Translation for: "Submissive to Earth"

[karlinthesun]

A respectful request to forum members. Thanking you in advance for your expertise, I am looking for
an artistic interpretation of the phrase "Submissive to Earth."

I have no knowledge of Japanese, I am simply interested in it aesthetically. I am a visual artist and am somewhat aware of potential pitfalls from my ignorance. Attached is my first attempt, simply two symbols placed near each other, and skewed to look organic.

Is it horribly wrong? If so, how may I best improve it?

 

[lanthas]

Which characters are they supposed to be?

 

[karlinthesun]

Thanks for your reply, Lanthas. This one, if I am right, is "Earth."

 

[lanthas]

Hmm, not quite . 土 means "ground", "soil" - essentially "earth" with a lower case "e". The name of our planet is instead written as 地球 (earth-ball); you'll notice 土 reappearing as part of the first character.

Apart from that, even in handwriting, 土 is written with three separate strokes to keep the vertical line straight and at a right angle to the base line. The way it's written now, people who know Chinese characters might mistake it for 方 which means something completely different.

What is the character to the left of it? It looks like り, which is a purely phonetic (and therefore meaningless) character in Japanese.

 

[karlinthesun]

Hey Lanthas. Thanks again for the Earth/ earth clarification. Makes sense to me. That s shape on the left was something I found in a search for "Japanese calligraphy for submissive" but of course after an hour of looking for it again yesterday, no dice.

 

[cez]

(...) Thanks again for the Earth/ earth clarification. Makes sense to me. (...)

But which one should it be then? "Earth" or "earth"? "Submissive to Earth" could be literally translated as "地球に卑屈" (chikyuu ni hikutsu). I don't know what a native speaker would make of that though.

 

[lanthas]

I'm not quite sure what the original sentence is supposed to mean either. As I'm sure you've noticed, humans are the complete opposite of submissive towards the planet; we utterly dominate it, exploiting resources and killing other lifeforms as we see fit. Apart from diseases, we no longer have any natural enemies but ourselves. It's our very nature to take control of things.