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It started back in September 2001 when Microsoft Latvia launched the first Latvian version of MS Word 2002. Then two years later MS Excel, MS Powerpoint and MS Outlook in fresh 2003 versions joined the suite and got the Latvian treatment as well. The latest version of the most popular office software for Windows, MS Office 2007, released just before Jāņi this year, has now gone all the way and includes Latvian versions of Word 2007, Excel 2007, Powerpoint 2007, Outlook 2007, Access 2007, MS Publisher 2007, MS InfoPath 2007 and MS Groove 2007.

Click on any of the images below to view the main menus in MS Word 2007.

    

    

Click on any of the images below to view the main menus in MS Excel 2007.

    

    

Click on any of the images below to view the main menus in MS Outlook 2007.

    

  

Click on any of the images below to view the main menus in MS Access 2007.

    

  

Click on any of the images below to view the main menus in MS Powerpoint 2007.

    

    

Click on any of the images below to view the main menus in MS Publisher 2007.

    

In terms of proofing tools, MS Office 2007 includes only the Latvian spellchecker and hyphenator modules, both of which have also been licensed from Tilde. If this is not enough and you need the multiple language dictionaries (Latvian-English, Latvian-German, Latvian-Russian, Latvian-Latvian), thesaurus, grammar-checking and a bunch of additional fonts for the Baltic languages as well, you’ll definitely want to look at the separate add-on package called Birojs 2005.

The Latvian version of MS Office 2007 is available for purchase only in Latvia and is at the same price as the regular English version. For those who already have invested in the English version of Office 2007 and want to give the Latvian interface a go, then for around USD 25 you can download the Microsoft Office 2007 Language Pack for Latvian. Similar packages are also available for Estonian and Lithuanian.

“Noķert vilni” (Surf’s Up) by Sony Pictures has been showing in Latvian cinemas since October 12th. We sincerely hope that Sony gets their act together and starts to release some of the earlier Latvian dubbed films on DVD as well (during the last 12 months only the Russian versions have been released in the Baltics).

“Noķert vilni” features the voices of Aivars Čivželis, Kaspars Pūce, Gustavs Butelis, Sarmīte Rubule, Jānis Kirmuška, Edgars Lipors, Artis Robežnieks and Jānis Reinis.

The most Latvianised Windows to date. No matter how much we delved into the system it seems that just about everything got translated into Latvian this time round. The Control Panel, Online Help, Mail, Calendar, warning dialogs, Windows Media player - click on any of the images below to get an idea of the extent of Microsoft’s latest version of Windows (more commonly known as Vista) for the Latvian market.

  

  

  

  

  

This has been the largest localisation project in the Baltics to date and took the combined efforts of Microsoft Latvia, Tilde and the Latvian Academy of Science’s Terminology Commission nearly 18 months to complete. The latter organisation was involved since Windows Vista also introduced new concepts and terminology which had to find the appropriate Latvian translations.

Estonian and Lithuanian versions of Windows Vista were also developed and all three Baltic versions were released in the summer of 2007.