Archives for: June 2010, 24

Банкомат

June 24th, 2010 by Don

The word for bank machine or ATM in Russian is банкомат. Back in the 80s there were essentially no banks in Russia in the sense of an ordinary bank in the US. Nowadays they are everywhere. And one of the chief ways to interact with a bank is through a bank machine:

Я взяла две тысячи рублей в банкомате. I got two thousand rubles from the ATM.
Мне нужны были деньги, но банкомат не работал. I needed money, but the ATM wasn't working.
Не подскажете, где ближайший банкомат? Could you tell me where the nearest bank machine is?
Я подошёл к банкомату, но в нём не было денег. I went to the bank machine, but it was out of money.

Just as in the States, to get money from an ATM you need a bank card банковская карта. Usually people will call it simply a карта, and sometimes they will call it кредитная карта. (Usually a bank card in Russia participates as well in the Visa or Mastercard system.) You also need a PIN number, which the Russians usually simply call a код, although it is also called ПИН-код (usually the first part is spelled with English letters, thus PIN-код) or личный код "personal code."

Я всунул карту в банкомат, но он сразу же вернул её. I put my card in the bank machine, but it immediately gave it back.
Я набрал свой код и проверил баланс. I entered my PIN number and double-checked my balance.

Just as in the States, a bank machine usually belongs to a particular bank. If you use ATMs owned by that bank, there are usually no withdraw fees. If you use one out of their system, there are:

Я держу счёт в Сберанке России, и поэтому я пользуюсь только его банкоматами. Sberbank Rossii holds my account, so I use only their bank machines.
Когда я пользуюсь банкоматами других банков, они берут проценты. When I use ATMs that belong to other banks, they charge extra.

That last example is interesting. «Берут проценты» really means "they charge a percentage." We Americans would expect that they charge a commission «берут комиссию», and that the commission would be a fixed fee. The commission in Russia is often not a fixed fee, but rather a percentage of the withdrawal, sometimes with a minimum amount of, say, $5. In this case phrase "they charge extra" is not a precise or technical translation of «они берут проценты». Instead it is a substitution of the most common English phrase used in that context for the most common Russian phrase used in the similar context.

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