Memphis Business Journal. Date: Wednesday, December 29, 2010, 2:47pm CST
Wells Fargo & Co. has added Russian language screens to its network of automated teller machines.
The ATMs operated by Wells Fargo and Wachovia banks will now display eight languages, the company said in a press statement.
Adding Russian language screens was based on customer preference and feedback, Jonathan Velline, head of Wells Fargo ATM banking and store strategy, said in the statement. Helping customers succeed financially includes a commitment to recognizing cultural preferences in diverse communities where the bank does business, he said.
Wells Fargo added Russian language screens to its entire network of more than 12,000 ATMs. Additionally, Wells Fargo has about 8,000 envelope-free ATMs across the country allowing customers to deposit cash and checks directly into ATMs without an envelope.
As of June 30, the most recent data available from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., Wells Fargo had $515.1 million in deposits in the Memphis area, making it the seventh-largest bank ranked by market share.
Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC), headquartered in San Francisco, bought Wachovia Corp. in late 2008 at the height of the financial crisis.
Source: http://www.bizjournals.com/memphis/news/2010/12/29/wells-fargo-adds-russian-language.html
Tags: Russian
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Нашим соотечественникам на Украине будет легче изучать родной язык
Члены президиума Международного совета российских соотечественников рассказали во время онлайн-конференции «Роль общественных объединений российских соотечественников в развитии российско-украинских отношений» о дальнейших перспективах изучения русского языка на территории Украины. Во время трансляции встречи, которая проходила в Киеве, они также обсудили вопросы взаимодействия Международного совета российских соотечественников со структурами Организации Объединенных Наций – ООН и Европарламента, а также проблем русскоязычных граждан и других меньшинств Украины.
С момента создания Международного совета российских соотечественников (который объединяет свыше семисот организаций из более чем пятидесяти стран) заседание его президиума впервые прошло в Киеве.
Накануне президент Украины Виктор Янукович лично принимал делегацию МСРС. В этом члены президиума совета увидели важное и знаменательное событие, знак внимания и уважения со стороны президента Украины к российским соотечественникам, проживающим во всех странах мира.
По мнению депутата Верховной рады Украины, председателя правозащитного общественного движения «Русскоязычная Украина» Вадима Колесниченко, во многом именно благодаря объединениям соотечественников проблемы русско-культурных граждан Украины представлялись на европейском уровне и даже на уровне Организации Объединенных Наций.
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Tags: Russian, Ukrainian
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By CLIFFORD J. LEVY. Published: June 7, 2010
TALLINN, Estonia — Sometime before year’s end, a man with a clipboard will drop by one of this city’s best schools, the Tallinn Pae Gymnasium, and the staff will begin to fret. He will saunter from classroom to classroom, ignoring the children and instead engaging in seemingly trivial chitchat with many of the teachers, 20 minutes at a time.
Tell me, what subjects are your specialties? How long have you worked here? Can you explain to me a little about how you prepare your lessons?
He will not be particularly interested in what they say. He will care only about how they say it.
So watch that grammar. The language inspector is coming.
Estonia, a small former Soviet republic on the Baltic Sea, has been mounting a determined campaign to elevate the status of its native language and to marginalize Russian, the tongue of its former colonizer. That has turned public schools like the Pae Gymnasium, where the children have long been taught in Russian, into linguistic battlegrounds.
Because Pae’s administrators and teachers are state employees, they are now required to have a certain proficiency in Estonian and to use it in more classes. The National Language Inspectorate, a government agency that is not exactly beloved in Russian-speaking pockets of Estonia, is charged with ensuring that the law is followed.
(more…)
Tags: Estonian, Russian
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01.06.2010, 14.56
KIEV, June 1 (Itar-Tass) – The Communist faction at Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada (parliament) insists on a nationwide referendum to give the status of the second state language to Russian, a lawmaker said on Tuesday.
“One of the main tasks today is to settle the issue of giving the state status to the Russian language. We do not agree that this decision should be postponed until better times; this theme is ripe and has become overripe,” Communist faction member Igor Alexeyev said.
He stated that it is impossible to successfully resolve this issue within the framework of the European charter of regional languages and the languages of ethnic minorities.
“The Communist faction insists on launching all the necessary procedures for the referendum,” Alexeyev noted.
Source: http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=15184078&PageNum=0
Tags: Russian
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17 мая 16:20
Тема придания русскому языку статуса второго государственного в Украине не будет стоять на повестке дня визита Президента России Дмитрия Медведева в Украину. Такое мнение во время пресс-конференции в «Обозревателе» высказал директор международных программ Центра Разумкова Михаил Пашков.
«Сегодня эта тема не стоит на повестке дня», – сказал он. Эксперт добавил, что «речь идет о выполнении соответствующей Европейской хартии». Вместе с тем, он отметил, что «сегодня нужно создавать все условия для развития украинского языка в Украине».
Эксперт убежден, что вопрос русского языка в Украине не должен стать предметом торга или политических спекуляций – здесь «должны быть разработаны цивилизованные, взаимовыгодные подходы, удовлетворяющие социально-культурные потребности как украинцев в России, так и россиян в Украине именно в формате украино-российской межгосударственной комиссии», – сказал он.
Принимавший участие в пресс-конференции директор Национального института стратегических исследований Андрей Ермолаев добавил, что «перспектив определения русского языка как второго государственного на сегодняшний день не существует». «В политической сфере это предмет баталий, но, вместе с тем, существуют механизмы, которые регулируют обеспечение русскоязычного населения соответствующими правами и возможностями», – сказал он.
(more…)
Tags: Russian, Ukrainian
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TBILISI, May 4 (AFP) – At schools across ex-Soviet Georgia, English is ousting Russian as the pro-Western authorities mount an ambitious campaign to promote the language of Shakespeare.
Keen to build closer ties with the West and amid continued tensions with Moscow after the 2008 Georgia-Russia war, Georgia’s government seems determined to end Russian’s dominance as the country’s most-spoken foreign language.
And young Georgians, anxious to learn one of the most widely spoken languages in the world, couldn’t be happier.
“Every Georgian needs to know English. It is impossible to get a proper education and build a successful career without knowing English,” said 16-year-old Mariam Sulashvili during a break from her English classes at high school number 47 in central Tbilisi.
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, a fluent English speaker himself, has led the charge for English, saying earlier this year that Georgia needs a “linguistic revolution.”
A string of new measures are being taken to help promote English.
Earlier this year, Georgia’s education ministry launched a programme to bring 1,000 native English teachers to schools across the country starting in September.
From 2011, English classes will become compulsory from the first grade in all Georgian schools.
(more…)
Tags: English, Russian
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By Vladimir Kozlov. April 22, 2010, 10:00 AM ET
MOSCOW — The Eastern European country of Georgia is preparing amendments to its film law whereby all films will have to be dubbed into Georgian.
“All theatrically released films have to be dubbed into Georgian as of January 2011,” Tamara Tatishvili, director of the Georgian National Film Center, told THR. “To my knowledge, the Ministry [of Culture, Monument Protection and Sports] and representatives of local distribution companies are now negotiating a smooth transition to the new scheme.”
The legislation is to make releases of films in Russian illegal, but it is not likely to have as big an impact as the adoption of similar legislation in the Ukraine which caused theater closures and public indignation in January 2008 in the country’s Russian-speaking areas.
But, unlike Ukraine, which is divided into the Ukrainian-speaking western and Russian-speaking eastern regions, in Georgia, the vast majority of the population speaks and understands Georgian.
Similarly, interests of major Russian distributors are not to be affected as they are not present in the Georgian market. According to Tatishvili, at the moment, only one theatrical distribution company is operating in the country, and it is local.
Source: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/world/news/e3i3a5fb1561d2145a38d9aa5667e982f0b
Tags: Georgian, Russian
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By Anna Mundow. Globe Correspondent / April 4, 2010
Marian Schwartz is an acclaimed translator of Russian fiction, history, biography, and criticism. Her most recent translations include Ivan Goncharov’s 19th-century novel “Oblomov” and Olga Slavnikova’s futuristic novel “2017.” Schwartz is also the principal English translator of the works of Nina Berberova.
She spoke from her home in Austin, Texas.
Q. What is a good translation?
A. I think a translation is considered “good’’ when the reader likes it, even if it’s tough going. Bulgakov’s “White Guard,” for example, was known for years in the Glenny translation, which was a pleasure to read but had little to do with the original text and omitted crucial bits; everyone but Slavists loved it. I hope that my new translation reproduces the full range of devices and effects of the original. Incidentally, our capacity — and willingness — to appreciate difficult texts seems to have changed, particularly for canonical texts.
Q. In what way?
A. I think we’ve become more receptive to foreign elements. Constance Garnett, whom I will defend to the end of my days, is now criticized for not being faithful to Tolstoy’s text, for setting his books in what feels like an English garden, but in my view it cannot be bad when a translation gives people access to works that they would never otherwise have read. As I was saying, though, our taste for foreignness has increased. A simple example: 50 years ago, names of Chinese characters were translated — “Peach Blossom’’ and the like — whereas now the preference is for the transliterated Chinese names. There is an ongoing debate among translators about “foreignizing’’ and “domestication,’’ but wherever a translator’s choice falls, today it will probably be closer to foreignizing than it would have been 50 years ago. (more…)
Tags: Russian
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Friday April 2, 2010
MADISON, Wis. (WTAQ) – Soon, the University of Wisconsin in Madison will soon be the only Midwestern campus to offer an intensive study of Russian language and culture thanks to a federal grant. UW-Madison will become 1 of 4 Russian Language Flagship Centers. Others are located in California, Oregon and Pennsylvania.
The U.S. Department of Defense launched the centers to educate students about the Russian culture to help with national security. The federal government will pay the college $1 million over the next 3 years to set up the program.
Source: http://www.wtaq.com/news/articles/2010/apr/02/uw-madison-lands-1m-grant-intensive-russian-langua/
Tags: Russian
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Pavel Palazchenko, Russian Translation Company. Published: 6:01PM BST 08 Oct 2009
Found in translation: Paradoxal semantics of Russian suffixation
In a recent translation of War and Peace, Platon Karataev, Tolstoy’s kindly peasant, addresses his interlocutor as “little falcon”. It just doesn’t sound right, reminding of someone from Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans. Remember Montigomo Hawk’s Claw?
Actually, “little falcon” is a literal translation of the Russian word sokolik, an intimacy or endearment that is still used by older people.
The Russian language is full of such words: First, the Russian national character is expressive and emotional, and one aspect of it is that it has so many diminutive adjectives and nouns (hence attempts to render them in English by the word “little”); second, the language itself offers a variety of ways to be expressive and emotional. One of them is suffixes. Russian is sometimes called the language of suffixes.
Russian suffixes express an extremely wide range of emotions and attitudes. They can produce words that are caressing, diminutive, familiar, vulgar or contemptuous.
Polish linguist Anna Wierzbicka studied the way Russian suffixes work with Russian personal names. She says the meanings expressed by names with suffixes are so rich and complex they cannot be represented by simple labels such as “affectionate” or “scornful”. Some are ambivalent.
(more…)
Tags: Russian
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(AFP) – 1 day ago
DUSHANBE — Tajikistan’s president on Wednesday signed into law legislation dropping Russian as an official language, a move likely to irk the Kremlin, already wary of the language’s decline in its former Soviet satellites.
The law, which was passed by the ex-Soviet state’s parliament last week, means that communication with and between state institutions can only be carried out in Tajik, a close relative of Persian.
“(Tajik President) Emomali Rakhmon signed several laws…. among which was a law ‘about the state language of the Republic of Tajikistan’,” a spokesman for Rakhmon told AFP.
The bill makes no mention of a change in Russia’s official status as language of inter-ethnic communication or immediately changing Tajikistan’s adapted form of the Russian Cyrillic script, used for the past 60 years.
The law means that courts, the army, state and non-state institutions will only be able to communicate in Tajik while stamps and official forms will cease to be bilingual.
Under Rakhmon’s rule, the impoverished nation of 7.5 million has sought to maintain decent ties with Moscow to buoy its faltering economy, while improving relations with both the West and Iran.
There are only 50,000 native Russian speakers left in Tajikistan after Russian engineers and other technical experts left in droves as the Soviet collapse gave way to a bloody civil war that left tens of thousands dead.
(more…)
Tags: Russian
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24 July 2009. By Natalya Krainova / The Moscow Times
Tajikistan is preparing to ban the use of Russian by state agencies and in official documents to boost the role of the local language, in what analysts see as either a move to win new financial support from Moscow or to demonstrate political independence.
But the move, criticized by a senior Russian lawmaker Thursday, could bring more damage than help to the impoverished country, where remittances sent back from Russia accounted for almost 50 percent of the economy last year, according to World Bank estimates.
Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon called on the government to speed up consideration of a bill that would require state agencies and companies to communicate with one another and issue official documents exclusively in Tajik, RIA-Novosti reported late Wednesday.
The bill would also make knowledge of the local language compulsory for every Tajik citizen, the report said.
“A speedy adoption of a new law about the [national] language is needed,” Rakhmon said in a televised address to the nation, according to a transcript on his official web site in the Russian and Tajik languages. “A state language … is an attribute of political independence,” he said.
Rakhmon’s televised address was dedicated to the anniversary of the law on the national language adopted on July 22, 1989. That law made Tajik the national language but gave every citizen the right to choose between Tajik and Russian when addressing state agencies, RIA-Novosti said.
(more…)
Tags: Russian, Tajik
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By Shant Kazandjian. Published on July 03, 2009
The Russian Language Immersion Program at CSUN is a component of the federally funded Southern California Consortium of California State Universities for the Strategic Language Initiative (SLI). Students in the six-week program receive in-class language instruction and participate in cultural activities in Russian after class. The program includes language instruction, group activities, projects, online and individualized learning, guest lectures and field trips. When the students first join the SLI program, they must choose an independent field study project. The project relates to the students’ field of study and future professional goals.
“We have 12 students in the class. [The students] have two types of classes that they take from 9 a.m. until 3 p.m. everyday,” said Dr. Oleg Minin. “They take a grammar class, which I teach, as well as a conversation class in the Russian language. One of the principal objectives of this program is to train them very well in the target language so that they can apply this knowledge in their future endeavors.”
After the six weeks of class in summer, the students continue to engage in language development activities, including face-to-face, mentoring, tutorial and online coursework during the 10-month academic year. Consistent tracking of student progress and feedback is provided weekly.
When the academic year is completed, the students participate in a study abroad program in Moscow designed to further advance the students’ language proficiency and broaden their cross-cultural experience. Upon return, each student will make a formal presentation of the portfolio or report in Russian.
(more…)
Tags: Russian
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Депутаты украинского Николаева через суд добились права использовать в официальной документации русский язык. Такое решение принял сегодня Одесский апелляционный суд, оставивший в силе решение николаевского горсовета “о предоставлении русскому языку статуса регионального в части его использования горсоветом и исполнительными органами в своей работе и официальных документах вместе с государственным украинским языком”. Этим же решением суд не удовлетворил решение депутатов о признании в Николаеве русского языка как регионального.
Николаевский горсовет еще 26 мая 2006 года принял решение о предоставлении русскому языку статуса регионального, и с тех пор идут судебные баталии за родной для города корабелов язык. Такие же судебные споры за русский язык, на котором говорит значительная часть населения, идут в Одессе, Донбассе и Крыму. Чтобы защитить и поддержать русский язык на своих территориях, депутаты советов разного уровня юга и востока Украины выделяют из своих небольших бюджетов средства. Это сделали уже Одесский, Николаевский областные и городские советы, руководство Крыма и Севастополя. С приближением президентских выборов тема сбережения русского языка и его статуса как второго государственного становится вновь актуальной для ведущих центристских и левых партий и организации страны, отмечает ИТАР-ТАСС.
Source: http://www.izvestia.ru/news/news208904
Tags: Russian
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Question: How would you assess mass media reports saying that Georgian school teachers are forced into Russian language training in the Gali district, on the territory controlled by Russian occupation troops?
Answer: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia has repeatedly focused the international community’s attention on the fact that mass and gross human right violations still continue to take place on Georgia’s occupied territories.
By prohibiting native language education, Russian occupation troops and the proxy regimes grossly violate the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, International Pact on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (Article 13) supplemental protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights, (2 Article) prohibiting any kind of restriction on native language instruction.
The reason why the Russian Federation made a decision on speedy recognition of the proxy regimes on the Russian-occupied territories must be clear to everyone. Russia’s aim is first to do all in its power to interfere with the functioning of international monitoring missions on the occupied territories and eventually achieve their expulsion upon creating a kind of ‘new reality’ and then to employ mass violations, discriminations, restrictions and prohibitions to force the remaining local population to leave their own places of residence, thus bringing to conclusion the ethnic cleansing process that started away back in the 1990s.
(more…)
Tags: Georgian, Russian
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