Part of Will’s job involves managing the Washington Anytime Library, a collection of eBooks and eAudiobooks shared by 43 of the smaller libraries throughout the state. Recently they added a Russian language interface to the digital library. Now patrons can choose to have the Anytime Library menus and instructions appear in English, Spanish, Chinese, or Russian. The books are still in English (for the most part), but the interface that helps you find them can be displayed in these other languages for the convenience of patrons who are more comfortable using them.

Checking out the new Russian language interface, Will noticed that the language interface selection box options were capitalized for English and Spanish (don’t ask him about the Chinese!), but not for the Russian, which uses the Cyrillic script. Uncertain if Cyrillic uses the same capitalization conventions as the Roman script used for English and Spanish, Will took a look at the rest of the Russian interface, and sure enough, he saw that the first character of most words was larger than those used for the rest of the word, but perhaps there was some exception to the rule for the word “Russian” itself when displayed in Cyrillic?

So he wrote back to the vendor rep and asked, who promised to check with the translation team. By the next day, the interface had been updated to show the word “Russian” in Cyrillic with the first character capitalized. So yes, Will can proof-read (albeit to a VERY limited extent) even for Russian Cyrillic!

Tags: Washington Anytime Library, Washington Anytime Library

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