Lingua Russian: how it started

I fell in love with Global Voices more than 5 years ago. As everything wonderful in this life, it happened by accident. I had no translation experience, but was keen on practicing my English skills, meeting new people and staying up-to-date. So, a friend of mine, who later became my husband, recommended me to have a look at globalvoicesonline.org. I liked the community idea and contacted Ivan, Solana (you must remember our former Managing Editor) and Leonard (who used to be Lingua Director at that time). They welcomed me so warmly that I immediately liked GV even more. Though GV had a Russian version, it was not active having several translations only.

I started with a short post about former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami answering the bloggers questions. After one month, I realized that really want to have Lingua Russian among the active sites and started translating more. It made me happy to see GV Russian having more content, but still it was not enough. Luckily, another volunteer, Lyudmila Isakova, joined me and we continued developing Lingua Russian together. We created Twitter and Facebook accounts, started thinking on media partnerships, welcomed new volunteers.

By the time Lyudmila left the community we had already several volunteers. Today we have much more: some translate a number of posts for some time and then go, others are not that active, but stay with us longer. Volunteers come and go, but every one of these people makes his/her priceless input in Lingua Russian and I am always happy to hear that Global Voices gives them a chance not only to master their translation skills, but also get to know new people and learn many new things.

Also, since September this year we I have co-editor Anna Shetnikova, who is very enthusiastic, open-minded and brings new ideas to Lingua Russian.
Just realized how happy I am to have so many friends around the world. Thank you, Global Voices, for that!

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