Florman updates...

[BruceFlorman]

Okay, I know it’s kind of a stupid subject line, and I don’t plan on actually posting regular bulletins here regarding my life, but there’s something I’d like to announce, both because I’m a little proud of it (though it’s a little goofy), and also to maybe avoid some confusion down the line.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a nearly lifelong Russophile, and I took up trying to learn Russian a couple of years ago. For practice I frequently translate articles from the Russian sports press into English, and then post them where other interested parties can hopefully enjoy them too. Obviously I’ve posted a ton of articles about Yelena Isinbaeva here, and a few about some of the other Russian gals (I’ve got a short one about Yulia Golubchikova from Thursday – the day before the Paris GL meet – that I’ll clean up and post later tonight if I have time). A little over a year ago I got in contact with Andy Maetzler, Yelena’s business manager, and he’s posted a number of my translations of her longer interviews on her website.

While Isi is absolutely my favorite Rossiyanka, and the PV is my favorite T&F event to watch, they’re not the only ones I’ve been following. However, I haven’t felt that posting non-PV-related articles on this site would be appropriate, so those have gone elsewhere. When I first started doing this, I was posting them on the T&FN board, but the editor, Gerry Hill, eventually put the kybosh on that, on the grounds that there were potential copyright infringement issues. While I always provide a link to the source and try to make it crystal clear that I’m posting a translation rather than an original work, and while I’ve never had any complaint from any of the copyright holders, I do understand Gerry’s position. If T&FN is going to assert their own copyright to the material in their magazine, they can’t be seen as potentially violating the copyright of others. So I can provide links to the Russian articles on that board, and can even translate brief excerpts, but I’m not allowed to post fully translated articles there.

So since then I’ve had to look for other places to post them. The Throwers.org website is somewhat similar to this one, and I’ve posted three or four interviews with Tatiana Lysenko there. I’ve also posted several articles, mostly things about Tatiana Lebedeva, Yelena Slesarenko and Anna Chicherova, on the IAAF message board. Clearly I’m more a field fan than a track fan, because although there’s certainly no shortage of fast women in Russia, so far I’ve translated more articles about Yuri Borzakovskiy than about any one of the women runners.

Anyhow, to get back to the point of this post, last Wednesday I sent an email to the folks at the Russian sports information agency Весь спорт (All Sport), briefly explaining my hobby, and asking if they’d be interested in posting my translations of their articles. Their site has an “ALLSPORT in Englishâ€Â

[rainbowgirl28]

That's awesome