Translation into Russian

Alba Translation Company renders translation services into the Russian language in different subjects, including legal, financial, scientific, medical, literature, technical and site translations. After native Russian speakers translated the text it is subject to compulsory proofreading and editing by the relevant technical, economic or legal specialist. Our services also include notary certification and legalization of documents in Russia.

The Russian Language

The Russian language is one of the most geographically widespread languages in the world. It takes the fifth place by the number of language speakers after the Chinese, English, Hindi and Spanish. The Russian language is one of the official and working languages of the UNO. It is official language in most ex-Soviet Union nations (approximately 220 million speakers). Russian belongs to the East Slavic languages subgroup together with Belarusian and Ukrainian. The Russian language is primarily spoken in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and other former republics of the USSR. During the Soviet period most of the constituent republics had its own official language, but Russian played the unifying role and had superior status. After the break-up of the USSR in 1991 most of the independent state have encouraged their native languages, but Russian preserved its role as a lingua franca in the post-Soviet space. Russian remains a co-official language in Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan along with Belarusian, Kazakh and Kyrgyz respectively. Large Russian-speaking communities exist in Latvia, Estonia and Ukraine. Russian is also an official language of unrecognized republics of South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Transnistria.

History of the Russian Language

The history of the Russian language dates back to 2 thousand years B.C., when formed a Proto-Slavonic dialect of the Indo-European language. In approximately 500 AD the Slavonic language separated into Western, Eastern and Southern groups. The first written examples of Old East Slavonic appeared in the 10th century. The Russian language endured two important reforms: reform of Peter the Great in the 18th century and the Communists reform in 1917. During the XX century Russian was widely taught in the schools of old Warsaw Pact members (Poland, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Albania, Cuba). Russian is written using the Cyrillic alphabet, which consists of 33 letters.

The Russian Alphabet

The modern Russian alphabet, also known as the Cyrillic alphabet, was developed by 2 Greek missionaries in 862 AD (Cyril and Methodius) and was named after one of them.The Russian alphabet consists of 33 letters, many of which were borrowed from Hebrew and Greek. The Cyrillic alphabet is also used in other Slavic languages (Belarusian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Macedonian, Ukrainian) and in some non-Slavic languages (Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Uzbek, Moldovan, Tajik, Mongolian). It is relatively easy to get started with the Cyrillic alphabet, because many of letters remind those in English. Six letters look and sound like letters in the Latin alphabet (A, E, K, M, O, T), though English and Russian sounds are not absolutely identical.

Interesting facts about the Modern Russian Language

• Approximately a quarter of the scientific articles in the world is published in Russia;
• There are no vernacular Russian words beginning with letter “a”;
• 67,8% of the Estonia’s population can speak Russian;
• Russian is the most widely taught foreign language in Mongolia;
• a Russian criminal argot of ancient origin with Russian grammar, but with separate vocabulary is called Fenya.