I was a little surprised, so I immediately googled, “What’s Ashton Kutcher doing in Russia?”

Photo by @aplusk (via twitpic)

As it turns out, he, along with other American Technology gurus, was participating in a State Department Delegation to Russia. To put it very briefly, the goal of the trip was to meet with Russian technology and community leaders to discuss how technology and social media can save the world.

For more information, see:

***And finally, see Ashton talk about the trip live on USTREAM on February 25, 2010 at 10:00AM PST!!

So here’s my question: Ashton, now that you’ve been to Russia and all, will you be participating in the Tweetup this Sunday??? (Hope to see you all there!!)

Photo by Conneee

***One note before we get started – You should probably get all your settings (настройки) how you want them while still in English mode. Then switch to Russian for daily use.

First, memorize these 4 words:

settings – настройки
language – язык
save – сохранить
cancel – отменить

Those should keep you safe, but just in case (and this goes for most gadgets):

To switch from English to Russian: Main menu –> Settings –> Language –> Русский
To switch from Russian to English: Главное меню –> Hастройки –> Язык –> English

Other than that, if you can’t figure things out, refer to this list:
(I am assuming we all know the Cyrillic alphabet here, so I’m going to leave out the cognates.) And I’m only including words you’d need on a daily basis.

дополнения – extras
исполнители – performers
перемешать – shuffle
повторить – repeat
поиск – search
сборники – albums (collections)
сейчас исполняется – now playing

Did I miss any words that might be important?? Let me know!

Stay tuned for similar guides on other devices. Please let me know if there is a specific one you’d like to see next!

One thing I am thankful for however, is my favorite online Russian-English dictionary, ABBYY Online. I was first turned on to this site when I was studying at Middlebury and had a ton of reading to do – what a time saver! One thing I really like about it is that there is no need to select which is the target language and which is the source language. If you type a word in English, it automatically gives you the Russian definition and vice versa. Some sites require you to choose the languages from a dropdown every time you look up a word, which is a pain. This feature makes it easy to copy a word from the Russian definition, and paste it in to get the English equivilant.

Like other online dictionaries, Lingvo includes an on-screen keyboard if you need to enter the search word in Russian. I also use this as shortcut (actually, it’s more of a longcut) for getting the Cyrillic alphabet when I’m not on my home computer.

Apparently ABBYY Lingvo also offers dictionaries and software for sale, but unfortunately for them, their online version is so great, I’ve never had the need to purchase anything! My guess is that the for-sale products are good, as well.

Has anyone found any other online dictionaries that you like? Please share!

Well, now that I’m on twitter, (follow me!) I wanted to write a simple post about twitter terminology, по-русски. But it’s turned out to be more difficult than I thought! There wasn’t much information out there, and there was a lot of disagreement amongst what I did find.

A simple Google search for твиттер didn’t turn up much. The Russian Wikipedia article was the most helpful. It used твитнул as the past tense of the verb, to tweet, and stated that a twitter user (tweep, in English, if ya didn’t know) is called a твиттерянин (or твиттеряне for plural).

Another good site I found was RuTwitter.com, which has a page called Что такое Twitter (which I like to translate as “What the heck is Twitter”). I didn’t get a lot of new terminology from this page, but it does have a list of Russian tweeps – I mean твиттеряне, if you’re looking for Russian-speakers to follow.

For more help, I turned to my own tweeps, where there was some disagreement. I think that’s understandable considering American newscasters are still chuckling to each other while trying to figure out what Twitter is, and where those Twitters go.

The general consensus for the word tweet, as a noun is simply the transliterated form, твит. (But I also saw запись and короткое сообщение.) One tweep recommended чирикать as the verb form, which literally translates as chirp or twitter.

Next, of course, the word, follow. My favorite is again the nice and simple, фолловить. But again, we have more options: следовать, следить, наблюдать, and добавить (to add).

It made me chuckle, but I even saw the term “фоллоу фрайдей”. (Doesn’t Russian have its own word for Friday?) And the website, Mир Tвиттерянин (World of Tweeps?) has a page called Tвиттинг.

So if you’re on Твиттер, please фолоувите меня! And if you have anything to add to this post, please comment! I am still a little confused about which are the best words to use! (Corrections also welcome.)

Also, a big спасибо to the tweeps who helped make this post possible: @StephenMJr, @kmaratte, @Imanotherstar, and @diman_dnk – Спасибо!

And now for the last three tools: (1) Search other languages, (2) Translate text, web page or document, and (3) Make your website available in other languages. Remember – just like the first two tools, you may need to download Google Tools in order to use them.

Search Other Languages

What it is: Want to search the web for pages written in Russian, but don’t have Russian font capability (or don’t know the Russian word for what you’re searching for)? All you do is type the word in English and Google will translate your word into Russian and perform the search. Results are displayed in their original Russian, as well as the ir translated English versions.

How to get it: Go to Google’s “Translated Search” page. From there, just choose your options!

Translate Text, Web Page or Document

What it is: This one’s pretty basic. It’s a free translator. It will translate a few words, a whole web page, or an uploaded document. As always, beware of automatic translations, like these. You’ll get the meaning of what you’re translating, but these programs are not putting any human translators out of business.

How to get it: From the Google translate page, type or paste into the empty box the text that you’d like to have translated. Or you can upload a document. Choose the source and the target language and click “translate”. Voila!

Make Your Website Available in Other Languages

What it is: Okay, now I’m getting in a little over my own head. This tool gives you an easy way for your website reader to translate your page into a variety of languages, via a button on your site.

How to get it: The Google Translate page provides a snippet of code that you can paste into the code for your website. I am no web designer, so I haven’t yet tried this one out myself, but it looks easy enough to use.  If I ever get caught up on writing posts for my blog, maybe I’ll try this one out!

Has anyone tried any of these tools out yet? What do you think??

Related post: “2 Google Tools for the Foreign Language Student”

You will need to download the Google Toolbar. If you don’t already have it, you can get it here.

I don’t want to overwhelm you with too many tools at once, so I am going to start out with what I think are the best two: (1) Translate words instantly with no clicks, and (2) One-click translation from your browser’s toolbar. We’ll get to the rest in a later post.

Translate words instantly with no clicks

What it is: This is definitely the most exciting of my recent language tool discoveries! Whenever you pause your cursor over an English word, the Russian definition will automatically pop up in a tiny window without the need to navigate to another page! 

How to get it:

1. Once Google Tools is installed (do that here for free!): on your new Google Toolbar, click the down arrow next to the wrench icon for “Adjust Toolbar Options”.
2. Click “Options”.
3. Click on the “Tools” tab.  
4. Under “Tools” scroll down to “Translate”.
5. Click the plus sign to see your options.
6. From there, check the box next to “Translate English words by hovering over them”. Set the translation language to Russian.
7. You might as well click the box next to “Offer page translations when a web page is not in English”. This will apply to the next tool. 
8. Once you have adjusted these settings you’re all set and should start seeing the Russian translations. If you ever want to turn it off, simply uncheck the “Word Translator” box under “Translate” on the toolbar.

One-click translation from your browser’s toolbar (Translate this page)

What it is: This one is sort of self-explanatory. With one click, you can view a Russian webpage in English. This is great to use when you are totally lost and confused about what you are looking at. But it’s a crutch. Don’t use it all the time. We’re trying to learn how to walk run here, right?

How to get it: Follow all steps of the instructions above, except for step 6. Then, when you wind up on a webpage written in Russian, a bar will appear at the top of the page with a button to “Translate”. Click it. Just be careful about clicking “Always Translate Russian”. You (probably) at least want to have the option to try to figure it out yourself.

These are the first 2 of several tools. Stay tuned for the rest.

If you’ve tried these tools, please comment to let us know how you like them! I am loving the instant English-to-Russian translations!