Russian Blog

There are a lot of corn fields in Wisconsin, some of them striped, dodging hills, others flat and monotonous. In a very few of them an enterprising farmer has mapped out and reaped a large maze. A maize maze. You grab a pennant on a long wobbly pole, and enter the corn. If it's a good maze, it'll have a few towers in it where you can climb up and see where you are from above. If it's a really good maze, you'll actually get seriously lost.

I'm from Wisconsin, and this is more or less how I introduce my favorite joke to Russians. Then I say, «Вы знаете, как строить кукурузный лабаринт для дураков?»

Are you itching to hear the beginning of an old soviet radio news broadcast? Or a few words of Yuri Gagarin? Interspersed with Latin pop music?

Two albums by Spanish musician Manu Chao contain snippets of Russian radio broadcasts worked into his multilingual beats.

Looking for specific things in your online dictionary? Like lots of synonyms? Love hyper links?

Check out the Мултитран "система для переводчиков" dictionary. It'll give you more choices than you can handle, and it will break them down by topic specialties such as seafaring, business, or medicine.

If you click on the topic specialty hyper links, you'll get all the phrases that use your word in that context, and the phrases' translations. I love dictionaries that give phrases.

If you look up a word in English, and you get a sea of impenetrable Russian synonyms, just click on them to get the return translation back to English.

Мултитран is perhaps intimidating at first, but quite thorough.

President Putin's Russia has been hard on the media. Numerous journalists disappear every year as the airwaves become more restricted. But perhaps the most surprising part of modern trends for us is that the Russian people don't seem bothered by it. NPR's "On the Media" went to Russia to hear Russians talk about it themselves. They interview high up editors and publishers, a musician, politicians, and others closely tied to the Russian journalism world.

Check out their site and mp3s free to download. You'll hear a bouquet of ideas, ranging from idealistic, to dark, to calculating, to exasperation. You'll also hear two cultures staring each other in the face.