LibriVox Forum

Hi all!!!

We (I and Foreigngirl) were thinking about adding some more of the beautiful Russian language to the LibriVox catalog. There are so many excellent works by Russian authors, some of them being recorded in English translation right now. We would love to have at least some of them in Russian also.

Anybody Russian-speaking around and interested in recording something in Russian?

And what would you prefer? We were thinking about Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov...

K.

I don't speak a word of Russian. But, any chance you could find some children's stories..? It would be especially neat to have Aesop's Fables, since we have those in several languages already ... means it's easier for people to get multi-lingual.

I totally support your doing the Russian Classics, too ... it's cool that they're available in a language I can understand, but I think it'd be amazing to have them in their original language too.

Thanks for your support to our idea, Cori!

And, yes, Aesop's Fables are to be found. For example, here: http://www.gumer.info/bibliotek_Buks/Fiction/Ezop/01.php

That could be a really good thing to start with, as they are not long and not difficult.

I can read in Russian fluently, with a slight "southern accent", perhaps.

By the way, Cori, I enjoyed enormously your most recent presentation (Community Podcast #79): LV can really turn into addiction if one does not plan well his "home work" etc. And, speaking personally, LV is of great help for people studying foreign languages.

euthymius wrote:I can read in Russian fluently, with a slight "southern accent", perhaps.

Great! A few more volunteers and we could think about something in Russian! As to the accent, I also am not free of it in Russian.

Kristine, I am amazed at the enormous quantity (and high quality) of audiobooks published in Russia. Most Russian narrators who work professionally are exceptionally gifted and, as a rule, very musical. Moreover, the audiobooks may be downloaded at torrent sites for free and this may be one of the reasons why Russian is not so popular with Librivox - well, this is but a guess on my part. LV is primarily an English (as far as I have observed so far, US English) site and English being for various reasons more influential (and richer in and more tolerant to a variety of accents), it is very natural that other languages should find their way here slowly. Perhaps introducing Russian should begin with shorter works - poetry, short stories, etc. and not with literary giants such as Dostoevsky, Gogol or Tolstoy...

Euthymius, you are right in all your points. The amount of high-quality audiobooks in Russian is great and due to specific attitude to copyright issues more freely accessable, as perhaps the audiobooks are in US. And it could be one of the reasons why there are not many volunteers (to say none) from Russia and adjoining countries. There are of course many other reasons for that; the lack of "volunteering culture", if I may call it like that, lack of interest and lack of information about the project as examples. But I do not suppose it to be a reason why some works in Russian could or should not be added to LV collection. Even if it was only for the sake of helping people learn languages.

Perhaps introducing Russian should begin with shorter works - poetry, short stories, etc. and not with literary giants such as Dostoevsky, Gogol or Tolstoy.

I agree with that also, those giants were proposed as a kind of perspective for the bright future. The start of course should be something smaller, the same Aesops Fables, for example. Maybe you have some interesting proposal?

Maybe you have some interesting proposal?

Oh, I have indeed. But perhaps... after the Slavonic "Vita Sanctorum" and the Bible. I was thinking of the Russian Filokalia (beginning with St. Macarius the Great's anthropological and philosophical chapters) - this is a reading one can rarely find even in Russia. But don't you think that more Russians could become interested if there were a Russian version of the site and we were discussing these subjects in Russian?

Nevertheless, for a beginning we could make a selection of classical poetry - short works always find readers more easily. I know a couple of sites in Russia, among which

• http://lib.ru/POEZIQ/
  http://litera.ru/stixiya/map.html - here you can find almost all classical Russian poets

etc.

Here is an interesting collection of poems, dedicated to the four seasons - we should only check the PD status of each:

# Четыре сезона
:: О зиме http://litera.ru/stixiya/themes/zima.html
:: О весне http://litera.ru/stixiya/themes/vesna.html
:: О лете http://litera.ru/stixiya/themes/leto.html
:: Об осени http://litera.ru/stixiya/themes/osen.html

Very interesting suggestions, I especially liked the season collections. As far as I saw most of the poems were PD, though not all.

There are so many wonderful things one would like to record... Where to find time for it all?

Well, we have 24 hours per day. The problem is not in time, but in energy - if one could sleep 2-3 hours per day and read all the rest of this time... There was a Topic somewhere: One Book in a Week. I would suggest that we try: One Book in a Night (not including War and Peace and similar to it, of course!)...

We can but try. I have found out that, next to diligence, one needs patience. And - the key to success - never say NO, never think you cannot do it. Just go on, go on, go on... eventhough too slowly.

After all, we are doing this for friends, and this is, I believe, the highest of human motivations. For someone who may have weak eyes, who is ill or too busy, or whatever... For someone yearning to learn more and having less spare time than needed.

If one is reading for love, I truly believe he/she will do it!

euthymius wrote:
After all, we are doing this for friends, and this is, I believe, the highest of human motivations. For someone who may have weak eyes, who is ill or too busy, or whatever... For someone yearning to learn more and having less spare time than needed.

If one is reading for love, I truly believe he/she will do it!

Well said! And refers to all human activities, not only to reading.

I speak native Russian and I am willing to make the records. The LibriVox resource helps me a lot with my studying of the English language and I would be happy to do something in return. Is there any Russian projects currently running?

Hi, Chamberlain!

I am really happy to hear that you enjoy our recordings and are willing to record yourself. Right now there are no currently running projects in Russian, but there are some really nice opportunities anyway.

For example, if you would care recording something not very large, there is the Multilingual Poetry collection, which you can find here : http://librivox.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=14446
We would just love to have some poems recorded in Russian for this collection.

And of course, if you feel like doing something bigger, you can always think of a solo project. But I would recommend you do something smaller first, just to get the feel of it.

If you have any questions about the process, feel free to ask !

Best wishes,
Kristine.

Hi, Kristine!

Thank you for the information. I have just recorded and uploaded a short Russian poem. I hope that my first recording is not a very awful one.

Sincerely,
Ilya