Happy Holidays

Photo by Monica Garcia-Salamon

A Jaguar for five year olds!

Two five-year old boys in Russia dug a tunnel at their pre-school center to escape in order to buy a Jaguar. They used their little shovels to dig their way to freedom. They walked for two miles to reach the luxury dealership. A passerby, so the newspaper “Komsomolskaja Prawda” reported, noticed the two boys and asked them what they were doing. They responded that they wanted to buy a ‘big’ car, but that they did not have any money. The police were called who brought the kids back to the pre-school center. The teacher had not yet noticed that the two boys were missing, which led to her being fired.

Russian Has World-Wide Appeal

The Russian language is the most spoken native language in all of Europe, with over 144 million speakers. Combined with those who know Russian as their second tongue, the language has over 260 million speakers worldwide as of 2012.

The language is not limited to Europe, however, as it is the most spread out language in the Eurasia region. Countries with Russian as an official language, besides Russia, include Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. Countries that have large numbers of Russian speakers, but don’t list the language as an official means of communication, include Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Estonia, and most of the countries that formed the former Soviet Block.

Considered a language of the East Slavic family, Russian is unique from other language branches. Consonant phonemes are distinguished by whether they have a palatal secondary articulation. They are labeled into “hard” and “soft” sounds. Russian also features a reduction of unstressed vowels. Variations of stress do exist, depending on the word and its meaning. Yet sometimes, as with many other languages, the rules are native to the speaker without much [understood] rhyme or reason.

Russian also features an alphabet separate from the Latin and Semitic families. This alphabet is known as Cyrillic. It has 33 letters that vary in upper and lower case forms, like the Latin-based alphabet. Some of the letters are merged sounds that are distinguished as their own mark. It can be difficult to transliterate the Russian alphabet, as some sounds do not have Latin counterparts. Still, linguists do their best to convert the letters into rough estimations of the sound. For the most part, the Russian alphabet is phonetic, meaning the letters usually carry the same sounds throughout their use in various words.

The first Russian dictionary was released between 1789 and 1794. It features 43,257 words of both old Russian and Church Slavonic. The third and final edition of this “Academic Dictionary” was released in 1847. By then, the word count was up to 114,749.

Russia is the largest country in the world in terms of land mass. Its language has followed suit, spreading to all corners of the globe. In terms of native speakers, Russian is the 8th most spoken language in the world.

What You May Not Know About Russia

By Amanda Scott

Russia may be well know for its vodka, but did you know the word comes from the Russian word for water, voda? Here are some other little known facts about Russia.

Women outnumber men in Russia, by a lot, approximately 10 million.

The official language is Russian, but there are 27 other languages co-official languages throughout different regions of Russia.

The U.S. Purchased Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million in 1867.

Gorbachev is a crooner, he recorded an album of romantic Russian ballads.

It wasn’t until 2013 that beer was consider an alcoholic beverage in Russia.

The most radioactive, polluted lake in the world lies in Russia, Lake Karachay.

It a crime to have a dirty car in Russia.

One-fourth of the world’s fresh water is contained in lakes in Russia.

The world’s highest volcano, Klyuchevskaya Sopka, sitting at a height of over 15,000 feet is located in Russia.

Russia is bigger than Pluto.

America and Russia are less than 2.5 miles apart at their closest point.

Russia has nine time zones, more than any other country, this is down from the eleven it had back in 2010.

St. Petersburg has three times the amount of bridges that Venice has.

The Trans-Siberian Railway spans almost the entire country, making it the longest in the world.

Russia is home to largest McDonalds, which can seat 700 people.

74 billionaires reside in Moscow, more than any other city in the world.

Tetris, a well known computer game, was created by a Russian programmer, Alexei Pazhitnov.

Russia was the first to send a dog to space.

Russians usually wear their wedding rings on their right hand.

There is a museum in Russia that hires cats to protect the artwork from rodents.

We have our current periodic table of elements thanks to the Russian chemist, Dmitrii Mendeleev.

The world’s largest bell can be found at the Kremlin. It weighs a whopping 223 tons!

Russia is known as the “Lungs of Europe” since it has the largest forest reserves in the world.

St. Petersburg’s metro is the deepest subway in the world, approximately 100 meters deep.

The Russian language does not include a word for ‘the’ or ‘a’.

Interpretation in Moscow

We are in the planning stages of our next interpretation assignment in Moscow, a meeting between a few American business men and their new counterparts in Russia. The interpreter is fluent in both the Russian and the English language and is able to switch from one language to the next instantly. (more…)

Drive About – Number Neighborhood

World Translation center recently had the opportunity to work with Artgig Studio, creative and technical specialists for websites, and designers of children’s educational apps. We provided language translation and voice recordings into French, Russian and Castilian Spanish for one of their latest apps, Drive About: Number Neighborhood. (more…)

World Translation Center Announces Portuguese Website Launch

World Translation Center announced today the launch of its eighth and final language-specific website, PortugueseLanguageTranslation.org, which, as the name suggests, focuses on English to Portuguese translation. In addition to a general discussion of the translation services available, the new site displays voice demos from voice over artists, with speakers from Portugal and Brazil. The Company believes these language-specific sites will enable it to test different marketing strategies while increasing its Internet presence.

Spanish and French Websites Launched

World Translation Center officially announced the launch today of two new language-specific websites, French Translation Service and Spanish Language Translation. This brings to seven the number of sites dedicated to specific languages that have been launched over the past several months and nearly completes this phase of the Company’s marketing strategy. It is anticipated that the final one of these sites, dedicated to the Portuguese language, will be launched by the end of the year.

Arabic Translation Website Launched

Today, World Translation Center officially announced the launch of its Arabic translation website. The Company has extensive experience delivering Arabic language translation services and is in the process of launching a series of language-specific sites designed to increase its Internet presence and facilitate marketing efforts. The Arabic site is the fifth site launched by the Company over the past five months. The Company launched its German translation site in July and followed with a Russian translation website launch in September, a Chinese translation site in October and a Japanese translation site earlier this month.

Japanese Translation Website Launched

World Translation Center officially announced the launch of its Japanese translation website via press release today. The Company has extensive experience delivering Japanese language translation services and is in the process of launching a series of language-specific sites designed to increase its Internet presence and facilitate marketing efforts. The Japanese site is the fourth site launched by the Company over the past five months. The Company launched its German translation site in July and followed with its Russian translation website launch in September and its Chinese translation site in October.