Job Discussion Forums

[Kira]

First, a thanks to Kent for his links, which will eventually make this job discussion board into a virtual site in and of itself.

And, a word of caution. Online dictionaries and translation systems are Venus fly traps ready to snap on the first unsuspecting victim. I, just for kicks, punched in "fire" -- and received answers along the lines of "ogon'" (Dave's won't let me post in Cyrillic). There was nothing along the lines of "fire" as in, "I was fired today", "Menya segonya uvolili."

These are very handy for those who are familiar with the language and need a quick refresher on a word they can't quite remember, but for the beginner (or even worse, the intermediate student), you could be up against more than you know.

For fun sometime, try entering a paragraph in English into a translation system, then re-route it back from the target language into English--the results are great.

Of course, this is the reason that translators make big bucks--their work is irreplaceable.

I recommend for dictionaries:

Russian-English: Oxford--the bigger the better
English-Russian: Katzner

Though Katzner is based on American English, it's English-Russian translations are more accurate than Oxford (and Oxford Russian-English the same)--perhaps "stronger" would be a more pc word than better.

Don't forget to look the word up in the target language and translate it back to English to double check the meaning--sometimes there are hilarious results!

Kira

[Kent F. Kruhoeffer]

Privyet Kira:

Yes; you are absolutely correct. These online dictionaries are rather limited in terms of subtle and/or second meanings of various words. No doubt about that whatsoever.

The thing that I thought was cool about this website was the fact that when you 'punch in' an English word, you get the Cyrillic spelling, not the more common English phonetic spelling. And that would be a good way for 'newbies' to practice their reading skills a little, learn a few basic words, and generally become comfortable with the Cyrillic characters.

As always, take these links of mine with a grain of salt; some will be useful to some people; some will be a complete waste of time for others.

It's my underlying hope that by providing lots of links to various Russian-oriented sites, people will be able to 'browse' this forum quietly ... and find the answers to their questions ... without having to post a lot of redundant questions like you have on so many other forums. As MLK once said, "I have a dream ...."

Yours truly,
kEnt