State Language Service

Address: Ratslaukums 1, Riga, LV – 1539,
fax 7012771, e – mail: vvd@riga.lv
Telephone: 67012763

Information on the services provided

Provides consultations to advertisers and designers on the advertising project and poster texts before installing these in public places at the Artistic Environment Division of Riga City Building Directorate of Riga City Council Development Department.

Consults the visitors of the service as well as provides telephone consultations on the provisions of the State Language Law and related regulations, the spelling norms of Latvian and the provisions of Binding Regulations No 3 of Riga City Council in the area of advertising.

Visits trade institutions and service providers as well as other institutions, in order to get acquainted with the observance of the provisions of displaying public information, points to the mistakes and explains how to correct them.

Summarises and regularly updates the information on the courses of State Language and informs residents who wish to learn Latvian about them.

History

The State Language Service has been operating since February 20, 2001, still, it partly continues the work of Riga City Council Language Inspection, which was established in 1995 with considerably narrower rights, authority and work tasks, as, according to the State Language Law, the legislating authorities have not delegated the rights to control the execution of the law and punish for breaches thereof to the municipalities. These functions are performed by the Control department of the State Language Centre of the Latvian Justice Ministry. The municipalities are commissioned with cultivating, and developing of the state language and financing the related expenses. Riga City Council, which has always paid attentions to the language issues in the city, decided to reorganize the inspection into a language service with the main task of taking care of the use of Latvian, its correctness and organizing of the cultural environment of the city according to the provisions of the State Language Law.

So, from a “punitive institution”  we have been transformed into a service institution, as we do not use punitive measures in our work. We try to achieve our aims by consultations, explanation and persuasion. Our methods work in at least 70 percent of the cases.

Our main work area is the city environment, where the residents of Riga confront advertisements, signboards, and other public information. We know that many residents of Riga would like to see their city more Latvian, while the legislation permits the presence of other languages as well.

Within our competence we attempt to provide for observance of the State Language Law and other language related legislation in the public informational area, as well for the correspondence of the information in Latvian to the spelling and grammar laws of the language.

As the practice demonstrates that preventing the mistakes is easier than correcting them, the language inspectors since 1995 cooperate with the former Department of the Chief Artis of the City, now the Artistic Environment Division by consulting on and reviewing the advertising project and poster public information texts before displaying those in public places, thus preventing posting of at least 300 texts with mistakes monthly. There have been cases, when an inspector corrected 26 spelling mistakes in a single advertising board.

The advertisers themselves admit that they feel much safer if the texts have been reviewed by language experts.

We are interested in public information, which does not have to be approved. That is why the inspectors regularly visit trade institutions and service providers as well as other institutions, pointing to the mistakes in the cases of necessity and explaining the provisions of the legislation.

All the information pertaining to the legal aspects of the state language and language norms is provided to legal persons and individuals who contact the service directly or by telephone.