card, the Cyrillic alphabet appears directly below the Latin alphabet — recreating the bronze plaque in Moscow almost completely in lettering and placement (the trademark which appears on this card is not on the bronze plaque).

Not incidentally, the business card provides an important clue for understanding the anomaly in acronyms — notice please the following:

“CERA An IHS Company”

“КЭРА Компания Ай-Эйч-Эс”

Do you see it? CERA and КЭРА are both printed in Bold Type Face.

Whereas only IHS is printed in Bold Type Face — Ай-Эйч-Эс is not. What this means is that the logic of Ай-Эйч-Эс is not that of an acronym, according to the company itself. It is in fact, thoroughly understood as a string of words, printed in Cyrillic alphabet, with the purpose of producing the sound “Aye Aech Es”.

As such, Ай-Эйч-Эс is a string of words. On the one hand, the sight of these words does not produce an immediacy of meaning that the three previous acronyms produce. The acronyms function as a hieroglyph — at one glance, we understand what they are meant to signify. Thus, Ай-Эйч-Эс is weighted down considerably. First, it requires a double-step to arrive at the meaning of the acronym (pronunciation and then realization). Second, the time-lag required for cognition dampens the effect of immediacy that accompanies the hieroglyphic sign function of the acronym. Third, the bold type face accents the immediacy of the hieroglyphic function, while the absence of bold type face emphasizes the immediacy of pronunciation function (i.e., “Ай Эйч Эс” appears like every other word that requires reading).

CERA stands for Cambridge Energy Research Associates. If you google the acronym CERA, a variety of company pages and news articles pop up in spades. However, if you google КЭРА, you are likely not to find anything, until you combine the acronym with a word string, such as “КЭРА energy”. So what does КЭРА actually stand for, if it is not a recognized acronym of the company in its own right?

Well, this is interesting. КЭРА is actually a transliteration of CERA. That is, it is the spelling of “Cambridge Energy Research Associates” in the Cyrillic alphabet: Кембридж Энерджи Рисерс Ассошиэйтс or КЭРА (Cambridge Energy Research Associates or CERA). In Russian, it is a string of word-sounds that would be recognized by a Russian speaker as totally foreign, of foreign origin. What this means is that the phrase does not follow any grammatical rule or usage in the Russian language that usually governs over the spelling and pronunciation of words. It is stable and static. It does not decline, for example, when used in the news media. Take the following example, of an advertisement for a job vacancy at CERA:

Looking at the first sentence, appearing under the news headline and company internet link — there are the words printed in cyrillic:

“Компания Кембридж Энерджи Рисерс Ассошиэйтс, Инк., КЭРА (Cambridge Energy Research Associates, CERA) –”

In English:

“[The] company [of] Cambridge Energy Research Associates, Inc., CERA….”

The point I want to make here is that the first word “company” in Russian (Компания) is typically followed by the name of a company appearing in its possessive declination, something like the following: Кембриджа Энерджй Рисерса Ассошиэйтса.

But here, of course, the phrase remains a transfixed loan word, without interruptions in Russian language. One might say, that it belongs to a category of Western capitalist word formations that are new to Russia, including the transliteration of the phrase “energy consulting” (энерджи консалтинг). The actual word Energy in Russian is Энергия or Energiya — “Energy”. It is not энерджи which in Russian, has the same pronunciation as the word in English energy.

But there is more: Look again at the Russian spelling — Кембридж Энерджи Рисерс Ассошиэйтс.

Actually, if you pronounce this phrase from your lips as it is spelled out, what you would actually hear is the following: Cambridge Energy Researsh Associates” — The word “Research” is actually mis-transliterated. The word is spelled without using a ч on the end, to create the “CH” sound. Instead, it is spelled with a с on the end, creating an “S” sound.

A small consideration perhaps, but then why go through the trouble of absolutely ensuring that that the “H” in the acronym “IHS”, is spelled in Cyrillic with the ч sound (Эйч)?

Thus, we add to our original three questions, a fourth question:

(1) Where are the bolts?
(2) Why is there a mix of upper-case and lower-case lettering?
(3) Why is the acronym “IHS” rendered as words printed in Cyrillic, when the acronym “CERA” — in Latin alphabet is rendered as the acronym “КЭРА” in Cyrillic alphabet?
(4) Why is the ч (“ch”) pronunciation important enough to be spelled out in the acronym “IHS” but apparently, not important enough to be spelled out in the word “Research”, when the latter word appears in the Cyrillic alphabet to denote the company name of Cambridge Energy Research (Рисерс) Associates?

And what does this all have to do, we wonder, with the fact that at the front door of the CERA/IHS office inside the building, the sign indicating the companies only refer to IHS?

These differences are beginning to suggest a critical set of distinctions that separate CERA and IHS as the joint company appears to itself and others inside of Russia.