Paint It Pink's Ashley Pollard posed the question, saying that Google translate had given her Progulki Boyevaya Platforma as a starting point.
A friend of her's had suggested that Progulki Voyevaya Platforma might be a better representation of how the Russian root word бой, meaning 'to do with struggle or combat', would appear, and she had herself used another translation site to generate Gulyayushchaya Platforma Boya.
Now I have a friend who is Russian (graphic artist Sibirian Blue who does all the illustrations for my IABSM scenario packs and for Q13) and she told me that gulyayushchaya means walking in the sense of a stroll, and that the expression Gulyayushchaya Platforma Boya therefore meant something more like "taking the combat platform for walkies" which, whilst rather sweet, is probably not what Ashley had in mind!
Her suggestion was Мобильная Боевая Платформа, or Mobilnaya Boyevaya Platforma, which translates as Mobile Combat Platform. She also checked out some Russian toy shops and sci-fi sites, to see how they described things like Transformers, but discovered that most just cyrillicise (if that's a word) the English.
The problem with 'mobile combat platform', of course, is that it could apply to anything that fights and moves: a tank, a warship etc. There's no specific suggestion of the walker bit. Back to the drawing board!
Ashley then produced another Russian-speaking friend, one who is quite into military stuff, who suggested Shagayushaya Boevaya Platforma (Шагающая Боевая Платформа), which apparently literally means walking fighting platform.
According to my friend, however, shagayushchaya literally means "takes step by step", so that although Ashley's friend was right in trying to get a sense of walking into the Russian, the actual wording wasn't quite right.
Now keen to solve this puzzle, Sibirian suggested that what was needed was to get the Russian sound 'hod' into the first word, as that is the root for all things walking or stepping.
