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Prices start to catch up...
Jul. 8th, 2008 09:15 amThere was a time, back some time ago in Russia, that dictionaries were as inexpensive as any other books, which were pretty cheap to begin with. I recall buying a copy of Zimmerman's somewhat short but very useful dictionary for translators for less than a dollar at the House of Books store in Moscow back in... it must have been 1993. Upon my return home, I found out the same book - imported - could be ordered in the US for something like $35.
Over the years, I have routinely stopped into Russian bookstores to check out what's new and available (not always the same, by the way, as when I picked up a marvelous dictionary on oil field technology a couple or three years ago, which had been published in 1979). And when prices were low, I tended to buy rather indiscriminately, on the theory that if, in the end, a dictionary saves me an hour of time, its expense shall have been justified.
I ended up buying several "clunkers" that way, dictionaries whose overall content is very nearly useless, because either the range of terminology never seems to jive with terms I'm looking for (one of the first dictionaries I bought, at Barnes & Noble in Manhattan, by a fellow named Paul Macura, was like that) or the definitions offered are, in my view, hugely suspect.
The poster child for this latter phenomenon was an entry in a very expensive dictionary on automation and control by a respected publisher. The term "process control system" was rendered unashamedly (and literally) as "технологическая контрольная система" (and although the immediately preceding entry – "process control simulation" ("моделирование управления процесса") – got the "control" part right and improved on the "process" modifier, there is no hint anywhere of what I have come to expect as the fairly standard term in Russian: "система управления технологическим процессом." Upon seeing this, you have to ask yourself, what other surprises lurk between the covers of this nearly $300 volume.
Anyway, Friday afternoon, I took a short walk from the hotel to the Moskva bookstore on Tverskaya just across the street from the city government buildings. The place is generally jammed and almost always has a good supply of dictionaries available. There were some new titles on display, but since my last visit in 2006, the prices have gone up.
Where before, prices pretty much topped out in the $20-$30 range, during this visit I had no trouble finding dictionaries priced at $50, and when they're that expensive, (a) you really need to look at them carefully, and (b) you can't buy a whole lot of them, or at least I can't.
I ended up blowing my budget on an oil business glossary (which tends to emphasize the business side of the business, as opposed to the technical side) and an aviation dictionary.
In other news, the Ubuntu on my Eee takes forever to boot, and the splash screen freezes for a while during the process, which is not very informative.
To eliminate the splash screen, edit /boot/grub/menu.lst and change the line that reads
I did a little research earlier on the IPv4/IPv6 problem I've been having and have scrawled the "fix" on a piece of paper that - did I put those shorts in the laundry?
Hmmm.
Cheers...
Over the years, I have routinely stopped into Russian bookstores to check out what's new and available (not always the same, by the way, as when I picked up a marvelous dictionary on oil field technology a couple or three years ago, which had been published in 1979). And when prices were low, I tended to buy rather indiscriminately, on the theory that if, in the end, a dictionary saves me an hour of time, its expense shall have been justified.
I ended up buying several "clunkers" that way, dictionaries whose overall content is very nearly useless, because either the range of terminology never seems to jive with terms I'm looking for (one of the first dictionaries I bought, at Barnes & Noble in Manhattan, by a fellow named Paul Macura, was like that) or the definitions offered are, in my view, hugely suspect.
The poster child for this latter phenomenon was an entry in a very expensive dictionary on automation and control by a respected publisher. The term "process control system" was rendered unashamedly (and literally) as "технологическая контрольная система" (and although the immediately preceding entry – "process control simulation" ("моделирование управления процесса") – got the "control" part right and improved on the "process" modifier, there is no hint anywhere of what I have come to expect as the fairly standard term in Russian: "система управления технологическим процессом." Upon seeing this, you have to ask yourself, what other surprises lurk between the covers of this nearly $300 volume.
Anyway, Friday afternoon, I took a short walk from the hotel to the Moskva bookstore on Tverskaya just across the street from the city government buildings. The place is generally jammed and almost always has a good supply of dictionaries available. There were some new titles on display, but since my last visit in 2006, the prices have gone up.
Where before, prices pretty much topped out in the $20-$30 range, during this visit I had no trouble finding dictionaries priced at $50, and when they're that expensive, (a) you really need to look at them carefully, and (b) you can't buy a whole lot of them, or at least I can't.
I ended up blowing my budget on an oil business glossary (which tends to emphasize the business side of the business, as opposed to the technical side) and an aviation dictionary.
In other news, the Ubuntu on my Eee takes forever to boot, and the splash screen freezes for a while during the process, which is not very informative.
To eliminate the splash screen, edit /boot/grub/menu.lst and change the line that reads
# defopions=quiet splashto (ceteris paribus)
# defopions=Then - and this is muy importante! - open up a terminal and run
sudo update-grub(If you don't do this, the splash screen doesn't go away!)
I did a little research earlier on the IPv4/IPv6 problem I've been having and have scrawled the "fix" on a piece of paper that - did I put those shorts in the laundry?
Hmmm.
Cheers...
