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An enthusiastic Latvian team has been hard at work since February, 2007 translating the 1.0x and 1.5 versions of Joomla, a popular Content Management System (CMS), into the Latvian language.

As a result its popularity has grown from a handful to several hundred Latvian Web site implementations many of which can be viewed in the catalogue on their JoomlaLV Web site.

It also poses a serious challenge to the home-grown CMS or SVS (Satura Vadības Sistema) software developed in Latvia, because Joomla is an open source solution that is freely available to everyone and has more flexibility than its Latvian counterparts.

Along with the announcement of the new iPhone 3GS model existing iPhone/iPod Touch users can finally upgrade to the latest software version: iPhone OS 3.0.

Unfortunately not much has changed in terms of Latvian language support and the date formats on the home screen and both Calendar and Weather apps still need to be fixed.

The good news is that the App Store is now available (since April) in all three Baltic countries.

If you have been working with desktop publishing software such as Pagemaker, InDesign, Quark Xpress and Pages you may want to check out iCalamus. Developed specifically for Mac OS X by German firm “invers Software” iCalamus is easy to use and is priced quite competitively. Thanks to Mārtiņš Zemzaris (a.k.a. Gludahill) a Latvian localisation has been available since June 2008.

The Web site and the User Manual have also been translated into Latvian. The full version is available for EUR 129.

The world’s most popular board game featuring 20 cities of the world became available in stores on 26th August 2008 in 50 countries and 37 languages including Latvian.

Nearly 6 million votes were cast for 68 cities during the six weeks of online voting. Not only did Riga make it in the top 20 selected cities it came second place to join Montreal in the dark blue property group which is considered to be the most prestigous property group in the board game.

“MONOPOLY Šeit un tagad: Pasaules izdevums” is available from most games stores in Riga for LVL 35-40.

Latvia’s largest mobile operator, LMT (Latvijas Mobilais telefons) finally launched the long awaited iPhone 3G last Friday (September 26th).

Although Baltic language text has been displaying perfectly in iPhones and iPods for at least the last 2 years it is only with the latest iPhone 2.1 Software update that the user is able to input Latvian letters as well.

To activate the Latvian keyboard on the iPhone 3G (or iPod Touch) go to Settings -> General -> Keyboard and from the list of International Keyboards switch on the Latvian option. To access the diacritical letters simply touch on the appropriate letter for more than 1 second and choose from the popup list. Latvian language purists may be disappointed since neither o-macron or palatalised-r are offered as input letters, however both will display correctly.

Riga is now also selectable as a city from the World Clock application (previously you had to choose Helsinki since none of the Baltic capital cities were available).

The User Manual for the iPhone 3G is also available in Latvian.

Last week, a whole 18 months after the screening of Aizskalotais (Flushed Away) in Riga cinemas (back in December 2006), we have finally got the DVD version in our hands. Joining Aizskalotais is also Šarlotes tīkls (15 months later) and Šreks Trešais (12 months later) which have also only recently appeared on video store shelves. Why it takes so long to release the Latvian DVD versions remains a mystery.

If you are looking out for the professionally dubbed Latvian DVDs for the younger audience here is a quick overview of what is now available:

    

    

Although the DVD covers have been nicely translated to Latvian the distributers seemed to have forgot about the printing on the actual DVD disks which are in either Russian or English.

Both Šreks 2 (Shrek 2) and Haizivs stāsts (Shark Tale) are still only available in VHS video casette format. Noķert vilni (Surf’s Up) and Hortons (Horton hears a Who) both of which have screened in the last 6 months are yet to be released on DVD. The Latvian version of Kung Fu Panda is currently showing in cinemas. Trauksme mežā (Open Season) seems to have been forgotten completely (screened nearly 2 years ago) and only the Russian DVD version continues to be available in Latvia.

There was a lot of buzz about the announcement of the new iPhone 2.0 software and the new iPhone 3G, but no-one expected that this was all going to be available in the Baltics as well. Latvijas mobilais telefons (LMT) will carry the iPhone 3G in Latvia with an expected release date later this Summer.

How much the iPhone interface will be localised into each of the Baltic languages is yet to be seen. Users who have unlocked their current iPhones can already enjoy the unofficial Latvian interface pack.

At the same time as Vārdnīcas, Kroko had also been patiently working on another Latvian proofing tool for several months and trying to improve on the already existing, but limited cocoAspell Latvian spellchecker. After several unsuccessful attempts a decision was made to go another route using MySpellX and Janis Eisaks’ OpenOffice Latvian spell checker dictionary.

The result is Pareizrakstība, a Latvian spellchecker, which works in most applications that make use of the system wide spell checking services in OS X 10.5 (Leopard). Examples include Mail, TextEdit, iCal, Skype and others. As of writing there were known problems with iWork 08 (Pages, Numbers, Keynote) which the author has agreed to address in a future update. In any case users are not complaining too loudly since Pareizrakstība is also donationware and available as a free download from Kroko’s Web site. 

Kroko also plans to create an easy way for users to submit additions/corrections back to Janis Eisaks so that the open source Latvian spell checker dictionary can be regularly updated and improved benefiting both the OpenOffice and Macintosh user community.

Reinis Adovičs aka Kroko, a budding architect and city planner, worked day and night for a whole week this past March to produce Latvian dictionaries for the Macintosh platform (Latviešu–English, English–Latviešu, Latviešu–Deutsch, Deutsch-Latviešu, Latviešu- Русский, Русский –Latviešu, Latviešu Sinonīmu, Latviešu Eirožargons).

After installing Vārdnīcas the dictionaries can then be selected from Apple’s Dictionary application. You’ll need at least Macintosh OX X 10.5. Vārdnīcas is available as a free download from Kroko’s Web site.

One of the most widely used open source bulletin board systems (forum software) in the world, phpBB has since version 2.x been available with a limited Latvian user interface as well.

Latvian language packs (as well as Estonian and Lithuanian) are available for phpBB 2.0.x and the latest phpBB 3.0.0 versions. Kaspars, the main translator, also provides the ability to download the language pack from his Web site at www.phpbb.lv.

Further effort is required to complete the Latvian localisation, for example, the Administration Control Panel is yet to be translated to Latvian.

With the rapid advances in IT and technology the Terminology Commitee of the Latvian Academy of Sciences has been busy translating Latvian language equivalents of terms now heard in regular daily conversations. Here are just some of the proposals:

     computer - dators
     Web page - mājaslapa
     database - datubāze
     chat room - tērzētava
     World Wide Web - tīmeklis
     weblog - emuārs
     spam - surogātpasts
     hotspot - tīklājs
     flash memory - zibatmiņa
     download - lejuplāde
     upload - augšuplāde
     short message (SMS) - īsziņa

Some of the terms have been around for a good number of years and are now well entrenched in the Latvian language. Others are not fairing as well with alternatives appearing, for example “surogātpasts” is better known as “mēstules” and “emuārs” is losing favour to the more popular “blogs”. The language localisers are still arguing whether settings are “iestatījumi” or “uzstādījumi”.

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.

One of the new features of the Firefox 2.x Web browser is the inline spellcheck that provides hints of possible spelling mistakes as you type inside Web forms.

You’ll need to download the appropriate dictionary (both Latvian and Lithuanian languages are available) from the Firefox Add-ons page. Works with both Macintosh and Windows versions of Firefox.