If I was wavering on this issue before I am not anymore. Mrs. T and I have had to deal with official documents in the Latvian language only for twenty years now and generally speaking my wife and I were able to muddle through as the general meaning was something that Mrs. T could figure out on her own as languages are her thing (seriously, she speaks 5) and after years of effort and private lessons she now speaks Latvian. Pretty well by most peoples feedback but when it comes to contracts or official documents we still have to get everything translated at an agency to be sure as the stress tends to cause her to miss important things.
And since we are dealing with the police of late an absolute rock solid understanding of Latvian is of prime importance. There is never enough time to respond to a letter in the mail box in the time allowed if you have to take it to a translation service and who has the money for that nowadays anyway?
If you have read the previous post you will know that we are embroiled in a criminal investigation of myself with the Tukums police but that is just the tip of the iceberg regarding our life here. You get a letter in the mail on a Monday telling you that you need to be at the police headquarters for an interview by next Monday but that is all you can figure out and there is no time to get the letter translated. So you show up without your lawyer and discover that it is much more serious than the seemingly innocuous letter suggested. So you beg for time and get a lawyer and find out what is really going on and show up again when they have a translator available.
When we set up our company all docs were in Lat/Russ/Eng and the same when you go to the bank plus everyone seems to speak English or Russian in normal society as that is the language of business (in Riga at least, home to 30% or more of the Latvian population). But how can the police service the 30%± of the population that does not speak adequate Latvian and all transactions are done in Latvian only? You are really at a disadvantage!
I used to think of this issue in political terms but now I understand why there are Russian enclaves here and why they will always be here. There is no other way to survive!
Right away in any type of dispute you are at a disadvantage as the whole system is bent towards the latvian speaking citizen. Not just Latvian as a second language but as a mother tongue, it is a very unforgiving situation.
Latvians should really consider taking such a large part of their population more seriously or there will never be peace and harmony here. You really need to reach out and make peace with a rather significant portion of your population.
And since we are dealing with the police of late an absolute rock solid understanding of Latvian is of prime importance. There is never enough time to respond to a letter in the mail box in the time allowed if you have to take it to a translation service and who has the money for that nowadays anyway?
If you have read the previous post you will know that we are embroiled in a criminal investigation of myself with the Tukums police but that is just the tip of the iceberg regarding our life here. You get a letter in the mail on a Monday telling you that you need to be at the police headquarters for an interview by next Monday but that is all you can figure out and there is no time to get the letter translated. So you show up without your lawyer and discover that it is much more serious than the seemingly innocuous letter suggested. So you beg for time and get a lawyer and find out what is really going on and show up again when they have a translator available.
When we set up our company all docs were in Lat/Russ/Eng and the same when you go to the bank plus everyone seems to speak English or Russian in normal society as that is the language of business (in Riga at least, home to 30% or more of the Latvian population). But how can the police service the 30%± of the population that does not speak adequate Latvian and all transactions are done in Latvian only? You are really at a disadvantage!
I used to think of this issue in political terms but now I understand why there are Russian enclaves here and why they will always be here. There is no other way to survive!
Right away in any type of dispute you are at a disadvantage as the whole system is bent towards the latvian speaking citizen. Not just Latvian as a second language but as a mother tongue, it is a very unforgiving situation.
Latvians should really consider taking such a large part of their population more seriously or there will never be peace and harmony here. You really need to reach out and make peace with a rather significant portion of your population.
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