Government Keeps Russian Translation of Laws a Low Priority

The Justice Ministry's 2012 guidelines will not require government offices to translate Estonian laws into Russian, thereby perpetuating the current situation, in which one-fourth of the nation is not guaranteed the right to read the law in their mother tongue.

If Russian-speaking citizens or residents want a law translated into Russian, they'll have to pay a private company (translation bureau).

The 2012 guidelines fortified a status quo of the past few years, as hardly any laws have been officially translated into Russian since 2006, due in part to budgetary constraints.
Before 2006, Estonian laws were regularly translated into Russian by the official gazette, Riigi Teataja.

But, since 2006, when translation became the task of the Ministry of Justice, laws have been translated into English - a reflection of English's status as a principal language of international business and policy.

"Translating laws into English follows the government operational program goal to create a legal framework in Estonia that is consistently in contemporary English," said Priit Talv, a Justice Ministry spokesman.

Until 2009, some laws were translated into Russian on the Estonian Population Minister's website. But after the abolishment of the Population Minister's office, the domain has been run by a company based in Latvia.

At present, about 67 percent of people in Estonia claim Estonian as their first language; about 29 percent claim Russian as their first language. In ethnic terms, 69 percent are ethnically Estonian and 25.5 percent of the population is Russian in origin. Of non-Estonians living in Estonia, 58 percent say they are able to get along "well" or "average" in terms of their Estonian reading ability.

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