“la parole exportée”

During my brief visit overseas (understand ‘under the English Channel’ and on to Canterbury, England) last Saturday, I dropped by the Oxfam second-hand bookshop in the main street and there I made my way, shelf after shelf, sifting through a much better selection of books than I imagined.

I almost bought a gilt-edged copy of Longfellow’s poems (and still regret not doing so, hoping it will still be there when I return in September).

Ending up in the Languages section, there, under a set of brand-new copies of Alain Robbe-Grillet’s Nouveau Roman gems, I found what promised to be fun for someone interested in words, and pure torture for ordinary people. [About Robbe-Grillet, I must confess that we parted ways when I was in high school and was assigned the reading of his Manifest toward the end of the school year; I found it so excruciatingly boring that I've never read anything by him since then.]

‘A Glossary for the 90s’ was published in 1998 by Guardian columnist David Rowan. It lists words and phrases that crept up maybe not in our personal vocabulary, but at least in the media, in corporate publications, etc. in the previous decade. Some of them have become very standard, like ‘Reality TV’, ‘Social Entrepreneur’, ‘the New Black’, ‘the Defining Moment’, ‘Pushing the envelope’, etc.

The book is classified in the Humour/Reference category, and it includes many euphemisms. I’m not sure which one is the longest, but one I particularly liked (and had never heard before) was: ‘Real-time Precipitation Syndrome’. The author doesn’t cite a source, but provides a translation: ‘Rain’.

Unfortunately, there are only 9 pages in the section headed ‘Eurojargon’, that well of linguistic and sometimes incomprehensible invention. But the ‘Wheeled Child Conveyancing Vehicle’ has been included. In those Eurocrats’ heads, What’s wrong with pushchair, or pram?

I am still reading the book, there are quite a few of these phrases and words that I’d never seen before. Buying this book was a good move. Longfellow will have to wait…

BBC Radio 4’s Today program has a segment on this topic:

“A group of literary figures, broadcasters and politicians are campaigning to keep some unusual words in the Collins English Dictionary. Elaine Higgleton, of publishers Harper Collins Dictionaries, and Poet Laureate Andrew Motion discuss whether this is a ‘niddering’, or cowardly, response to archaic language.”

Those who publish dictionaries do that every year: they sift through the language and every year, it is reported that a few little-used words have been removed from dictionaries for the general public, and new more widely-used words have been introduced. Both choices typically generate some criticism.

At the same time, we have the French Academy documenting the French language at snail speed (but getting there).

More importantly for us translators, there is the FranceTerme website that tells you all about the new French terms that the official Terminology Commission has validated for you to use. The latest available glossary is a English-French-Chinese glossary on the Beijing Olympic and Paralympic Games.

But our language, like all others, has a life of its own, and doesn’t always feel like taking orders from a government department or the French Academy.

You need a lot of faith to be an official terminologist, because language cannot be restricted to what a group of people, however distinguished they may be, are telling you is OK to use. Inventing new terms is tricky. I listen to a business radio most of the time, and never heard the term “investisseur providentiel” mentioned once (for business angel).

My guess is that it doesn’t ’speak’ to the people in the industry. In common everyday language, “providentiel” has a supernatural connotation, and one of unexpected benefit.

Somehow this doesn’t sound exactly the same as business angel.

Or does it?

photo credit: Daquella manera

I am torn apart between writing about this event here, or adding it to my 2008 International Year of Languages page, listed on the right here —–>

April 4 will be Dictionary Day in Quebec and several reports are discussing the importance of dictionaries in supporting the French language in Quebec and elsewhere, and this is absolutely true. Quebec has the added difficulty of facing the influence of English, wanting to retain its own identity as a francophone region, yet not to follow France; whereas we in France are free to decide to be unbending purists or to adapt to influences of whatever origin. Our choice.

Translators are known to be the primary users of dictionaries, along with writers and students. But as always things change over time, and our practices have to follow.

When I started my career as a translator, all kinds of paper dictionaries -whether technical, general, language…- consumed a huge share of my budget, and I used them every day.

However, with the increased pace of technology development in all fields, that share has been dwindling over the years. Now I own electronic copies of what I consider essential language dictionaries like Le Robert for French and Robert-Collins for English-French-English. I also use le Grand dictionnaire terminologique, a remarkable source developed by Office québécois de la langue française and various online glossaries for explanations of terms and acronyms. However, an overwhelming share of terminology research now consists in tapping the immense reservoir of knowledge you can find on the web: corporate websites, industry analysts, etc. I also have a collection of technical manuals, because when you are dealing with documents and conferences on state-of-the-art technology or even current affairs, dictionaries are not always there for you.

But that can also depend on the domain you are working with. Obviously Law does not change as rapidly as cellphone technology, for instance. I still own manuals about Local Area Networks that are now totally out of date. I bought a ‘bible’ on mobile and wireless networks printed in 2001, but so much has happened in between, I hardly ever open it these days.

And of course, nothing replaces a direct, open and responsible relationship with your clients. They are often your main, indeed your only source of information, and they are the ones to approach first. Where else would I find the terminology developed specifically by that company or organization that they so insist on using, contrary to equally-valid choices made by their competitors?

But I’m curious, how many of you out there still use dictionaries? Paper or electronic?