Hallo. I'm working on a translation and in the book a word ailien appears. The character who has this stamp in her passport is a Russian woman living in Latvia, so I guess the word means the same as "an alien" in English, but I didn't find the word in online Latvian - English dictionaries, so I was wondering if the spelling is correct or not, and if the word ailien really exists. Thanks for your help.
Hello, I think, this is just a typo and you should read "alien" instead of "ailien". You should not translate this word, because this is the English word "alien" which cannot be used in Latvian text. Some background: In the pre-war Republic of Latvia everyone had a citizenship, and when independence was restored in 1991, "old" citizens and there descendants were granted citizenship. However, those who moved here from Russia, remained without a citizenship. So, about 15% of inhabitants are so called "non-citizens". In 1990-ties, they had passports of former USSR with some stamps. Currently, they have documents called "Alien's passport". As far as I understand, you are mentioning Soviet passports with stamps. Unfortunately, I don't know what exactly was written on these stamps. Is that still important?
Well, as far as I know, we call that "nepilsoņa pase" (non-citizen's passport). We do have that here. There must be a spelling error in your book
