725cc42f   
   XPost: soc.culture.baltics, soc.culture.czecho-slovak, soc.culture.russian   
   From: holman@mappi.helsinki.fi   
      
   In article , David Friedman   
    wrote:   
      
   > In article ,   
   >  holman@mappi.helsinki.fi (Eugene Holman) wrote:   
      
      
   > > That would transform him from a person who was ill informed about the   
   > > issue when he started to make pronouncements about something he really   
   > > didn't know about or understand, into a world class expert,   
   >   
   > I note that, despite having the advantage of already reading Finnish   
   > (and, for all I know, Russian), you have not engaged in this project,   
   > and yet you do, and I do not, make confident pronouncements about the   
   > conclusion that would follow from such research.   
      
   I read (and speak and write) Finnish as well as Russian. I do not claim to   
   be an expert on Finnish-Russian trade, but I worked for many years as a   
   translator for a Finnish magazine dealing with the Finnish economy and   
   thus gained a consideable amount of insight into what was gling on. I am a   
   linguist, not an economist, even if economic and trade issues intrigue me,   
   partially because they have a suprising nuber of things in common with   
   languages and interlingual commuication. Trading X for Y had many things   
   in common with creating a target text Q in language b from a source text P   
   of equivalent value and function in language a.   
      
   There was indeed an internal book-keeping unit called the clearing ruble.   
   Since the ruble had no precise international value and more than a dozen   
   "official" exchange rates, the public statistics about Finnish-Soviet   
   trade were in clearing dollars. The financial pages in the leading Finnish   
   daily always had the exchange rate for the clearing dollar in its list of   
   foreign exchange rates. The clearing ruble was mentioned only rarely,   
   mostly in arcane discussions about exchanging wood chips for nylons, or   
   vodka for boloney sausage.   
      
   Regards,   
   Eugee Holman   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)