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Introduction
This dictionary was compiled by the authors as a result of dissatisfaction with the field of available publications. The existing dictionaries lack on two accounts: a) outdated word lists, b) no usable Russian-English translations. We strove to produce a modern dictionary with succinct and comprehensive lexicon. The result is this work of 30,000 computer-related entries, divided equally between English and Russian languages.
Our attempt to produce an all-encompassing, comprehensive volume may in itself be the dictionary's biggest drawback — we chose not to emphasize any particular subspecialty in the vast and rapidly expanding computer vocabulary, while keeping to our self-imposed limit of 30,000 dictionary entries in order to keep the printed volume a manageable size.
We attempted to include as many new words as we could — words which did not exist, particularly in Russian, as recently as a year ago. Our emphasis on new terminology has somewhat skewed the word list towards the Internet. But, of course, it is the explosive growth of the Internet which has introduced new concepts into wide circulation in the United States, followed by their entry into the Russian language. In some cases, we invented words in Russian to correspond to new expressions in English. Our favorite invention has to be цифрудиты our translation of digerati. Only time will tell if we made good choices and whether such new words will become a permanent part of the Russian language.
In our methodology of translation from English into Russian, we have chosen to make usable translations rather than explanatory translations. An explanatory translation is a long article in the foreign language, spelling out a definition of the term. A usable translation can be readily used in a written or spoken language. We resorted to a brief explanation only when we considered it to be an absolute necessity, due to an otherwise ambiguous translation.
Historically, Russian technical language has a stable tendency (starting with Dutch naval terms introduced by Peter the Great, followed by an all-pervasive usage of French, in vogue during and after the time of Napoleon, then German in the first half of the 20th century, and finally U.S. English in its second half) to acquire carbon copy transliterations of foreign terms. No matter how unfortunate this may be from the viewpoint of the Russian linguistics, a number of such terms have been accepted in common use by the Russian technical and scientific community in verbal and written communications and in technical publications and dictionaries. Whenever possible, we have attempted to list both existing Russian equivalents and widely accepted transliterations. An example of this might be firewall which we translated as a well-established German transliteration брандмауэр, together with native Russian перегородка and the latest incarnation closest to its networking meaning of сетевой экран.
Much thought and debate has gone into the dictionary structure. There were two main choices to consider — a nested organization and a linear-alphabetical list. A nested dictionary structure is more familiar to the Russian audience, while the linear-alphabetical structure is prevalent among U.S. dictionaries. A linear-alphabetical structure is advantageous for looking up multiple-word entries. A nested dictionary structure has its strength in establishing a term's context. We chose a rather unorthodox linear-alphabetical dictionary organization in combination with numerous cross-references to make it easy to locate desired terms while permitting a look up additional, contextually-related translations.
An Internet version of this dictionary can be found at www.russian-dictionary.org. This site contains the latest version of the dictionary, as well as forms where the reader can submit corrections and additions for incorporation into future editions of the dictionary.
We would like to thank IEEE Computer Society for undertaking the publication of this dictionary. We would also like to express our gratitude to Greg Cole, who heads the Center for International Networking Initiatives at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville for maintaining the Friends and Partners web site hosting an electronic version of the dictionary since 1994. Our thanks and indebtedness goes to people too numerous to mention, for corresponding with us over the years, giving us new ideas and suggestions, helping us make this a better dictionary.
We see our audience as computer professionals, students, and anyone who comes in contact with computers and the English and Russian languages. We hope that the readers will find this dictionary to be a useful reference in their everyday work.
Yury Avrutin and Paul Druker
Notes on Dictionary Usage
There are two types of dictionary articles — main and secondary. A main article consists of a term and its translations. A secondary article lists a term which may be an abbreviation, an acronym, or a form of a term which does not require its own translation. The secondary article always references its main article. If a main article has secondary terms, they are listed in parentheses.
Translations close in meaning are separated by semicolons. Translations representing different parts of speech and unrelated translations are separated by bold numerals. In certain cases, in an effort to help the reader establish the context, we have included a short explanation or a functional group to which the translation belongs. Groups appear in italics preceding the translation; explanations are italicized in parentheses after the translation.
The English-Russian part of the dictionary lists parts of speech, groups and cross-references in English; explanations are shown in Russian. The Russian-English part of the dictionary is the opposite of the above — it lists parts of speech, groups and cross-references in Russian; explanations are shown in English.
A translation which is an abbreviation or an acronym is indicated by words abbr and аббр., in English and Russian parts respectively. To cross-reference closely related terms and synonyms, words See and См. are used. Lower case see and см. are used to reference the main dictionary article from a secondary entry without its own translation. Contextually related terms are cross-referenced with phrases See also and См. также. In those cases where a translation may be clarified by a comparison with another translation, words Compare and Ср. are used for cross-reference.
Homonyms are indicated by superscripted numerals in separate dictionary articles. Wherever a homonym is used, either as a part of a translation or a cross-reference, it is also superscripted.
According to the rules of the Russian grammar, word combinations cannot be assigned a part of speech and therefore, unlike English dictionaries where syntax error would be listed as a noun, standard Russian dictionaries would list nothing for синтаксическая ошибка. However, for the benefit of our readers who may not be intimately familiar with the intricacies of the Russian grammar, we have listed the identity of the masculine, feminine and neuter nouns in word combinations so that синтаксическая ошибка appears together with ж for женский род.
See the following diagram for examples of dictionary articles and tables below for a complete list of parts of speech, groups, and abbreviations used in this dictionary.
Parts of speech