Radio Free Europe Extravaganza and other Goodies

[Benjamin Sher]

Dear Colleagues:

As you know, I have tried to keep you all informed of the latest
developments in Russian Radio and TV. This is of interest to me
personally because, like many if not most of you, I am NOT a native
speaker of Russian and any opportunity to improve my hearing or
spoken knowledge of Russian is welcome indeed! I am sure many of you
feel the same way.

A major development along this line has recently taken place at Radio
Free Europe (RFE), whose address is:

http://www.rferl.org

What is remarkable about this offering by RFE is that their
broadcasting of their archived taped clips on a variety of subjects
(a long list of around 20 1-hour tapes, which includes several
ongoing series and is constantly updated) is accompanied by THE
ENTIRE TEXT of the broadcast itself. That is, after clicking on the
"archives", you will find a long list of taped clips. Then click on
the icon for the taped clip immediately to the right of the written
text, bring up your FREE RealPlayer (or RealAudio) software client,
then go back and click on the text on the left and bring up the full
Russian text. You can then follow the entire lecture on the screen
while listening to it on your speakers or earphones. Nothing could
be more wonderful than this arrangement, thanks to the kind folks at
RFE.

Be sure to remember to click on the audio "ear" icon ("poslushat'")
immediately to the RIGHT rather than the FTP version on the far
right ("vygruzit'"), which is a file that you would select if you
wanted to save the file to your computer and listen to it later. The
advantange of the live audio is obvious. You will hear the clip
immediately. The advantage of FTP is having the broadcasts
permanently on your own computer's audio library. This is especially
great if you want to have an entire series of lectures. But, of
course, first you must save them, and that can take a long time.

The lectures cover everything, not only Russian history and culture
but, for instance, currently, a series of lectures on Casanova. They
are first-rate.

Finally, please don't forget that when you go to the RFE Russian
Service you can also choose to hear their 24-hour a day, 7 days a
week live broadcasts ("Priamoi efir" or "kruglosutochno") rather than
the archives.

As for the TV  and Video part, currently there are only two sites on
the Internet that I know of that offer video/audio broadcasts in
Russian, the St. Petersburg Fitness Center, which, along with a lot
of pretty faces, has a variety of video/audio lectures on a variety
of subjects other than just fitness (requiring the free RealPlayer).
And, of course, don't forget Chulaki's wonderful video/audio lectures
using Microsoft's Netshow or MediaPlayer 5.2 (all available free by
clicking the proper icon on Chulaki's site).

You'll find all of these sites under Radio & Audio and Radio-TV on
Sher's Russian Index. The address is at the bottom of my signature.

All my best,

Yours,

Benjamin





Benjamin Sher
Russian Literary Translator
Sher's Russian Web:
http://personal.msy.bellsouth.net/msy/s/h/sher07/
Sher's Russian Index:
http://personal.msy.bellsouth.net/msy/s/h/sher07/bll-link.html