*EPF409 10/19/00
State Department Launches New Russian Language Web Site
('One-stop shopping' for official U.S. texts, transcripts) (680)
By Christine Johnson
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- The State Department's Office of International Information Programs (IIP) officially launched its new Russian language Web site October 18 with a special demonstration at the Foreign Press Center for journalists and Russian experts.

The site is located at http://usinfo.state.gov/russki/homepage.htm

Joe Johnson, deputy IIP coordinator, explained that the organization's mission is to inform publics around the world about the policies of the United States and, more broadly, about U.S. society and values.

Noting that Russian is one of the eight most-spoken languages in the world, Johnson said IIP is very proud to be introducing its new Russian Web page. IIP already has Web sites in Spanish and French, and that sites in Arabic and Chinese are in production.

"So this is part of a broader trend for the State Department" aimed at enabling a speaker of a foreign language "to access a very wide variety of U.S.-related information over the World Wide Web in his or her preferred language," Johnson said.

Ramona Harper, head of the IIP team that created the new site, said it is intended for people who need but do not have ready access to information about the United States. The site is a sort of "one-stop shopping" service for users -- a single access point for obtaining official U.S. texts, statements and documents, she added.

"What we're attempting to do on this Web site," Harper said, "is to pull it all together, to have one place where you can go and get those official texts."

IIP Russian Web editor Alexander Kratly demonstrated how an Internet user can access the main categories of information on the new Web site: highlights from IIP's daily Washington File, which consists of U.S. policy-related texts and transcripts; Electronic Journals on various topics dating back to December 1996; basic facts about the United States and historical American documents, such as the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights; and links to other Internet sites including those of the United Nations, NATO, and the Voice of America.

The information in one category complements that in the others to present U.S.-related issues as comprehensively as possible.

The Electronic Journals, which IIP publishes approximately every three weeks on its main Web site, examine a variety of political, economic, social and global issues from the perspective of experts working in these fields. Recent titles have included "Foreign Policy and the 2000 Presidential Election," "Accountability in Government," "Preventing Conflict: Military Engagement in Peacetime," "Towards a Community of Democracies," "Internationalization of E-Commerce," and "AIDS: The Threat to World Security."

Following publication in English, many of the Electronic Journals are then translated into Russian, Arabic, French, Spanish and Portuguese. The Russian translations are available on the new Web site. Ilya Suslov, a senior Russian editor in IIP, called these journals "textbooks of democracy" and an "absolute must" for students and governments in the former Soviet Union.

Senior Russian editor Lydia Voronina explained the process of preparing material for the Web site; the material is sent to Moscow for translation via electronic mail and then returned to Washington for editing, resulting in a quick turn-around of as many as 10,000 words a day. "We are not a news organization," she said, yet "we work very fast" to provide a "conceptual" information product, one that provides historic and cultural context for U.S. policies.

Several of the invited guests offered suggestions for future refinements to the new Web site, including a feedback channel for users and a "mirror" site registered in the Russian Federation to increase accessibility and reach a wider audience.

A searchable database for Web site is in the early implementation stage, according to Wayne Hall, an electronic media producer with IIP who was instrumental in developing the site. He projected that a search engine would be available in one to one-and-a-half months.

(The Washington File is a product of the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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