In an effort to make clothes washing even simpler Electrolux decided to dispense with most of the dials (except the program dial) and slap on a larger LCD display instead. Following their current advertising campaign Electrolux was definitely “Thinking of Us” by choosing to add the Latvian language to their EWF12981W, EWF14981W & EWF16981W Front Load Washer models.
Rotate the program dial to select “Kokvilna”, “Ekonomiskā mazgāšana”, “Smalka veļa”, “Vilna”, “Mazgāt ar rokām”, “Zīds”, “Sintētika” and other wash cycles. Click on the images below to get a closer view of the Latvian text.
Estonian, Lithuanian and 10 other European languages are also supported. Visit Electrolux’s Latvian Web site for more details.
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Home Appliances •
"Ice Age 2: The Meltdown” ("Ledus Laikmets 2: Atkusnis") by 20th Century Fox was first shown in Latvian cinemas in mid-April, 2006 and was finally released in DVD format in November, 2006.
It is fully dubbed in Latvian featuring the well known Latvian voices of Kaspars Upacieris/Ufo, Aivars Čivželis/Čižiks, Jana Kalniņa, Pēteris Šogolovs, Edgars Lipors, Ainārs Ančevskis, Andris Freidenfelds/Fredis, Jānis Jarāns and others.
You can select Latvian as the spoken language as well as Latvian sub-titles or even both simultaneously. This DVD is coded only for Region 2 so if you live outside of Europe you will need to use a region free DVD player. This is the first time that the Baltic distributors, Forum Cinemas, have decided to release the Latvian version of a blockbuster film in DVD format - up until November of last year all films dubbed in Latvian were available only in VHS format. Ledus Laikmets 2: Atkusnis is also available in VHS format.
Filed under:
Films •
DVDs •
Released in December 2003 this major upgrade of MS Office introduces for the first time Latvian versions (menus, dialogs, help) of MS Excel 2003, MS Powerpoint 2003 and MS Outlook 2003. The less popular applications MS Access 2003 and MS Publisher 2003 missed out on a Latvian version and remain with the English user interface.
Click on the image below to view the Latvian version of MS Word 2003:
Latvian version of MS Excel 2003:
Latvian version of MS Outlook 2003:
Latvian version of MS Powerpoint 2003:
It is pleasing to see that Microsoft Latvia has consulted with both Latvian localisers and used local translation resources to provide an interface that it is quite easy to understand. Estonian and Lithuanian versions of MS Office 2003 are also available.
Although MS Office 2007 is starting to appear on store shelves it won’t be until mid-year before we see the Latvian version.
Auto Bild is Europe’s largest car magazine and in conjunction with German based publisher “Axel Springer” Santa first published the Latvian version of Auto Bild in May 2004. Auto Bild Latvija is published monthly and has a print run of 15,000. Apart from the current cover a PDF version of the magazine is not yet available.
Auto Bild is also published in Estonia and 28 other countries.
This is the current operating system running on all of the latest Macintosh computers. Also known as OS X 10.4 not much has changed since Mac OS X Panther (Mac OS X 10.3) in terms of Latvian language support. The keyboard driver works well (based on either the Option or ~ key) and all Cocoa-based applications (iLife, iCal, TextEdit, Mail, iChat, Safari, Address Book, iTunes, iPhoto, GarageBand) work beautifully with Latvian fonts. Non Unicode applications such as MS Word X and AppleWorks will still have problems with Latvian fonts and you will need extra software such as Baltic Utilities.
Through the International System Preferences it is possible to select Latvian dates, time and number formats as well as the Latvian keyboard driver.
The Language tab allows you to drag Latviešu to the top of the list, but will cause minimum changes to the System in terms of translated application menus and dialogs.
The Formats tab allows you to choose the Latvia (Latvian) region which automatically brings up the Latvian date, time and number formats. Unfortunately the short form date formats are still not correct (similar to the US short date format) and hopefully this will be addressed in OS X Leopard.
The Input Menu tab allows you to select the Latvian keyboard which belongs to the Central European script. It is great to see that Apple has adopted the Option key approach to obtain the Latvian diacritical letters.
Apple’s announcement of the iPhone today is going to cause a bit of a stir in the mobile phone industry with its revolutionary 3.5” touch screen, built-in music and video iPod, GSM mobile phone, Internet capabilities and a user interface like never before in a smartphone.
Although we are still many months away from the final release early reports suggest that the Latvian language could also be supported. iPhone will run on a mobile version of OS X and feature Unicode friendly full version applications such as Safari, Calendar, Address Book and Notes. The big question remains on how Latvian letters will be input via the onscreen QWERTY keyboard.
American artist and writer and world’s best-selling children’s book author, Richard Scarry wrote and illustrated over 300 books, selling over 300 million copies worldwide. Thanks to a team lead by Baiba Vītoliņa (Sweden) the Latvian version “Jautrā grāmata” was published in 1974 (printed in Portugal) bringing joy to many emigre Latvian kids.
You have to remember that this was no easy task without the help of a personal computer which only came a decade later.
Click on any of the images below to view several pages from this book.
This book has been out of print for many years, but efforts are underway to get this reprinted again in Latvia.
