How to translate first and last names from Latvian?
First and last names are not the most difficult problem for linguists. With English, for example, everything is simple: it is clarified with the customer how his data is indicated in the passport. However, in the case of Latvian, there are interesting points to be aware of.
What is so difficult with names in Latvian?
The thing is that personal names in Latvian documents are written in accordance with the norms of grammar and spelling of the literary Latvian language. The nouns themselves in Latvian have a complicated grammatical system. What is meant. Words belong to 2 genders — feminine or masculine, as in the Russian language they are inclined by cases, are classified according to six types of declension.
Problems may arise when using and writing foreign proper names. By the way, adjectives in Latvian, which are often the equivalent of surnames, as in Russian, agree with nouns, and tend to cases like Latvian nouns.
Spelling of first and last names of Latvians is regulated by the Rules of the Cabinet of Ministers of Latvia. Within the framework of these Rules, in official documents, the first and last name of citizens and non-citizens of the country cannot be written in a foreign language transcription, it must be transcribed according to the rules of the Latvian language. And in this case, men were less lucky than women, it is necessary to add the ending "-s" to the first and last names in the masculine gender that are not of Latvian origin. This can be said to be the main problem for citizens living in the country who are not ethnic Latvians at the same time.
As an example
Ivanov Ivan in the Republic of Latvia will be listed in all documents as Ivanovs Ivans.
How is the full name translated? Are there any norms?
First and last names of citizens, non-citizens of Latvia of any origin, no matter it is ethnic Latvians, Russians or persons of other nationalities, are translated according to the phonetic principle. A similar principle takes place when translating first and last names from other languages into Russian, which means that as they are heard, so they are written.
Translators should, in theory, start only from this principle, but in the case of Latvian there is a certain problem that has developed historically and caused by the fact that during the Soviet past all personal documents of citizens were issued exclusively in Russian.
Our bureau can specify when translating, for example, Ivanovs Ivan, but then it may turn out that this person has a birth certificate obtained during the Soviet period, where he is registered as Ivanov Ivan. As a result of such a discrepancy in data, a citizen in Russia will face identification problems by contacting any competent internal authorities of the country.
As a result, how will the translator translate a person's personal data?
When translating such first and last names, the linguist will have to:
- treat each case individually;
- to clarify for what purposes a citizen applying for services translates certain personal documents;
- find out if the client has documents (and verify what is written in them) in Russian, issued during the USSR.
It should be understood that when translating official documents, linguists are necessarily guided by something. The main reference point, most often, is a visa. A birth certificate is also an important document in which the writing of a person's personal data may differ from the version that is written in the visa.
In case of existence of a document in which personal data is recorded within the rules of spelling of the Russian language, the linguist has the right to register the first and last name in the same way. In most cases, the customers themselves asked to specify one or another variant of writing personal data. Someone remains Ivanov Ivan, and someone will be renamed into Ivanovs Ivans.
Complex cases: Pyshkin — Piskins, Shyshkin — Syskins.
In Latvia, the spelling of surnames, names of citizens of foreign language origin is a very complex and somewhat politicized issue! However, not only the endings in the masculine gender cause doubts and questions.
The scandal is known, the essence of which is that local officials refused to write down the baby under the name "Miron". The refusal was at the Registry Office, whose employees motivated their actions by the norms of the legislation of Latvia. According to them, a boy in the country can only be called "Mirons", that is, the name must contain the ending -s, which, in turn, is consonant with the Latvian word "mironis" (translated as "deceased"). The parents of the baby did not express a desire to call their son a "deceased" and filed a lawsuit.
However, the case of the "deceased" – Miron is not the first such scandal in Latvia, directly related to the desire of the local ruling elite to make foreign-language first and last names more Latvian. Stories about Pyshkin (Piškina and Piškins), who became instantly Piskins, Shyshkins (Šiškina and Šiškins), suddenly turned into Siskins, in whose surnames the letter Š š has lost the diacritic mark (Piskins, Siskins), have been exaggerated for a long time, including far beyond the borders of the country.