Bulgarian tries to change his name to "Manchester United". The Bulgarian authorities allowed Marin Zdrakov to change his name to Manchester Zdrakov, but apparently didn't let him change his surname to United. (via The English Manager)

Interestingly enough, Pravda (aka the Russian equivalent of either Ananova or the Weekly World News, depending on when you look at it) have now added a Portuguese translation to the English and Russian. Could this be an acknowledgement of the rising power and influence of the Portuguese blogosphere?

Posted by: mitch | http:// | Mon May 10 12:29:29 2004

It's the rise of Brazil in general, I would think. I imagine that the Russian left in particular likes Lula.

Posted by: acb | http://dev.null.org | Mon May 10 14:13:49 2004

Russian left == nostalgic Communists, or a new, reconstructed left?

I got the impression that Lula's a centrist; i.e., he's basically what Tony Blair pretends to be when talking to his residual left-wing constituencies.

Anyway, it'd be interesting to see whether it's in Brazilian Portuguese or Portuguese Portuguese. Any Portuguese readers care to chime in?

Posted by: ed | http:// | Mon May 10 18:39:36 2004

two reasons: portuguese is the second language used in blogs worldwide (80% of these being brazilian ones, and the remaining being 'true' portuguese); also, portugal is probably the western european country with the strongest ukrainian community, and many immigrants would thank a bilingual website which would help them to learn portuguese. i speculate the translation might be the work of immigrants here.

Posted by: Alexander | http://asseptic.org/433 | Tue May 11 01:28:17 2004

No, it's because me and Ed are working hard to bring Portugal to the world, and our fame is ever greater!

Seriously, it might be as Ed put it in his comment, though I'd also suggest that the upcoming Euro 2004 in Portugal and the rise in Russian interest in foreign football (look at Abrahamovich) might have something to do with it too.

Posted by: Jack | http://jack.smux.net/ | Tue May 11 04:42:39 2004

Acb: it's "portuguese" portuguese. And very well written, from what I've seen. A few (minor) errors, but it's very good (better than a lot of portuguese sites :)).

I share ed's opinion, that it has something to do with the russian-speaking immigrant community in Portugal.

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