Sunday, December 12, 2010

Russian Blogger Explains Cycling in Paris

"Live Streets" blog entry about the cycling infrastructure in Paris (in Russian). Google's language tool does an acceptable job of providing a English translation.

Автобусно-велосипедная полоса на улице Риволи / Bus-bike lane on Rue de Rivoli

Of course, it isn't perfect - a fair number of words related to cycling that the author uses don't appear in any dictionary so they are simply transliterated versions of the Russian Cyrillic ones. Most of these are understandable this way, however - the blog entry title is "Sketch of veloinfrastrukture Paris" - "veloinfrastruktura" would be "cycling infrastructure," a single word coined most likely recently in Russian. Or the word "sitibayki" - that is, "city bikes," a case (another case) where an English word/phrase has been incorporated into Russian wholesale.

This is a good, comprehensive overview of what Paris does to support cycling as an alternative means of transportation. Much of what is described is available in some (a few?) American cities, but I don't think any do all these things.

No comments:

Post a Comment