KZBlog

Apologies for the pun in the title. Couldn’t resist.

Apparently a shop in Aktobe is being sued by a customer for being unable to explain a tin of fish in Kazakh. The language law says that all consumer information must be available in Kazakh. For those who don’t live here, all products made in Kazakhstan have product information in both languages. Most products made abroad are targeted for the former Soviet Union and have information in any combination of Russian, Kazkh, Ukranian, Belarussian, Kyrgyz, Uzbek, Armenian, Azerbaijanian and sometimes even Korean, Mongloian, Chinese, and other obscure languages.

Foreign products that do not have information in Russian or Kazakh have labels glued to them with that information. No idea who does it, whether it’s customs or the shop or the distributor, but everything made in Europe from frozen fish sticks to mac and cheese to shampoo to glass cleaner has a white label with nutritional information, preparation instructions and warnings as well as the name of the manufacturer in Kazakh and Russian (it’s especially amusing when the preparation instructions are different from the original). So I’m not sure how this tin of fish slipped through the cracks. Interesting to see how this turns out.

As the Eurasianet article points out, chances are the buyer knew what to do with the fish and this law suit is probably designed to just raise attention to the contentious issue of Kazakh language use in Kazakhstan.