Hi guys I could use any suggestions please. I have encouraged my Irina to browse these forums and guides for the steps and cautions that lay ahead for her end of the paperwork and procedures, but the problem is her english is limited at this time and it takes her awhile to work through it all. Short of me highlighting key areas and highlights of the guides provided here... any suggestions? Of all my research, the info provided here is the most up to date and most accurate i have found. She might find info elsewhere translated to english but i would have serious doubts about its accuracy. Any help is appreciated

A couple months ago someone on here recommended this site for my fiancee. You should have Irina check it out... It's a site like this, only geared towards Russian fiancees.

http://www.russian-fiancee.com/rus/forum/viewforum.php?f=26

wow jamest thanks for that link. I cant read it of course but it appears right off they go into details on all forms and such. I appreciate it

You can also try using this link and plugging in the website in question to get a rough translation:
http://babelfish.altavista.digital.com/babelfish/tr?

Ah yes Babel fish!

I have never had any success with the webpage translation but it is useful when translating sentences and words.

Word of advice though it will sound VERY strange through the translation!

I have written short sentences using it and translating, then translating it back into English...very strange indeed!

I think that website posted would be much better, in fact I think I shall send that off to Olga! =)

Welcome to the Russia Forum! (How about more on your story.... where are you guys from, how'd you meet, have you met in person... what stage of the game are you in?)

That link that James provided is probably the best one for her to use. There was a girl on here not too long ago that used that site as well. It sounds like the Russian equivalent of VJ and should be pretty helpful for the ladies.

Satellite's link is good for translating webpages, and I've used a "cut and paste" method on the promt/paralink (just google Russian translation) website.

As for you, if you're going to marry a Russian girl (and a big thumbs up for that!!!) it would help you in the long run to learn to read Russian. I'm not talking being able to read blogs and understand everything, just being able to read the Cyrillic letters so you can look at the map or something like that. (You are most likely going to have to go to Russia and if you know how to read Russian it will help you a whole lot. Not to mention it will score you major points with the ol' lady!)

Good luck, and welcome aboard!

thanks satellite for the babelfish page translator. i have tried it on a few different things and it actually works better then i thought it could. abit disjointed but easy enough to figure out.

Hi slim and thanks for the welcome. I am from Atlanta and Irina is in Krasnodar. We met through a small personals site. communicating for 4 months and the plan at this moment is i will be meeting her in Moscow in mid september. Extremely deep feelings for one another at this point but both of us are keeping perspective that this person to person meeting has to happen first to see what chemistry is there. We had but one phone call so far but she is so worried about her english ability she is very shy to try further until she is more comfortable. i have tried to reassure her but she is quite sensitive about it.

About learning to read Russian myself, i agree it is prolly a good idea... but where to start. Anybody have good online resources for me to get started on?

Irina asked me to pass on thanks to jamest for the link and i would like to thank you all for the guidance so far and i hope i can kick back to my friends here in the russia regionals forum in the future

No problem Jeremy, and best of luck to you. I am also from Atlanta, and my Katya has her visa and will be flying here to be with me in a few days (July 12th.) Hopefully all will work out with you and Irina, and she will be here someday and we can all get together sometime!

http://www.visajourney.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=4901

I'm concentrating mostly on speaking as of now but I have a good working knowledge of the alphabet, but there are some letters that just drive me up a wall! щ и ш and the worst one that I know from an american point of view, ы =

I use a software translator I bought during my trip and read the translation to Olga during our weekly talks and she seems impressed and ALWAYS understands what I am stumbling over to say!

again, this is from a speaking point of view!



Also try this site to learn help learn Russian, it'll give you some good phrases to use!

hey jamest grats on your umcoming reunion with Katya, i can only imagine the anticipation you are feeling at this moment. I noticed you are in Kennesaw which makes us practically neighbors since im in Acworth (all part of metro atlanta for those that arent in-the-know) and yes if it works with Irina we will definately need to meet up.

A good place to start for online learning is:

http://www.princeton.edu/russian/SLA101/

http://www.princeton.edu/russian/SLA105/

http://www.princeton.edu/russian/SLA207/ (incomplete)

These links are from Princeton University's Russian language department and are a very good start to spoken language. (This link was provided by russ in the Russian language self study thread on page 2. Great resource.... thanks again russ!)

As far as learning the written alphabet, the best way is to learn from a beautiful girl with a sexy accent!!! But, if she's not available, I like using childrens books, just like the ones we use here (available at any bigger book stores with a good selection on Amazon too) and the Lonely Planet Russian Phrasebook. I can't say enough about how helpful this little book has been, and if I could only have one Russian book, it would be this one. ($7.95 on Amazon.) Try to find Russian websites or news articles or something (Aeroflot.com, Pravda.ru, etc.) and try to read what you can using the Cyrillic alphabet in one of your little books. You'll be surprised how much you can actually understand just by being able to read the alphabet. (There are several words that are "English sounding" words in Russian.) Remember, the best way to learn it is to just do it!!!

Hey guys , I just checked out that russian-fiancee website. it is soooo detailed for all visas, including how to call NVC from Russia cheaper and what time so it takes less than a minute:) I am impressed , there are bunch of short cuts and little hints filling out documents and even russian versions , so the "alien" can understand better. It also talks about visa pick up, if you make it before certain time after the interview you can pock up your visa that same day before they mail it out. I thought you might want to know.

Jeremy, it's a good advice for you both try to SPEAK as much as you can to each other by phone, no matter how bad her english is. My english wasn't so fluent as before until we started often to talk by phone. And tell her you care much more about MELODY of her voice not as about words themselves... (Ya hochu slyshat' melodiyu tvoego golosa!) Good luck in that process! By the way, this site of Russian fiancees could be REALLY so MUCH helpful for her! You can SURE recommend it to her cause it's much more even detailed than this one according to circumstances of russian law, embassy and dates of processing.
Mari

This is a great post! Let me share my experiences with Russian translation. My Fiance does speak very good English but as she has pointed out, our daily personal emails and weekly phone conversations have brought her level of English to a much greater level. We had spoke over the phone at least twice a week before we met and that was for 4 months. I was learning on my own through books and CD Russian learning programs and when I traveled to Ekaterinburg, Russia in May, 2006. I was only using this knowledge of Russian launguage for my own use like taxi, airport, Apartment, but more importantly Maria's Mother!!! Maria speaks very good English. I bought a $450.00 Ectaco translator that does English to Russian and vise versa and has a simulated voice to tell me what to say. Beware of these devices as they are not as completey reliable as they advertize. I used the Ectaco translator to translate the word "Nervous" and it translated a Russian word meaning "Crazy"! A good Laugh as my Maria had caught the mistake. But I would never want to call her Mother crazy:))) To sum it up! YES, Learn the Crylic alphabet, Learn the Dialect of the region she is from, Just Learn Russian!!!

Here you go, Brad! Real love makes it improve much faster and much better by emotional help to memory. Good luck to you both to find common language of hearts.