Slashdot Mirror
France National Library Attacks Google Book Effort
An anonymous reader writes "The National Library of France is not happy with Google's effort to scan and integrate millions of books into its Web search. Jean-Noel Jeanneney, President of the library, wrote in an editorial that he is concerned Google's initiative to digitalize volumes at five leading libraries will reflect a unipolar worldview dominated by the English language and American culture. Jeanneney is pushing for European libraries to follow in Google's footsteps. Google said it was surprised by Jeanneney's remarks and noted, 'This is a first step for us; we can't do everything at once.'"
i just don't understand why
Hey, that's not fair! Rather than help you in your good idea, to make it fair, we'll bitch about it.
...they're prepared to scan books themselves and contribute them to the effort.
Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Gates M'dna wgah'nagl fhtagn.
It seems to me that this is just a kneejerk response to the elemental truth that English has superseeded French as the international language, French was of course once considered the language of diplomacy :-)
When Google first got started in the Yahoo-era, I also wrote an editorial about how little result Google gave back in 1999, I almost gave up on it.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Doesn't he realize that English is the only language that matters? :P
Can't argue with that concern.
Things in a rear mirror might be behind you
SO whats stopping him from volunteering and starting to scan/digitize other works?
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
...at the mortuary.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
It's one thing to say "We should do this with French lit as well." but it's entirely another to say complain about someone doing it with English works. Given Google's efforts in other languages, it seems strange to me that they'd not continue their project in other languages.
Besides what is a French person doing complaining about things like this? The French are the biggest language snobs on the planet.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
You mean an english speaking company with english speaking employees is starting off with english literature?!
"It is better to risk sparing a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one." - Voltaire
Jeanneney's remarks are indeed anti-American. I don't see what makes him think that Google's efforts will "reflect a unipolar worldview dominated by the English language and American culture" other than the fact that it's being done by Americans. Indeed, he seems to like the idea itself but resent that it's being done by a US company.
Look, I know it's awfully trendy to be down on anything and everything American (and certainly there are things that legitimately cause concern), but frankly I'm more concerned that Jeanneney's anti-Americanism is affecting his scholarship than that Google's efforts (with the help of the libraries concerned and plan to be inclusive) is bad scholarship.
"...all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness..." yada yada
Americans are already pissed at the French for not helping with Iraq, hence the "freedom fries" name-change-fad that happened a while ago.
I'm sure France stating that they don't like American culture dominating won't help their American popularity very much.
-Glitch "We all know Linux is great...it does infinite loops in 5 seconds." - Linus Torvalds
"Google said it was surprised"
Nooo, it can talk, and it's got emotions... Run away!
My <1000 UID is with a hot chick
people stink, who cares what they think, scan me some more books mister pink, grab the one on your left ya dink
to find some reason why they don't like a good idea. Aside from France, Quebec, and a bunch of little African countries, where is French the primary language? Oh yeah, Haiti... let's not forget Haiti. France need to stop living so vicariously in the past. They are not the world player they used to be.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
that more books will be more accessible and possibly free. If he wants more French literature to be available either start a company to do this or make it more interesting to Google. Does he point out that French universities were jumping at the bit to have Google do work at their libraries? Sounds like a lot of lot of pointless bitching to me.
The link in the article is to the original French in Le Monde. Do I speak/read French? Yes. Do I want to read some French guy whine about French becoming a minority language on the Web (like it isn't in real life)? No, not really
With that record in book preservation, I doubt that they would be a very effective judge of what Google has to offer.
sulli
RTFJ.
where does it say, that an american corporation like google, has to promote all works by all nations?
/rant
or another american corporation site (like slashdot) has to some how not be american centric?
Me thinks the world has gotten a little too attached to our finger pointing. If you DONT like the way an established business is doing things, DO THEM YOURSELF!
#include sig.h
I think it's interesting that the entity Google replied directly to this editorial. Am I to believe, then, that Google has taken on a life of its own, and is now a living, speaking being, rather than just a corporate entity?
-- There, everybody likes a gorilla.
The French want to rule the world!
I think the editorial would have been much more powerful and effective if it was written and presented in a language that people actually read. /ducks
English is the world-language. It's spread and is actively being spread by the UK and US government (on a joint initiative) which has been in force for decades.
Non-english speaking countries may not like this, but it's the truth.
Maybe Jeanneney wants it instead to be a unipolar worldview dominated by the French language and French culture. They still seem to think they're a world power for some reason.
If his country came up with Google, then sure it's a case, but sorry they didn't. The best thing he can do is ignore it and not use it.
Of course he cannot force France and the EU to stop using Google, as that would violate their rights of freedom, which is somewhat more flexible than the United State's Bill of Rights lately.
Why are they suing Google at every chance they can get? Is it anti-Americanism? Is it bad foie gras induced hallucinations? Seriously guys, google just sorts information and tries to make it easily accessable. Go away!
And google is a company from an English speaking country, so I find it quite normal that they start out with English books.
However, if this leads to others also making the effort I can only welcome this development.
"Google Book Effort Draws French Ire" But then again, what doesn't?
Do Not Eat iPod Shuffle
Racist comments marked as funny ,
all in one line.
Besides what is a French person doing complaining about things like this? The French are the biggest language snobs on the planet.
On a more serious note-- I'm willing to bet this is a mischaracterization to sensationalize the story. hmmmmmm that's never happened before.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
It seems like it would be massively in the public interest for libraries to set about digitizing their catalogs.
Much as I like google, i feel that this starts down the path of allowing a corporate entity to be guardian of our cultural heritage.
Hopefully google's move will show that large scale digitization is possible and will pave the way to libraries doing this themselves.
And if the French had their way with everything, I would be reading my "Courriel" right now.
If the French really wants to make sure that French still survives as a world language, they need to get off their butts and conquer a few countries.
Dispatch a couple Germans into Paris. They'll surrender.
...from a country that used to be called 'Gaul'?
I find it odd that Jean-Noel Jeanneney calls Google's work a "Messianic dream". I am a big fan of books and the written word, but to digitalized volumes with the Christ seems a bit over zealous. Besides, this is funny coming from a country which likes to ban English words.
Sola Deo Gloria!
No English translation of the editorial?
the french are assholes
Obviously, these large libraries have a number of books in other lanugages, including French.
In any event, I'm sure that Google would be ecstatic to digitize the French national library's stacks, if given a chance to pitch the idea.
France and Munich, Before the Surrender. by Alexander Werth
News Reporters Make Tasty Polar Bear Treats!
...that I have to start eating "freedom fries" again?
We're dealing with a librarian here, people. And as we all know from experience, librarians are stereotypically quite weird, usually nasty people in this country. I doubt it changes much if you go overseas. ;)
It's a joke, laugh, you uptight librarians!
Why not follow in Google's footsteps and then contribute to the their work and then you can search that one source, across multiple languages, to find what you're looking for. Then it won't necessarily be English dominated documents...It's not that hard... Maybe it's just the way the French are..."That's a great idea, but if I support it I look like one of the general masses. I know! I'll critisize it, and at the same time perform the exact same actions and claim my way's better!"
Today's contestants are:
Number 5: Spats
Number 22: Commodore VIC-20
Number 7: Emmanuel Lewis
Number 17: The slide rule
Number 2: The buggy whip
And in the pole position - Number 36: French government and culture
Gentlemen, start your memes!
No mod points, no meta-moderating/Firehose/all the other free work Slashdot wants me to do.
Oh no!
- gmail scans my email (ignoring the fact the tons of other companies, scan and attach ads to inbound and outbound email).
- google toolbar has optional smart links (that default to off and the user must enable).
- google print will make knowladge more available.
The world will be ending shortly.
I like france actually, lived there for a year when I was younger. The librarian makes some interesting and I think valid points. The conclusion I draw is not that google is at fault, they are just ahead of the game on this and will likely get the libraries in france to open things up sooner then they would have otherwise.
Jean-Noel Jeanneney, President of the library, wrote in an editorial that he is concerned Google's initiative to digitalize volumes at five leading libraries will reflect a unipolar worldview dominated by the English language and American culture.
Dearest Jean-Noel Frogface,
American Culture already dominates the world, which is why so many other countries have citizens that speak english. Maybe if you did something productive or actually won a war people would care about france.
American Culture dominates the world, because it is based on Christianity. If America drifts twards secularism as the Europeans have, she too will die the slow death that old europe is going through.
... but it just had to be brought up.
Cue John Cleese: Stupid american kaniggets! i spit in your general direction! Go and boil your
bottoms, sons of a silly person. I blow my nose at you, so-called Google-engine, you and all your silly American kaniggets. Your father was a hamster, and your mother smelt of edelberries!
Seriously though, why French? Why not Chinese, or Russian, or even Hindi? We must ALL have our Google book catalogs!
If this individual is so very keen on promoting the French language and culture,
why aren't they digitizing and making their own libraries accessible?
In stead of bitching about google?
It's in French.
The only way this would become "unipolar" is if around the globe, everyone used Google, and in most part, they do.
So what is there to complain about?
Should America complain that France has a "unipolar" stranglehold on the wine industry?
If you'd have bothered to read the editorial, you'd find that "attack" is perhaps not the most appropriate word to use. Rather, M. Jeanneney calls on his own country to get its act together and do the same sort of thing as Google for the sake of keeping the Internet from becoming even more of a monoculture than it is today. What, exactly, is so bad about that?
He's not attacking Google. His main point is "look at what Google is doing--we should be doing the same thing, for the sake of preserving our culture!"
Can the inflammatory headline. It's designed to get a cheap rise out of simple-minded people, and it doesn't make Slashdot look good. There's nothing wrong with what this guy is saying--and if he's attacking anybody, it's his own countrymen, not Google.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Even if Google wished to create an "English-only" digital library, that is up to them.
Don't like it? Too bad.
Start your own digital library. Or don't use theirs.
I'm just curious. Personally I'm pretty rusty at French myself, but it's easy enough to get the gist. I don't see a great deal of difference between the two languages; modern English uses many words derived from French and various other languages... it simply has more vocabulary to draw from, because it isn't fussy about including new words from any source.
Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Gates M'dna wgah'nagl fhtagn.
Interesting that Google's close to monopoly position is correctly identified. Perhaps this will convince those Google lovers who seem to forget that Google is a rapacious corporation intent on maximising shareholder return.
They do not provide a public service - search the net by hand instead!
i don't aglee with you. this is veli veli wrong. lere is no future for engilsh. the future of english is Hinglish and Chinglish. :-)
Yes, naturally since France was mentioned in the headline, we have to cue the French bashing right away instead of looking at the real cultural issues being discussed.
The fact is - whether for right or wrong - France has long kept a strong interest in preserving their language. For a long time, American English attempted to do the same (that lasted up till the early/mid 1800s, on a less formal level - the rate of adoption of Native American words, for example, into English was incredibly slow during this time; British English by comparison changed far faster than American English). The French government, across administrations, has fought the adoption of imported words into their language.
This google initiative is - perhaps rightly, perhaps not - seen as a threat to maintaining the integrity of the French language. I think the approach called for was appropriate - instead of trying to force Google's hand, they instead called for European libraries to follow Google's lead.
"Lock and load, Brides of Christ!"
Quite a while back I worked on a "personalization engine" for a software company that ran on top of Autonomy. It would display different content depending on what was inside someone's "profile". The internal code name for the technology was "Orwell". I am not even kidding, and I didn't find it the least bit funny. In fact, I quit because of it.
The bottom line is that the Web, which is made up of a lot of different technologies (html, http) is too centralized in its nature. Interacting with the "web" means that first and foremost, you have to start trusting a single website whom you may or not have a connection to. Even if it's your employer, there is no way *not* to have any kind of "big brother" as you interact with the web.
There are nascent efforts to provide an open source search engine (for one example see: Nutch, but I also think this needs to be combined with a much more decentralized transport than HTTP, ideally one that is fundamentally "peer to peer" *and* authenticated in its nature. That way, each time you interact with other organizations, there will be a face to it and you can get a sense of how people are interacting with your personal digital profile.
While having a "unipolar" worldview is certainly a bad thing, this reaction seems silly. Google's indexing is, admittedly, of more benefit to Anglophones than Francophones, but it's detrimental to nobody. If the French government (or a French company) wants a similar index of French literature, they should make it themselves -- and I hope they do, since free access to information is never a bad thing. But to criticise Google for focusing on works in their native language located in libraries in their home country for a new project, however, is silly.
However, it looks like he's mostly not criticising Google but calling for a parallel effort from non-English sources. This, of course, is laudable.
(Side note: I'm generally on the side of the French in these little Franco-American spats. I saw a SUV that had a "Boycott France" bumper sticker today, and considered sticking a note under his wiper that said something to the effect of "Y'know, you have the French to thank for the philosophy of free speech that allows you to show that sticker without danger of your tires getting slashed...")
This is interesting on so many levels. First of all, non-French-speaking people are as unlikely to read any French books online as non-English-speakers are to read English books. Secondly, I can't believe that English and French literature come from entirely disparate worldviews that always disagree. Third, I strongly suspect that some of the books Google will be putting online will be translations of French literature. Presumably, many of those are as faithful as possible to the original.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
And at 2:57pm EST on February 22nd, 2005, the Google became self aware.
Seriously though, I guess I understand attributing quotes to an organization, but it'd be nice to hear specifically who said it (e.g. a talking head, the CEO, some PR guy, or an actual techy, or whoever).
I speak french and read the editorial. The guy basically says that if the french governement doesnt invest more cash digitizing old books, english literature will totaly dominate the future of the net, even in the francosphere. He doesnt biatch about google at all.
I think the effort should be to digitize older material first.
Firstly there's a lot of very valuable information which is in the public domain, which makes the legal issues go away.
Secondly, a lot of said information is in danger of being lost. The national libraries of our various countries hold one-of-a-kind books. One fire and they could be lost forever.
Publishers will probably have to start supplying the text of their books to google/amazon to keep their sales up.... some are doing it already.
This is a new one. RTFS.
You don't even have to be bothered to RTFA, it's in the fucking summary.
"Jeanneney is pushing for European libraries to follow in Google's footsteps."
Sounds an awful lot like he's trying to get people to scan books themselves, eh?
If they were still small, they could do something like kill French language support for one day, replacing the franco page with a fake offer to "Upgrade your language" to either English, German or Chinese.
This story is unsurprising somewhat mischarachterized. The call to action is simply for the french to get on board and make their works available, to keep a diversity of ideas out there.
How do I know this? I read the article through Google: http://tinyurl.com/4gyex
I'll see if I can post it to a following message.
Oh why don't they just cry about it.
OOOOH, the internet.
Fansworth: And this is my Universal Translator. Unfortunately, it only translates into an incomprehensible dead language.
Cubert: Hello.
Translator: Bonjour.
Farnsworth: Crazy gibberish!
Cubert: Don't you have any worthwhile inventions?
It is that it will be unipolar english speaking slant.
They aren't against mono-culturalism. They are just against non-French mono-culturalism. they think they are the pre-eminent ruler of the EU, and everyone else is just for fluff.
And I don't care how much France didn't surrender during World War II, and I don't care how we should feel sorry for the people that died, because it was a higher volume than the countries that came to their aid.
There were no Vichy Jews. There were no Vichy anything, but fucking french fuckers. Everyone else stood and fought the best they could. Fucking French elitist pieces of shit.
Most Americans that don't speak foreign languages don't insist you know English, they just don't know any other languages, couldn't communicate with you if they wanted to. It isn't pomposity, but ignorance. The French on the other hand, have what amounts to Language Police. Where the fuck would America be, if we insisted that all words printed were in English. Fucking French.
why don't you go rape another country for its rubber, then hand us your bag of shit for a third time. Fucking French.
Oh, and poke your head in the sand, because if you don't sell any WWII memorabilia, you don't have to rememeber trading all the French Jews for a tiny piece of property. Fucking French.
France should just stick to what they are good at.....Surrender and accept the English language.
France has been trying to ban English words like E-Mail from entering into its language for years now. Maybe we can send them some tinfoil berets so that they won't be so paranoid.
http://www.kubuntu.org/
Re-read all the /. comments on that page, replacing French/France/Frogs with Linux and US/English/Americans/Superman with Windows...
Sometimes being the underdog's a good argument to justify a rant/fight, sometimes it ain't...
There's no place like 127.0.0.1
MyBlog
Always some bureaucrat whining about private initiative by American industry. What Google is doing here could be an invaluable resource for any country, but because Google started the work in the country it was founded in, they're evil. Google should afterall have gone to France first because everyone is just dying to read French literature in French, a language most people around the world don't understand.
So what are you going to do about it, huh? Are you going to help Google go through your library and digitalize it? Are you indexing the volumes you can start legally digitalizing now so that if Google's efforts pan out with the 5 U.S. universities that you can help them get started with a French version of the service? Why not go ahead and digitalize the volumes yourselves and then send copies of the data to Google so that they can quickly build a French-language section if it means so much to you.
You know why they won't do this? This has nothing to do with an earnest effort to promote French culture, but rather whiny, childish name-calling and attacks because Google is an American company and the French are being left out-like the Germans, Italians, Spanish, Dutch, Russians, Chinese, Koreans, Japanese and every other country where English isn't an official language.
If you reall do care about seeing a French version of this site, digitalize the stuff you can now and send it to Google. I'm sure they'd love to receive your French-language materials if you sent them the data in a format they can use for adding your books to their databases. Just stop bitching because Google chose to start with materials written in a language that at least 25% of the world's population can understand, especially when probably not even 4% of the world speaks yours anymore.
Sheesh. I have never been a "French-basher," but this whiny rubbish just annoys me to no end. Your language lost the influence it had on global trade, English might suffer the same fate, but it hasn't yet. You have no right to complain about Google targetting 1.5B people over probably not even 200M people.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
they instead called for European libraries to follow Google's lead.
No doubt he's delighted to note that one European library, at Oxford University, is way ahead of him on that.
So when any one in america comes up with a innovative new idea it is just a way to be arrogant?
He can get off his high horse and do the same thing in his language.
Google should make "self-righteous asshole" link to Jean-Noel Jeanneney.
He's not really anti-american. He's just inciting controversy to garner attention. I'm sure He'd like to thank /. for helping his negative publicity to jump the pond. I'm inclined to trust google over a whiny frog.
From the article:
"In the subsequent weeks after the editorial was published, Jeanneney has toned down his statements made in the French media, but remains the leading proponent for mobilizing funding for the digitalization of European libraries. A Google spokesperson told BetaNews that Jeanneney's remarks were a reflection of his fundraising efforts."
Seems like somebody didn't get a gmail invite :(
Face it Frenchie, google is an innovative, American company. If the country that has a institute created expressly to hamstring the evolution of its language wants to play, they can come up with some backing money to hire google to do the same thing for Frenchland.
Or get off your asses and do it yourselves.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
How do you say hello in American-English?
With your mouth full of fried food
Of course, it doesn't smell very french to me...
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Wikipedia has over 450,000 English entries, over 200,000 German articles, and over 100,000 Japanese articles. France is in fourth with over 83,000 articles.
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
[sarcasm] Really? I mean, providing an excellent product at no charge? How can we stand for this? We must protest, because if we don't, who know what might happen? Other companies could start following the lead. Then we'd have tons of high-quality products at good prices! Oh no, we can't let our standard of living go up! ARG! [/sarcasm]
And ill educated pricks like you , mistake the word racist for the word racialist( .
Now this is racist , america is predominantly non gaull or celtic mainly anglo saxon and hispanic , and france is celtic or gaull in heratige,so one person of one race insulting one of another race is racist is it not.
xenophobic comments would display a fear of said race , racist is just nasty illfounded hatred
Did you ever know someone who no matter how hard you tried, you simply could not find any redeeming reasons to like them? That's France. An arrogant, self centered little tiny egomanical ankle biting country that has a part of it's government devoted to keeping english words out of the language. An arrogant, rude country that thinks they are a gift to the world. An arrogant rude country who after they were liberated from Nazi Germany at the end of World War II refused to be a part of NATO because it wasn't run by them. They happily took the Marshall Plan money from the US all the while ankle biting the US at every step. And they are still nasty little ankle biters. Instead of biting the ankles of Google because their idea of putting books online which happen to be in english offends the sensibilities of the French, why don't they build their own in French. I'm sure all of those French speaking countries out there, you know those old French colonies in Africa and Asia - would love to be able to find the collected works of DeGaulle online. Any while the French are at it, why don't they simply create their own Google instead of whining about an American created company being in English? Geez. But then the French will be the French.
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
I think his concern should be addressed a serious concern about an on-going problem. As France continuous to become less and less influencial in world affairs and culture, we all lose. If the culture that once France is lost because of whatever reasons, we all lose a great deal. Voltare, Descartes, Napolean (a tryant but still a mover and shaker), The French Revolution, Lafeyette...it's a big list! His attitude deserves a great big wake up call, or a spanking. One or the other. Sillie Americon with yourre littlee boooks. Nowa go away ora I willa taunta yoou a seconda timea!
*click**beep**beep* Scotty, One to Mod up!
my girlfriend is a librarian and she's always telling me how her colleagues complain about google. they think the results are random and there should be a dewey decimal system for the web.
"Jeanneney is pushing for European libraries to follow in Google's footsteps."
/. blurb doesn't have that many words, does it?
Jesus, the little
And congrats to the mods for modding parent insightful, what an achievement.
Oh yeah, France? Well we're calling it Google Freedom search now!
If it weren't for my grandpa...you'd be googlin' GERMAN!
"French library website surrenders to hackers"
What would life be like without the joy of silly international personality conflicts?
technically (looking at the numbers) more people speak manadarin than any other language
and if china's current rapid economic expansion is anything to go by that figure will only increase
They're just pissed because of these results
Google Annouances its "Not Magic"
Feb 22 2005
Buzz_Litebeer
Today google announced that it was indeed "not magic." "We here at Google, despite the current products we serve on the web are 'not magic'" gushed a Google Spokesman. He later went on to describe the technological hurdles required to pull together their many free technological solutions. The statement was in responce to people complaining that there sites were not indexed properly and to a most recent complaint by the country of France that it did not do enough French things and that it did to many English things.
Google did not know how to respond but to assume that the country of France thought that it must be magic and could "do everything at once."
Google feels that its being "not magic" interferes with its ability to please everyone all of the time, and that includes country. France is expected to surrender to Googles arguments later today, and ask if they could pay them money to set up a similar solution in France. Or they will just be mad that Google isnt magic and try legal action.
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
Read the summary carefully (or read the article if you can read french).
Jean-Noël Jeanneney NEVER critized Google for its work. He says that, as one OS or one browser is evil, one digital library (especially in one langage/culture) is evil too.
So, his point is not to prevent Google from doing what it wants but to encourage other initiative to emerge, especially in European countries.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
All discussion seems to be limited to childish and pathetic "they will surrender" jokes or other rants. Consider this:
If Google archives US libraries, there would be a bias towards english literature. I don't think many would disagree. And whatever is on google gets spread lightning fast, unlike (e.g. french) paper libraries. So the man has a point in pointing out this possible bias.
Oh yes, to all those idio^H^H^H^Hposters saying 'then do it yourself': A large profit driven company like Google would have the proper resources to do this. A librarian wouldn't. (I know, oversimplification).
"Google said it was surprised by Jeanneney's remarks"
The day Google reaches sentience is the day the human race's days become numbered.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
The moderators will get rid of it.
Did you ever know someone who no matter how hard you tried, you simply could not find any redeeming reasons to like them? That's France. An arrogant, self centered little tiny egomanical ankle biting country that has a part of it's government devoted to keeping english words out of the language. An arrogant, rude country that thinks they are a gift to the world. An arrogant rude country who after they were liberated from Nazi Germany at the end of World War II refused to be a part of NATO because it wasn't run by them. They happily took the Marshall Plan money from the US all the while ankle biting the US at every step. And they are still nasty little ankle biters. Instead of biting the ankles of Google because their idea of putting books online which happen to be in english offends the sensibilities of the French, why don't they build their own in French. I'm sure all of those French speaking countries out there, you know those old French colonies in Africa and Asia - would love to be able to find the collected works of DeGaulle online. Any while the French are at it, why don't they simply create their own Google instead of whining about an American created company being in English? Geez. But then the French will be the French.
Also they were a brutal colonial power with many vietnamese still remember with much venom. I do beleive the US wqas encouraged by France to invade vietnam.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
And Americans will be Americans - as you might realize in hindsight. I challenge you to go back and actually read the article - babelfish it if you must. Maybe then you'd realize that just because a /. summary says a thing doesn't mean that its accurate. This was not an attack on Google, far from it, more of an "attack" if you must use that word on his fellow countrymen to make sure that they did something similar. Just as you were lamenting.
... misapplied.
Your zeal, while strong, seems a little
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
and future civilizations dig this up someday, they'd have the false impression that english was not the worlds dominant language. which it is.
so quit denying reality and realize that the real world communicates in english.
Yes the dude makes himself look ridiculous. But I would like to oppose the "english is dominant" view. It is not the English language which dominates this planet, but a small subset of it. "Communication English", spoken all over the world, contains only a fraction of vocabulary and grammar of "the real thing". And people who can show you the way in Bejing most probably have read neither Shakespare nor any of the more modern classics. So starting to digitise English litterature is really not as "normal" as you might think. I am not French, but I can speak it. And I can tell you this: the French language has song lyrics which make John Lennon look like a guy from "star for an evening". Yup the frenchkies should get their act together and start digitising themselves, no Shakespare does not rule the world.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
because they always whine about shit like this.
If you'd have bothered to read the editorial, you'd find that "attack" is perhaps not the most appropriate word to use.
If you had bothered to read it yourself, you'd find that it is.
Rather, M. Jeanneney calls on his own country to get its act together and do the same sort of thing as Google for the sake of keeping the Internet from becoming even more of a monoculture than it is today. What, exactly, is so bad about that?
Nothing is bad about that in and of itself. However notice that he only suggests that because the alternative he sees won't work and he admits it. See the comparison he draws to post-WWII, when American programming basically dominated the realm of film and television? He suggests that the French imposed quota system was effective and correct, and goes on to point out that such a system wouldn't work on the web.
The fact that the French quota system was total anti-freedom bullshit doesn't seem to have occurred to him. The French have this driving need to prove that they have the best culture or, more often nowadays, to preserve their culture in spite of the fact that nobody likes their culture. Look, when you have to artifically keep your culture, and even your language, alive through forceful means, then maybe, just maybe, it's time for it to die off already. If French culture is in danger of being overrun by other cultures, then perhaps that's a good thing. Stagnation is death.
He's not attacking Google. His main point is "look at what Google is doing--we should be doing the same thing, for the sake of preserving our culture!"
True, he's not attacking Google, but he is attacking American cultural "domination". The problem here is that culture is in the minds of a people. If they change their minds, then the culture changes too. I submit that forcefully preventing such change is neither desireable nor necessary.
Can the inflammatory headline. It's designed to get a cheap rise out of simple-minded people, and it doesn't make Slashdot look good. There's nothing wrong with what this guy is saying--and if he's attacking anybody, it's his own countrymen, not Google.
Inflammatory headlines are well deserved when the other guy is being a prick. And an annoying French prick at that.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
It's not a threat in any way, shape or form to their culture. If you don't want to use Google, don't. For the same reasons I'm not browsing French literature and culture online they can not browse Google for American literature and culture.
Google is company located in the United States. The fact that people around the world use it does not change the fact that Google is a US company. It is their choice what language they provide content in.
If a French company became the world wide source for information I see no reason why they should be attacked for providing content in anything but French. Don't attack google for being successful here. Instead why not try to help some business in your own borders.
Just give it a few days, and if France refuses to back down, they'll have their electricity cut.
[o]_O
The French have been feeling second-rate ever since the phrase "lingua franca" became an oxymoron. That's their problem, not Google's.
French to English translation of Jean-Christmas Jeanneney editorial
I read
Given current demographic trends - in another 40 years there will be no French culture. The French in France aren't procreating enough to replace their population. The French in Quebec are becoming increasingly Anglicized. And here's a news flash: the French quarter of New Orleans isn't French anymore either. So seriously, why should Google waste their time on it from a business perspective?
No, France now STFU!
On a serious note, this is no worse than the gutenburg project trying to digitize books, it should be an effort undertaken to make books more easiliy accessable. Not everyone can lug around 20 books, why not use a portable device to read! It is progression, you saw the church throwing a fit when Gutenburg invented the printing press because they couldn't control people anymore. Same deal, hundreds of years later.
English > German > Dutch > Spanish > Italian > Portuguese > ...... > Swahilli > Zulu > French
Go read a dictionary, asshole.
i c
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=xenophob
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=racist
Man it's incredibly funny how Americans react if a nation dares to remind them that they are not the only nation on the planet, that there are other nations too, that these nations may even have different interests and views and on top of that are not afraid to voice them.
Though there are many things to like about France this alone makes me love them.
I think what Jeanneney was trying to say is that there are other cultural views, representations of knowledge, and contributions to the realm of literature that should be represented in a data repository accessible to the world other than simply the American ones or those endorsed implicitly or explicitly by American institutions.
This is a legitimate concern. World history classes in US elementary schools (and some high schools) consist of the history of Western civilization to teh exclusion of the rest of teh world. At best, the non-Caucasian members of teh world are mentioned only in the context of their interactions with Western civilizations. Funny since last I checked the world consisted of more than the Greeks, Romans, British, French, and Americans and these other ppl had historical events, too. Mention of non-European countries and populations of non-Caucasians are largely restricted to the US civil rights movements, WWII, and the slave trade. Oh and the ancient Egyptians get a mention since they had a relationship with the Greeks. It isn't unreasonable to see Google's efforts as a manifestation of the same brand of tunnel vision.
Granted, complaints from the French about this are kinda weird since it's unlikely they wouldn't be represented in a clearly eurocentric compilation of literature. But they raise a good point and it leads to some important questions. Is Google also going to catalog the literature of the Chinese, Japanese, Zulus, Australian Aborigine, or Ainu? Will the works in the catalog only be that which fits conveniently into a Western format? Will Google's efforts inadvertently be used in the larger argument that non-American and non-Western forms of knowledge have no value?
I might mention this is being actively debated in academic circles right now. The French aren't the first to have voiced it but they probably the first to get a write up about it. A lot of ppl are happy Google's doing it. But just as many are concerned that they may wind up pushing a very, very America-centric view of what is and isn't legitimate literature on the rest of the world.
(almost a moot point since those who would likely be underrepresented probably don't even have internet access anyway)
I was referring to the original editorial, btw.
Read it translated (courtesy of Google) here.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
it isn't racism, it is stereotyping. French people are not comprised of a single race, same for Americans. A US company starts scanning volumes of text in our predominant language, so what?
...because Plutonians are teh suck
But wouldn't French literature (like Les Mis, for example) also be indexed by Google, *but* in the English translation?
Have you seen the arrow?
What company do you know of that has a 40 year planning horizon? Or even ten?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
now *this* is a nice color scheme. can we get an option (required for .fr readers) to show everything in these colors?
Before leaving I made one particular request to M. Reynaud. Over four hundred German pilots, the bulk of whom had been shot down by the RAF, were prisoners in France. Having regard to the situation, they should be handed over to our custody. M. Renaud willingly gave this promise, but soon he had no power to keep it. These German pilots all became available for the Battle of Britain, and we had to shoot them down a second time.
While there is a slight hint of counter-americanism in the article, I did not see any particular attack on google. It seems to me the article was simply warning that they need to get off their butts if they dont want the only publically available resources to be from english speaking perspective.
Google translated article (see:irony)
Im not here now... Im out KILLING pepperoni
...he doesn't want the world to realize that the French's sole military accomplishment was inventing the tassled combat boot.
10100111001
How old-world. Here's a translation into lingua franca :)
Jeanneney's desire to create a similar corpus of non-American books seems reasonable, but what's his problem with American language? American language already contains quite a bit of French, German, Spanish, Italian, and others.
Americans *are* French, German, Italian, Spanish, English, Irish, Polish, Ukranian, Swedish, Lebanese, Nigerian, etc. You name it, we've got it. Show me a country whose population better represents the world at large.
"Bonjourrrrr, you cheese-eating surrender monkeys!" ~ G.K. Willy
"Jeanneney is pushing for European libraries to follow in Google's footsteps."
And again, congrats mods.
France has long kept a strong interest in preserving their language.
I'm afraid that they take it to the point of being absolutely nazi.
An example: a friend of mine, an archaeologist, deals with archeological literature in a multitude of languages. The two most prevalent ones are English (for obvious reasons) and German (as germans have a surprisingly big representation in archaeology). Still, the international community has no problems talking to each other -- with a standing out exception, the french. French scientists are not allowed to write publications in any language other than French. Who cares if the bulk of potential attendees to a conference doesn't speak that language? The french government (and unfortunately, a sizeable part of the society) pursues interoperability as strongly as MicroSoft...
Another example: a few years ago, out of a sudden, the french government decreed that the word e-mail is to be forbidden and replaced with made-up "courriel". They are forcing their own citizens to be xenophobic!
On the other hand, English keeps borrowing words from other languages on a massive scale -- and this is one of reasons of its success.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
The French language tirade against English via French Academics is nothing new and something similar happens periodially in Britain vis-a-vis American/Australian English. The idea is to drump-up support for some funding effort related to language preservation from the government.
It isn't simple to get funding in Europe for anything including science at the academic level. That's why they European academics often end up in the states where funding is more plentiful relatively speaking.
The whole point of the guy's editorial was: if English language works are the only ones that become searchable this way, that's going to make those works more influential. He's trying to get funding to do exactly what you're talking about -- granted, not to give to Google gratis.
I love how /. readers who didn't even bother reading the story are now accusing him of cultural bigotry, though. Very edifying -- though not in the way our posters intend. It's not like the guy is, oh, a librarian who actually considers what he's saying because he's trying to provoke a response in order to get funding, or anything. Must just be jealous of America. Yeah, that's it...
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
So seriously, why should Google waste their time on it from a business perspective?
Why bother with English, too? There are three times as many people that speak that language...
One man's Funny is another man's Offtopic.
Google is an American company. Wouldn't it make sense that they start with libraries that are in the same country as the company headquarters?
Beyond that, when did Google say that they would not be asking libraries from other countries to participate?
Goo goo g'joob.
France has a point, although that point would be better made if they scanned a few french books themselves. But the fact remains that engl^H^H^H American is superseeding all other languages, for reasons that are not always based on the supriority of the english language. Why is it that the signs in my (dutch) university are mostly in english? Why is it that the advertisements in our dutch shops are all in english? Why are my children throwing at least 10% english expressions into their conversation?
America has been the main exporter of amusement for more than fifty years now, and it is showing. If it is not American, it is not cute. If it is not American, it is not worth anything.
Sooner or later there will be a backlash. I applauded when the planes flew into the WTC, and I was not the only one in Holland. You Americans would be wise to reconsider the colonization of the rest of the world.
Paai
The BN - Bibliothèque nationale - is one of the hardest places I've ever attempted to get into to do research. I spent some time studying paleography and codicology, and I got into three or four great manuscript libraries in and around Paris. Too bad most of the stuff I needed was at the BN. They won't even talk to you until you're done with your PhD.(1)
I find it interesting that someone represetning such an institution, who basically holds the keys and has locked the doors to most of the history of their language, would get mad for someone else in another language open the same door.
1 - Yes, before some archivist jumps on me, I did do microfiche research at the IRHT, and I did have some questions that required the original manuscript.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
self-editing note: that language = Chinese
One man's Funny is another man's Offtopic.
"Something Good Happens in the World"
or
"Something that is Completely Harmless to France"
or
"Somebody wants to Buy Something of Nazi Origin From Somebody in another country while living in non-France"
or
"Somebody wants to write 'France' on their Web Site"
or
Anything
and France responds feeling they can police the entire freakin' world with their moronic superior-acting judges or presidents of some-or-another organization. Idiots.
As much as I don't like defending France, the summary is misleading.
Mr. Jeanneney is not angry at Google. Actually he pointed out that the European Union (and France in particular) must follow Google's example and put on the Web the their own libraries so that it will be easy to access the works in not only english language, but also in french, italian, spanish and what not. I agree with him when he says that the preponderance of any single culture (in this case the Anglo-Saxon) is a BAD THING.
Actually the BNF already started with Gallica but there must be a common european effort.
And the people from Google should actually have read the editorial before answering questions.
POSTAL ÉLECTRONIQUE Anyone?
Oh, they're just still miffed about that whole "french military victories" thing. ;-)
(Yes - I know how it works.)
They try to sue Microsoft into oblivion. They subsidize Airbus so that it can compete with Boeing.
It's pretty obvious.
You would think if this guy wanted to be taken seriously by someone outside of France he would at least publish the editorial in English for god's sake.
it is making him, and France, look rather silly (again).
lol, France are not the ones who have looked silly lately, friend.
oh la la!
French scientists are not allowed to write publications in any language other than French
First, I worked for a French scientific institute last year (I am French), and I wrote some publications in English (proof here).
Moreover, I read an article 2 days ago saying that, in France, a lot of mathematical publications are writting in French and in the other scientific domains in English... No law here!
the french government decreed that the word e-mail is to be forbidden and replaced with made-up "courriel"
Wrong. French government has no power over the langage... It's the "Academie Française" which is supposed to tell how to spell words, and which words are French. The government wants its administration to speak French, and so wants it to use the word "courriel" which was declared French by the Academie Française - so it's logical. What would be your reaction if the American government doesn't want its administration to speak English?
I had to say that the Academie Française is sometimes not really well understood by a lot of French people (me included)...
But who really cares what this douche [french word] thinks?
At best, he can stop french users from looking at this, but again, who cares? The french have been (once again) been marginalized from the web because of the insistence on using their earlier proprietary information service.
So again, I ask. Who cares what he thinks?
Let's face it: if folks in France were doing this for all of their books, wouldn't folks in the US start saying "boy, we'd better do the same thing, or we'll be left behind"? 'Cuz that's all they're doing.
How about this: since the editorial is in French, I think it's only fitting to post the Google translation of the editorial
excepting Canada, French Polynesia, etc...
why should Google waste their time on it from a business perspective?
Why should I care about Google's business? Or, rather, why should the president of The National Library of France care about Google's business?
My own experience is a few years stale, but I'll echo this. Parisians do come off as brusque and cold, but I have a theory as to why this is.
When the city you live in is home to several million people and the population density hovers around 25,000 people per square mile, personal space becomes very, very valuable. To this end, you don't want to interact with each of the hundred-odd strangers you pass in the street on your daily commute; you'd be nodding, greeting, and interacting every step of the way. Now, once you actually 'break the ice' and start talking to somebody, they tend to be amazingly friendly and accomodating--it's just that most folks in Paris value their privacy and understand that it makes everybody's life a little easier if we're not all waving, gawking, and engaging strangers in small talk all the time. For what it's worth, it works--I could stand in a metro car literally packed with other Parisians and feel like I had my own little personal space. You really need that kind of thing in such close quarters--you'd go nuts otherwise.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
My God, for Americans at this point to be whining about French people's cultural bigotry is about as stark ironic as anything ever has been.
In response to an editorial that says, basically, "If only English-language works are scanned, that'll skew the world view shown in the results," and that encourages funding scanning of other languages, we get -- ta dum! -- people who didn't read the article saying those French sure are biased dorks. (And we get puerile insults. "Surrender Monkeys." That's right up there with "Freedom Fries" on the list of mature arguments, people.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
I like their fries, their toast, their kissing, their bread, and their mustard.
Everything else they make is BS, but those things...Say Magnifeek.
I don't understand why everyone is upset. France can just index its own books and materials and provide some competition for Google? IF it has the resourses and knowledge to do it that is...
The matter of the fact is who controls the information can influence the public, as they themselves correctly observed. And if they are adamant about it, then they should compete instead of complain.
There is a slight subtelty here:
The first point, government sponsored research papers MUST be written in french first. The official papers must be in french, but any number of translations can be made afterward. It's usually the same with universities and such. Since most research are sponsored by govt or uni, well, most papers are written in french. You know, when a french speaking govt. sponsors a research, is it weird for them to ask that the results are in french, for the benefit of the french people? How would you like, as an american uni, to sponsor someone for a research and he would submit a paper in arabic?
The second point is similar. They said that government related communications must use "courriel" instead of "email". I'd say it's a good thing, official communications should use the correct vocabulary. Using "email" would be the same as using leet speak in official govt. communications for example.
French is firstly a litterary language, while english became a business/everyday language and lots most of its litterary roots. English is made to be interroperable. French will usually use french, latin or greek roots to "invent" new words instead of adopting a foreign word. This usually preserves the litterary properties of the language. That's the big difference. Yeah, they can be anal about it sometimes, but then, who isn't?
J-N Jeanneney doesn't attack Google but want that Europe invest in a similar system to promote the european culture and political influence.
Actually, only twice as many. ;) But most of 'em live in China, where as English is a 'business language', which is used around the world. Still, it would seem to make sense for Google to start in in on Mandarin for their second languages - if their search engine can handle the characters.
The only real point here is this.
"The web is democratic. The french can set up their own information that is accessible to the web. It is not Google's responsibility to make sure France is well-represented in a data base. If France wants more info about France on the web, then they should put more informatio about France on the web"
If you'd just change your official language from French to English, and translate all of your documents from that outdated romance language, then it wouldn't be a bloody problem, would it?
(sarcasm, in case you missed it)
What would be your reaction if the American government doesn't want its administration to speak English?
If English speakers started using the word courriel to mean email then it would be an English word. Just like cafe or ad hoc. If the American government said its workers couldn't use the word "courriel" because it isn't English enough then people would laugh at them. Well, Slashdoters would get enraged at them but everyone else would just laugh.
the french government decreed that the word e-mail is to be forbidden and replaced with made-up "courriel". They are forcing their own citizens to be xenophobic!
It didn't "forbid" anything. It encouraged. It may have mandated it in government documents, but that's about as oppressive as forcing employees to call to-do lists "weekly action projections."
Anyway, "e-mail" with French pronunciation is "euh-mal". "Courriel" with French pronunciation is a perfectly good, French word. If I were French, I'd be grateful. It's like "croissant." We took the word, we pronounce it wrong, but we sound stupid doing it, so most of us just call it "that curvy surrender-monkey bread." And the government puts that on its menus below Freedom Fries. So let's not go pointing out the colors of French kettles until we've taken a look at the outside of our pot.
Google better surrender now.
Seriously, if this is such a big issue, they can publish French works on Le Google website and the Germans can publish their works on Der Google.
Otherwise, who cares?
In 150 years you won't be able to find German being spoken anywhere except hell.
Your amazing ignorance of other cultures is eclipsed only by the stupidity it's steeped in.
Or, to put it another way, since you obviously have no clue what you're talking about: SHUT UP!
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
Actually, birth rate in France is one of the highest of all of Europe.
In the US, English is actually threatened by Spanish if I recall correctly?
=====
I lie all the time, including now
by changing their name to Googeau
No data, no cry
Here is the google english translation of the Frenchman's comments about google making english the homogenous language of the world
Slashdot, would a spell-checker for posting be too much to ask? It's not rocket science!
I'd say Quebecers are probably more 'french' in everyday life than the french. Just go to France, listen to people talk in the street. Then go to Quebec and do the same. You'll probably understand the French a lot more, in some place nearly every word is english. Ok, you probably won't understand because of the accent, but they still use lots english words, and mostly bastardize english words. The later is the worst. Parking, Footing, etc. It's not only the youth, just watch French TV, it's incredible how anglicized they are becoming. All the 'in' expression are bastardized english.
Quebecers understand that english is the business language, but in everyday life, they speak better french than the French themselves, although with their own slangs and all.
The 'american way' infiltrated France at the core, while in Quebec, people stood up to keep their own culture as the root, but adopted the rest. With the core(the youth) as it is today, France of tomorrow will probably be totally anglicized, while Quebec will fare better. By how much? I don't know, but there is a serious problem in France.
http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?ts_mode=glo bal&lang=none
they are quite visible. In global top 20 web sites, 6 sites are chinese web sites.
Perhaps it's more subtle in the original French, but Jeanneney seems to be more whining about the limited funding that the government has provided for the National Library's efforts so far, and waving the twin red-white-and-blue flags of French national pride and the insidious spread of American culture to draw attention to the problem.
He's not saying it's a bad thing in itself... but he's saying if the American culture is not to overwhelm the rest of the global culture, Europe needs to get with the program... or be forgotten.
In other words, "Publish or Perish."
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
And let the France / EU - bashing begin.
Seriousely, if this was told by the head of the German library do you believe that it would have made it to Slashdot?
I find it interesting that throughout this discussion, I have seen no mention of Project Gutenberg. They've been working on this kind of thing for a very long time.http://www.gutenberg.org/
I dont even know if I can write this piece, because I think the word "English" comes from French.
But I've heard a few die-hards want to forget the French even took over England in 1066 and left all those long words here.
As if there can be a bad Star Trek reference!
I don't speak French, so is this correct? (In its sense, not word-for-word)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
In the long run, the librarian-in-chief cautioned against the domination of America for generations to come and its potential to skew thought without reflecting the diversity of civilizations.
Isn't that wat America is... a melting pot of other civilizations?
Let's keep in mind, the French are against EVERYTHING. About the only thing they don't complain about: smoking. Mais oui!
... that the French, for one, welcomed their new English-speaking overlords.
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
Google's answer to the tempest is that they can essentially only do one language at a time. Perhaps they should team up with the Europeans to get multiple languages in one shot. I think that everybody would benefit from the combined expertise/resources.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Money-- and he has been. From an automatic translation (ironically via...) of the editorial:
Or, in other words: "Hey, morons! I've been working on this, but I can't match their efforts when I'm being outspent by this much!!!//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
who cares what France thinks? They'll be thanking us when whoever invades them in WWIII or something and we have to bail their asses out again...
hack a day
If English wasn't the world's Lingua Franca, what else would it be? :-)
[Insert pithy quote here]
I know exactly what I'm talking about. I do NOT care what anyone in France thinks about the business practices of Google a non-French company. Good troll though :). Kudos sir.
I find it rather odd that Google can digitize millions of books to share with the world and everyone is excited about it (including me) but if I want to copy my own CD's and DVD's to store on my PC for easy personal access I can be sued by the RIAA or MPAA for violating the DMCA. Something's not right with that.
In other news, France has surrendered and Google is sending engineers to occupy the captured territory.
"I love French wine, I like the French language. I have sampled every language, French is my favorite. Fantastic language. Especially to curse with. Nom de dieu de putain de bordel de merde de saloperie de connard d'enculé de ta mère. It's like wiping your arse with silk. I love it."
...that French is dying. A living language doesn't get prickly or defensive, and it does not try to impose linguistic purity the way the Acadamie Francais does. Culture grows synthetically, by combining influences from various sources. Purity is death. Look at the wonderful things that the Nazis did for Germany in the name of cultural purity--they killed the culture of Beethoven, Mozart, Goethe, and Kant. If you want to preserve something, you pickle it in formaldehyde--but first, you have to kill it.
If French has a word that English doesn't have, English speakers will happily pick it up, and it will soon appear in the Oxford English dictionary. The same is not true for French. And if the French are bad in this regard, the Quebecois are 10 times worse. The dream of the separatists in Quebec is a country inhabited only by "pur laine", descendants of the original French settlers. In fact, Quebec's cultural influence peaked in the late 60's, when Montreal was New Orleans North, a mixture of races, religions, languages, and traditions. After that the separtists started driving out, in Jacques Parizeau's words, "money and the ethnic vote."
If the French and the Quebecois get their wish, they may preserve their culture, but it will be dead, and no one will care.
This is the solution.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
"reflect a unipolar worldview dominated by the English language and American culture."
Consider it a gift from the U.S. Would the french rather German?
Actually, it's more like an English speaker using the word "fatigue" to express that they're tired. Except that we don't mind borrowing words from other languages (even French), while they're extremely anal about doing so.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
OK being french myself, I think I can add few infos missing here. This news in the french newspapers already a few days ago. My opinion was: this guys is probably not a 100% wrong, but he's saying out in bad way. ;-)
1/the bnf have already been digitalizing books for years, and putting them avalaible on the the net here : http://gallica.bnf.fr/
2/for this work, bnf (french equivalent of the libraryof congress) has a budget ridiculous compared to what google is investing in this operation, but it's financed by tax pars; this is france
peronal opinion
3/he wants more money!!! that's all. he just want to digitalize more books, for example BNF is going
to digitalize newspapers from 19th century till 1945. And he needs more money to do so. all the buzz is making is just a way to get more money.
Make your own opinion and he's probably right in a way: google and all the search engines aren't that neutral
if you could speak correct English.
Clear, Dark Skies
jesus.
misleading !
I expect better of the new york time-=-- what? where am I?
-pyrrho
of whining about how Americans are forcing them to change their language, their eating habits and, now, preventing them from launching their own web sites?
This is *exactly* why Americans bash the French. Americans do something that has nothing whatsoever to do with the French and the French complain because the Americans were insufficiently attentive to France's passive-aggressive syndrome.
Clear, Dark Skies
Just what I needed. One more tick mark on my list of french people who behave like complete asshats. Of all the cultures I've encountered, I had a vague suspicion that I disliked the french while being neutral to very positive about most others. Until recently when I visited a resort in Mexico where over half the patrons were from France, whereupon I became very certain of my feelings. Very exclusionary of other languages, and really seem to feel that they should have some special privilege of treatment. Newsflash to all the French: The rest of the world is NOT here for your convenience, or to serve and entertain you. The rest of us accommodate diversity, I suggest you do the same.
You know, you could always use an OS that has a built-in spelling checker that's available for all applications.
Like, oh, OS X.
Clear, Dark Skies
You, my friend, are a tit for generalizing so much.
I'm a french canadian. I grew up in New-Brunswick, in Acadia. My family is French from France, so I've been immersed in two francophone cultures. It's NEVER as simple as you seem to think it is to deem something 'french', or any other culture. Cultures are constantly changing. You'd have to be a total tit to believe everyone, everywhere in the world, who shares a common language also share a common culture.
I've lived in Montreal, I've lived in Douarnenez France. To call the population of one city less 'french' than the other is totally idiotic. And if you believe they go around claiming they are genuine 'french', you're, again, a total tit.
So, my tit, in conclusion, you're a tit.
I just pooped your party.
they might surrender to the germans again in protest.
lose != loose
Dang. Here I was feeling all self-righteous and indignant and there you go point out that the author was actually proposing the right solution (that the EU start it's own online library program).
Clear, Dark Skies
Professor: And this is my Universal Translator. Unfortunately, it only translates into an incomprehensible dead language.
Cubert: Hello.
Translator: Bonjour.
Professor: Crazy gibberish!
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
Hmm, ok, so since they (the French) insist on lumping the UK as being 'part' of Europe, I wonder how well received The British Library would be 'welcomed' into such an pan-european enterprise!??
Trust me, I work in one of EU institutions, and the French speakers are terrified that the recent influx of 10 East European nations is eating away at the influence of their language. EACH of the 10 'new' nations are more than happy to speak English rather than French as a second tongue.
what the French think.
Wow. The French have something against an American company for doing things in english. Now that comes as a shock to me. I thought the years of anti-American propaganda and superfluous legislation to eliminate the english language within their borders were signs of love and affection.
I guess it would be different if Google was publishing texts in Turkish or Arabic, that might be sponsor-worthy to the French.
No. Simply put, the French are the inferiority complex of the world. They desperatly try to impress themselves upon the rest of the Western World to say "We're important too". Sadly, they are about 60 years too late on that call. Even more sad, it will probably be another 60 before they realize it.
Maybe instead of bitching so much about how they are left out by English speaking world, they might try doing something about it. If Google puts libraries on thier site, maybe SurrenderMonkey.fr should do the same, tit for tat. Or better yet, do something inventive, original, and progressive that proves the French are still important and not just a society in the death throws of obselence.
English is the modern Latin. At one time, all international trade was done in Latin, so everyone could at least speak one common trade tounge. English is the defacto common trade tounge of the modern era. If everyone speaks/reads english, then we have a common basis for sharing information across national borders. And for the most part, the world does this, except the bitchy French who would rather pretend that they can maintain thier pedigree though dogma in an era of increasing homgeneity. Meanwhile, the rest of the world progresses polyligualy.
So, I say unto the French, lighten up and enjoy the one true legacy you have given to the world... have a French Fry. (You can find them at a McDonalds near you!)
The first type of post argues that the author is just trying to motivate the French government to launch a digitization effort for French books. That's all fine and dandy folks, but this article is being, and should be, judged on the basis of its text, not the golden intent behind it. The author alleges, and this is almost a perfect translation, the threat of an American stranglehold on the world of ideas. The "money-shot" here is when the author wrote: "Voici que s'affirme le risque d'une domination écrasante de l'Amérique dans la définition de l'idée que les prochaines générations se feront du monde." I don't care what he is trying to accomplish -- that is anti-americanism, pure and simple.
The second type of posts have argued that the author did not attack Google's initiative at all. Bullshit. The people espousing this point of view either didn't read the original editorial, or can't understand French as well as they think. The author followed a very popular line of argument among the French chattering classes: that the U.S.A. has grown TOO powerful, and that English is a lever by which they jiggle the world. (In this analogy, business would be the fulcrum). "Hyper-pouvoir" is the word practically coined in Le Monde, France's leading daily periodical for the grad degree plus set, and the anti-American editorials have flown fast and furious for at least the last 20 years. How French intellectuals manage to avoid noticing that English is actually spoken in other parts of the world boggles the imagination. Of course, talk to the average French teen who doesn't belong to the radical left, and they have no idea what the fuss is about. Unfortunately, it's the intellectuals that govern, not the teens.
Long story short, an editorial that talks about Google's initiative as enhancing the U.S. "domination ecrasante" (sorry about the lack of accents) over ideas is an attack on the initiative, not "yellow journalism" as one poster put it. The motivation may be noble, but it comes off as bigotry, and it's dead wrong. Knowledge isn't a zero-sum game.
Regards,
Astolpho
P.S. The most popular historical figure in France is Napolean. Now how could that possibly be?
F in the french!
one of reasons of its success
No it's because even stupid people are able to learn
it, silly!
This post said exactly what I was thinking. Have you ever read Chaucer in the original English? It's so diffrent from today that you can barely understand it (British or American). And think of all the great English literature written after Chaucer (Shakespeare comes to mind) that was written in a much different version of English. I respect the fact that France wants to preserve their language but why does that mean our language is degenerating?
Sorry to burst your bubble - 'Freedom Fries' were the brilliant (cynicical!) innovation by two dorky Congressmen from the United States Congress - who erroneously considered 'French Fries' to be of French origin, and felt that by renaming them they would 'show' the French that the US meant business.
Unfortunately, the aforementioned Fries were of Belgian origin, and the Congressional action elicited hearty laughter from the French over the stupidity of 'those Americans'.
Hence why, a little bit later, without much fanfare, 'Freedom Fries' (and 'Freedom Toast') were renamed back to their old names.
Ah, yes, education *could* go a long way to save one to be embarassed, n'est ce pas?
France does this all the time. Why Care?
Google is an American comapany. If France doesn't like it, they can create their own database. Boo f-ing hoo.
Yoda of Borg am I! Assimilated shall you be! Futile resistance is, hmm?
FWIW, since I specialise in languages other than English, I wrote to Google asking them what their plans were for dealing with languages other than English, and in particular, books using alphabets other than the Roman alphabet. Their reply is of course copyright Google Inc, but I think it would be permissible for me to re-print the following extract:
Obviously this doesn't disarm the concern about representing world literature from an anglophone perspective, but it seems to make clear that (a) English, or at least languages using the Roman alphabet, are their first priority, and (b) they intend to get around to other languages and literatures in due course.
French scientists are not allowed to write publications in any language other than French.
This is false.
Regardless of what your "friend" said, let me give you first hand information from a PhD economist---me. The field's most reputable journals in the world are all in English, and I can assure you that the French try to publish there as much as anyone else.
(One of the top journals, Econometrica, actually has an official policy to "consider papers written either in English or French"! I don't know how many decades it's been since a French article appeared, however.)
AC
Right. Japanese popular culture is successfully exported to America in spite of the incredible linguistic and cultural barriers. Lots of German bands dominate the techno, experimental and industrial music landscape. Belgians are highly influential in graphic novels and comics, and also in techno, as well as 20th Century painting. Yet France seems to be becoming increasingly irrelevant to modern popular culture. Why is that? It wasn't always that way, France used to be the center of culture, the home of the avant-garde, and highly influential in film too.
I can't help noticing that the cultures that die out seem to be the ones that have official government policies to protect them. Looking at the UK, there was massive political effort to protect Welsh culture, but little attention paid to Scotland. Result: Scots culture celebrated in big Hollywood movies, Welsh culture unknown outside the British isles.
I've been to Quebec, and I visited a gallery full of state-supported French Canadian art. I have to tell you, it was a really sorry excuse for a collection, full of stuff that I doubt would get space in a gallery if the venue wasn't legally required to display a certain percentage of French Canadian artists. In contrast, Germany and Belgium have some of the best modern art galleries I've ever been to, with modern art by German and Belgian artists.
I'm not mentioning England, because it could be argued that the relative lack of linguistic boundaries makes it a special case. Note also that I'm not saying that French culture dying out is a good thing; just that I think protectionism is part of what's killing it...
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Disclaimer: IAAFM (I am a Frenchman)
;) Thus they do have some power over the language used after all...
:)
French government has no power over the langage
Not quite right. The currently applied Toubon law forces e.g. every advertisement material using non-French language to provide a translated version somewhere in the ad (even as a footnote, that's why so many ads in France have footnotes
The government wants its administration to speak French, and so wants it to use the word "courriel" which was declared French by the Academie Française - so it's logical.
The word "courriel", though official French, is never used, either in administrative circles or other circles. That word is just too ugly. Everybody says "email" or "mail" like everyone else. The Académie Française can scream all they want, they won't change that one, just as they couldn't turn "bowling" into "boulodrome"or "week-end" into "fin de semaine".
Languages are doomed to evolve. French is a language that does not want to evolve very much, but it is hopeless. It is never a good thing to try and resist evolution
Karma cannot be described by words alone.
France's greatest accomplishment in the last 100 years has been to maintain an inflated and truly remarkable sense of self-importance in the face of conspicuous underachievement and insignificance.
France's contributions to the European economy are embarrassingly low for a country of its size. France's seat on the UN security council is due solely to the United States and Great Britain who needed to beef up the NATO side during the cold war. France's "great cultural institutions" from art to photography to film, are heavily state supported in order to keep them alive (and to keep France's sense of cultural identity alive).
But who can blame them. Their language (outside of France) is disappearing. Quebec is more and more English speaking every year, as is Haiti. They have had to enact desperate protective laws in order to keep English words off broadcast television. There will be more mosques than churches in France in something like 12 years. They banned the use of islamic headscarves "to protect the wearers" (Please, its because the French don't like the constant reminder that France is only decades away from being a muslim nation).
Why do we care about France? We play in to their hands when we even acknowlege them. Their per capita GDP is way lower than Singapore's... do we flinch if Singapore disagrees with the U.S.?
France is just pissed off at their own irrelevance and the only way they can stay on the world's radar is by making a stink.
Let them stink.
And the current Bush Administration propagandists have always made sure to refer to the Iraqi resistence as "insurgents" or "terrorists" or "rebels" rather than "resistence", which would have invoked memories of the bravery of the French Resistence as well as implying that Americans (er, excuse me, the Coalition of the Willing) were the invading Bad Guys.
On the other hand, "CheeseEating Surrender Monkeys" was quite definitely a joke.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
France is just not happy with the fact that they as a country DO NOT MATTER. They hate me because I am American??? So what! We could all just save ourselves the trouble and ignore France.
too stupid, all these racists n nationalists around here. *puke*
If you think that is all America contributed to the second world war, you have about as much education on military or geopolitical matters as your average garden gnome.
I'm not American. I don't seek to defend all of their actions through the last century or into this one. But the view you have is naive and ill-founded.
You might not have noticed the red wave that ate the Eastern half of Europe. It wasn't the British that held them up at Berlin. It wasn't the French. It wasn't the Belgians, nor Poles, nor Finns nor even Nazi Germany.
If America served no other role in WW2, and I think one can argue that D-day might never have happened without them quite effectively, they gave the Soviet Red Army something to think about. Perhaps a lot to think about, with Fat Man and Little Boy. If you think Nagasaki was *only* about what was going on in Japan, you're a bit on the naive side. That message was destined for places beyond Tokyo and the Imperial Palace. And it was heard.
Yes, that did leave us in a Cold War state, since no one seemed to game to go with Churchill's interest and head to Moscow. But in the long run, that war ended up being less painful than we feared, and is mostly over now (not entirely, but mostly).
To say all America did was tie up the Japs for a few days and send a bit of food to Britain is historically inaccurate and not factual. If you can't disguise anti-American polemic better than that, I suggest you go back and practice some more.... they aren't perfect, but the facts do prove your premises wrong in this instance...
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
The French where once the most powerful nation in the world (or aleast they thought or still think so). It went a little bit to their heads and they still feel like they are the center of the universe.
The Egos of country does not decrease at the same rate as their world influence.
The same will happen the United States. Right now the Americans have a Big Ego. Everything has to be their way because they think it is the most correct. In a 100 years when their economy is in the toilet and India or China is center stage the Americans will still have a big ego and will be bitching about same things the French are now. It happen to all nations and when they fall it can be particularly sad how they act.
the French are complaining about now.
My Sig indicates the end of the comment I posted.
All this stuff from Bibliothèque Nationale to French Fries ???
You're very strange people...
so i fail to see your point.
If we didnt help the french during ww2, there wouldn't even be any french being spoken this day..only german. and they still complaining about us?
Don't worry, they'll surrender pretty soon ;)
In large parts of Afrika esp. the west you'll find french speaking persons anywhere, but are totally lost with english. Trust me, I had to learn it the hard way...
English has evolved and degenerated so much that in fact there are now at least two english languages: American english and British english, with different spelling and grammar rules.
Yeah, and I live in the Philippines, which seems to have its own dialect of English. They tend to treat mass nouns as count nouns, for example. They "take some medicines" or have "a bowl of fruits."
But there's a simple solution to all of this. Microsoft. Yes, Microsoft.
Most users of MS Word install the program with default US English, so they get corrected when using British English. A fair number don't know what's going on, and just think "Oh, so I was spelling it wrong all these years." Combine that with American movies and foreign call centers which service mostly Americans and standardize to American English, typically, and you'll see that this fragmentation problem is in the proces of reversing itself.
I've never been a fan of cultural hegemony, especially with folks as nice and friendly as the Brits, but I have to admit, it feels good.
Anyways, languages are natural. They're supposed to evolve and adapt. Degeneration is far too perjorative a word for the situation. It implies a lack of moral fiber which is simply irrelevant. Say what you will about the 'degeneration' of the English language, but I can understand Brits just fine. The problem that you present is a straw man with no real consequences.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
say again?
I recently had to translate a whole report on archeological studies in the Yonne valley for one of my friend and I'm quite shocked to learn all this work was for nothing... please, get real. Yeah, French scientists (or archeologists in that specific case) are required to write their papers in French. But nobody's actually preventing them from doing translations and presenting them to whatever international committee they please.
and for the whole courriel thing, how about you get your fact straight. Yes, it was suggested by the Academie and the Ministère de la Culture to use french versions of the popular Internet words. It was an attempt to at least provide French words that could be used, not impose them. Courriel, for what it's worth, has been in use rather exclusively in Quebec and almost not at all in France. In my 5 years of consulting jobs in Paris, I've never heard nor read the word 'courriel' in any publication. How this post was modded up as Insightful is beyond me..
And no, I'm not French..
I think the French just feel slighted that none of their libraries were included in the initial scan. I think it is a bit pompous to expect an American company to scan french books first anyways... but they are the best, right?
i find it hilarious that when i read the parent 30 minutes ago, it was rated +5. "overrated" is the most abused moderation on /. what, some anti-american guys couldn't handle reading dissenting opinion? trendy anti-americanism is the most popular meme on /. in these kinds of articles
This is going to be interesting.
"French is firstly a litterary language, "
If you hang around slashdot, the not-so-subtle ironies really kill you.
They are doing that for years...
(sigh)
I am not Remy Mouton, unfortunately: http://remy.mouton.free.fr/art/
Some sources for scanned Scandinavian books, some OCRd:
* Numerous encyclopedias (bibliographical, etc), as well as literature at Project Runeberg
* Encyclopedias regarding Danish parishes at Statsbiblioteket
* Misc. pre-1900 legal texts as well as dictionary of Danish 1300-1700, at Digitalhylla
* Codex Holmiensis
(midieval Danish law)
* H.C. Andersen's manuscripts
American Memory I do believe the French are trying to do the same but it's a matter of funding. I don't see it as an attack on Google but perhaps the wording got lost in translation?
The English language absorbs and adopts new words with ease. It lends itself well to what basically amounts to word hacking. If you don't have a word for something, you can just make one up on the spot. As long as people "get it", then it's perfectly cromulent English.
English is a bazaar; French is a cathedral. I don't think that anyone will try to take the position that English is as beautiful as French, just as a cathedral is more beautiful than a bazaar. But English is much more user friendly, and this utility is reflected in its' widespread adoption. Even the French use words borrowed from English like "frigo", "okay", and "email", much to the frustration of the Academie Francaise.
The members of the Academie Francaise are free to sit in their ivory tower and make up rules about their language all they want, but the Francophones of the world are nearly unanimously voting with their active vocabularies for the English way of doing things.
--- 11 meters/second, or 24 miles per hour - the airspeed velocity of an unladen European swallow. Really.
Standard German is also decided from on high, but not necessarily as efficiently as in France.
flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
Do you even know what 'degeneration' means? It certainly doesn't mean "increasing efficiency of communication by finding compact representations of frequently repeated phrases", a feature found in the evolution of every single natural language on the planet, including the degenerate form of Latin commonly called 'French' by English speaking peoples.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
That's just a load of bollocks... French scientist can and do write papers in English.
I'm sorry but you have your definitions wrong.
Evolution is a natural process whereby entities that are more fit are selected for survival. In the case of language, a word is more fit if it's easier to use, and a word survives if people continue to use it. This is evolution.
What the Academie Francaise participates in is called intelligent design, or creationism.
Finally, let me clear up the illusions you seem to have about the difficulties that Brits and Merkans have in communicating with one another. I recently traveled to England, and had no problem whatsoever in communicating with anyone I met there. Yes, there were a few words that had different meanings, but there was not a single instance where I wasn't able to infer from the context of the conversation what the person meant.
The "degeneration" of the English language that you're going on about exists only in your imagination.
--- 11 meters/second, or 24 miles per hour - the airspeed velocity of an unladen European swallow. Really.
French scientists are not allowed to write publications in any language other than French
I beg your pardon ??
It is true that French scientists - who happen to have a civil servant status - are often required to produce reports in French. I don't know where you got the idea that they are forbidden from publishing anything in English.
Another example: a few years ago, out of a sudden, the french government decreed that the word e-mail is to be forbidden and replaced with made-up "courriel".
Yeah, Heaven forbid that people speaking a different language try to create new words for new things instead of just adopting English ones !
BTW, the word "courriel" was coined by the Quebecois.
Thomas-
I read perhaps 300 comments so far and my feeling are mixed: /. people forget to read comments, to follow links or to think as soon as they can resume French bashing.
- there are plenty of good-will people there, thanks
- and half
It's a pity and a very unhealthy signal.
I am not Remy Mouton, unfortunately: http://remy.mouton.free.fr/art/
of how the English language evolves. I agree with you that "spim" is a stupid, ugly word, and I myself plan to never use it, except in discussion about the word itself. I'm guessing that most other people will also find it to be a klunky word (is there a French equivalent of "klunky"?) and "spim" will eventually die.
I find this to be a much, much more natural and efficient process than the French version whereby a bunch of pointy-headed academics decide which words are and are not "real". By letting each of the individual users make a decision, (call it a vote if you like,) and then documenting the consensus in a book like the Oxford English Dictionary, you get a language that manages itself.
--- 11 meters/second, or 24 miles per hour - the airspeed velocity of an unladen European swallow. Really.
BTW Gallica rocks! It's not all french, there's plenty of other great stuff on there. Hell, I use their incunabula scans of Averroes and Avicenna daily! Ducange is an irreplaceable resource (But somebody please tell them 3 volumes are missing); and I grabbed the complete 20-volume Recueil des Historiens des Croisades for the guy in the office at the end of the hall. It's a totally kick-ass site, and the BNF is providing a resource unmatched in the world, some of the fruit of which occupies a couple gigs on my HDD.
Yes, reading the article, he's basically arguing for a publicly funded version of the same thing, from a European perspective. And, as a proud Amurrican, I concur. The BNF has pioneered putting useful but not commercially interesting (read public domain, often _really funkin' old_ and really rare) E-texts online, and is in the process of revolutionizing fields of research. Five years ago, I had to read this crap in rooms with big ass warning signs telling me how long I had before the Halon killed me -- and most of the IT devices in that room were over 300 years old.
Google can make money doing this; the BNF can further research. When governments invest money in making information accessible, everybody wins. What's to complain about?
If you equate stupid college freshmen with poor grammar and spelling habits with the state of the English language as a whole, then I completely understand your position vis a vis the degradation of the English language. I even agree with your use of the word 'degradation.'
However, my friend, there is hope. The evolution of the English language that I've spoken of so much is not lead by clueless college freshmen. See, there's a big difference between evolution of the language and stupid misuse. The difference is in the volume of users.
While from your perspective (being surrounded by fraternity buffoons who can't spell "tomato" to save their lives) this may not be apparent, I assure you that the vast majority of English speakers are concerned with using "proper" grammar and spelling.
You may ask how one can possibly define what is proper in a language where you can make up the rules as you go, and that would be a very fair question. The answer is simple - it's determined by majority rule.
Stupid college freshmen are in the minority - and, perhaps more importantly, the way in which their "spleling aand gramer" differ from the majority is not standard. If every college freshmen in the English speaking world suddenly agreed to start spelling "tomato" as "tomatoe", then at least they would have a community within which their spelling of that word would be viewed as correct.
An example of evolution, as opposed to degradation, is in the word "healthy". A sentence which most people would view as being perfectly correct is as follows: "Be sure to eat a healthy breakfast, you've got a big day ahead of you." The usage of the word healthy here is different from what it was, say, 30 years ago, when the word "nutritious" would have been a more likely choice. "Healthy" is generally used to mean alive and well - however, clearly the speaker in the example sentence is not advocating that the person they're speaking to eat a breakfast which is still alive. But we all understand what's meant here (that the person should eat a breakast which will result in their health and physical well being), so using it this way is (in the English language) just fine.
And that is how the English language evolves, why college freshmen are not going to cause the downfall of the English language, and why your current perspective regarding the degradation of the language is ultimately incorrect.
Evolution is far from the only agent of change, and hardly the most common: perhaps the "E" word you're thinking of is "entropy".
"Evolution" is typically used to mean an increase in organization and sophistication, while entropy describes the natural tendency of all systems toward chaos, in the absence of opposing forces. I leave it to the reader to consider which term most accurately describes the majority of changes we're currently seeing in popular usage of the English language.
SIERRA TANGO FOXTROT UNIFORM
All these books are being scanned and stored in what, a database? Can the databases then be copyrighted? Might this be a sneaky way of copyrighting and profiting from public domain work?
This isn't France attacking Google - it's France attacking Europe, for letting an American company do all the work, and leaving Europe behind. That's called "competition", which we usually expect from Germany instead. France is just so stereotyped as dissing American supremacy that everyone's misinterpreting it as a personal attack on them. And, strangely, it's almost always worth considering whether a French attack is relevant - because when it is, it's very personal.
--
make install -not war
English hasn't lost is literary roots, it's managed to preserve a series of synonyms for almost every world, thereby there are low, middle, and high-English ways to state just about everything. This comes from the post-French invasion of England, and the sudden influx of French. English became low-language, French-middle-high, and Latin-highest. This system continues to be used in English today, with additional words from other languages peppering low-and-middle English. It is only recently that English has begun to create new words without using Latin and Greek roots.
Anyone who whines about being modded down should be.
ditto any real city....
I spent some years in NYC (manhattan - 25,849.9/km density). There are just too many people to become involved in anybody elses dramas. you find the people you find but, often, you don't have the time or interest to interact. It may come off as brusque but anybody in the city understands this.
I had obnoxious parisian experience when I was there but that was before I lived in a city, so my perception may have changed.
NYC also has the 6in of personal space, it is almost a law. except on that f*($& 6 train in the mornings.
American culture was largely inherited from Europe, including the language. If the concern is that the new Google library will be too American or too English, why don't they start by adopting books from cultures that are truly marginalized? I suggest starting with any one of roughly 50 countries in Africa. India has one of the most ancient cultures/literary traditions in the world. Why not them? Or for that matter, what about Asia? I'd love to see Romance of the Three Kingdoms online; what could be less American than that?
Yeah, but as soon as someone calls americans warmongering, its marked funny without complaint.
Which is right? If you say one or the other, you are more racist. If you say they are both bad, why aren't you complaining about the american version?
You read the wrong article... you read the article on the article...
I would further venture to guess that the author of the article of the article asked google to comment on his piece and that google was responding to his assertions rather than the "Le Monde" editorial.
Read the original
Im not here now... Im out KILLING pepperoni
Does it strike anyone else as odd that someone somewhere is trying to keep language barriers fully intact?
Monoculture indeed. How can a culture be anything but mono if it has an exclusive language?
Direct away from face when opening.
Ultimately, the French just want the world back where it was when Louis XIV was at the height of his powers.
If you want to imagine a future that would suit the French, imagine a perfumed, bewigged fop, pressing a ballet shoe on a human face - forever.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
The French have a ministry of culture, the U.S has rednecks. I don't want this to be a flame, but they both serve the same purpose. Think about it.
I think you'll agree that being called a "warmongerer" is hardly even perceived as an insult by most people. Indeed, many will even think they're getting a compliment. But a "cheese eating surrender monkey", well...
You would get them, my anonymous compatriot.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
It takes time to filter down, though. I remember some years ago buying a fax machine in France. It was sold as a "telecopieur" with an associated verb 'telecopier'. It eventually died and when I replaced it I was sold "un fax" which I could use to "faxer" documents.
It's hardly surprising that these invented words don't catch on. Language will always be what people speak rather than what is strictly correct.
For an example, look at the phrase 'a fine toothcomb'. Originally, it was 'a fine-toothed comb'. Or 'brand new': originally, it was 'bran new' because items of furniture were packed in bran. Both of these phrases are common currency and yet 'incorrect'. My predicition: 'Could care less' rather than 'Couldn't'.
-Josh
Admittedly not through Google's machinations, necessarily. But having non-English-language journal and book citations in the scholar.google.com search results has definitely made me aware of the somewhat narrow Anglo-American worldview of the online journal indexes I normally use.
I don't understand why people single out the French for this one.
"sweet dreams are made of this..."
French society has problems with many things like this, and not because they are trying to "isolate" themselves, culturaly or otherwise. The French people are very proud of their heritage, and are concerned about the "Americanization" of said heritage. Picture this: A couple walks into a store anywhere in the United States, speaking a different language, maybe they are US citizens, maybe not. The first thing many think is "They are in our country, they should be speaking our language." How is this any different from many American's view of the French?
French people... when are they just going to give up and accept that they're irrelevant now?
Frankly, you can't understand this issue if you are not close or part of a linguistic minority.
Using english words so that the originals are lost, replacing verbs tenses and sentence structures with the ones from english so that the correct way of expresisng something is forgotten are real problems and are indeed a case of a language degenerating.
It is degenerating because ma lot of the richness of a language is lost this way and the replacements form inspired from the english from the internet and such, not Shakespeare of even common newpaper and magazines english.
So in the end, the expressive power of the language is diminished. That is why I would agree with calling it degenerating.
There were times when my language was close to extinction, it is now getting much better but for a long time having a sloppy way of expressing yourself and using english terms were popular and seen as "cool". Hopefully no longer.
It seems all they ever do today is complain about America and Americans and American companies. So fuck 'em. I think we should send the Statue of Liberty back, along with any other French cultural artifacts we may have in the states and say good riddance. I don't even want to eat French food.
Hell, I'm so pissed I'm going to go through my vocabulary and stop using French words and words derived from French.
Sheesh. What a bunch of fucking crybabies.
Am I alone in hating the French?
The happy american flag in the politics section is enough, we don't need to be bashing french officials and implying anti-americanism without a reason.
typical whining by french intellectuals. if they think it's so bad, why don't they get off their ass and join the effort?
You know what would be funny? watching dick cheney anally rape the entire french academie.
this is the first post that has revealed the truth of the article. this is in no way french-bashing, it is a fact. the article directs the french to "combat" the domination of america. that is the fact of the matter.
everyone else seems so concerned with the political correctness of the question that they were too busy to even read the thing.
No, no, no! It's a free country, Frenchmen can do whatever they want.
It is only in National, Government-sponsored publications, that either the abstract or the article has to be written in French. If that case doesn't apply to you, you can write in any damn language you well please. Most scientific journals have language restrictions, INCLUDING journals in the US (ie, for example, papers must be in English, French, German or Russian).
E-Mail is NOT FORBIDDEN!
Government publications and communications need an official word for the object, and chose the word "mél", which is a french spelling of "mail", which stands for "message électronique". The term is inspired by ENGLISH, with simply a more French spelling and a backronym.
No one in practice actually uses this word, they usually say "email" or more often just "mail" because the term is unambiguous in French.
The term you referred to, Courriel, is a Quebecan term, which is not official in France. Some people just decided to adopt it in France, because they prefer it over "mél" or "mail" - it's THEIR CHOICE.
Ah yes, good old "logical" as a reason in and of itself, with that peculiar Gallic meaning to it.
You know what? You French people suck. That's why I switched from French to German classes. I've also studied Japanese. And if you want to bring up the Holocaust and Nanjing, I've got an Algiers and Haiti waiting for you...
Unfortunately the opinion piece was written in French, so no one will ever know for certain.
I have read TFA, and the guy IN NO WAY attacks Google. He is simply worried about the availability of primarily European literature online and argues that an effort should be made by Europeans to digitise non English languages as well, because, as he says, American English dominates this field completely and offers a very American centric view of the world.
That's all he says. Nothing more and nothing less. It's not an attack on Google, and it's not an attack on English and it's not an attack on the US.
But that wouldn't stop the rabid morons from posting an inflammatory anti-French article, now would it.
If he had read the article, you AC shitbag, he would have quoted something more than the first line, and claiming that he's the only one who understands French here is pure and utter bullshit.
This guy is scanning on his own maybe but who goes to the Gallica who are not already reading lots of things in France? Google already searches in French.
They should pay Google to scan French books for them and offer them to the world faster and more easily, and offer google books they scan in France themselves. Perhaps they could get Google to provide a link to their site so if you read a French book on Google you can jump to more information (bibliography, related topics, etc) hosted by the Gallica or whomever.
Also France could translate popular texts into French, or host sites with books in English as well as French, or do any number of other things on a global scale.
Hope this guy gets some ears in France, the more online texts the better. Though it might be easier to produce French translations of English texts already being scanned and provided for free on the net by Google and no doubt MIT will follow through on their open courseware project. I am thinking about French-speaking countries like some in Africa.
I am an American working with Europeans (French, Belgians and others) in Japan and am working to improve my French because I want to ensure better communication, friendship and business opportunities. But if France is serious about making French play a serious role on the Internet, it should work to increase the number of French speakers on the Net and make it easier for French speakers to access work in French.
They can't have it both ways. If the French want to promote French they have to promote multiculturalism. If they want to reduce the number of languages in use, then the winner seems for now to be English (though perhaps Chinese will be right up there, in its own world).
Anyway this is the old way of thinking. Europe now seems to be promoting a mixture of cultures that somehow stay separate (as opposed to the American "melting pot" we always used to be fond of saying, until people stopped wanting to melt together so much).
This is what is happening with agriculture, where the EU wants to maintain provenance of products while the U.S. wants to guarantee homogeneity regardless of origin.
To promote this on the Net, if they are serious the appropriate DG of the European Union should launch a massive program to digitize text (not just Voltaire but also dictionaries, encylopedias, trade journals, engineering texts, newspapers, television shows) into all of the languages of all the member countries. This would provide some useful content to solve the chicken and egg problem with broadband in the EU (that was solved by Korea apparently).
Is it just me or is the justice system of France always censoring internet sites?
Could someone tell me why they keep doing this? I don't understand...
> beleive the US wqas encouraged by France to invade vietnam.
Actually, the French told the US they shouldn't get into Vietnam because there was no way they could win. The Americans ignored them. 3.4 million Vietnamese and 50,000 US deaths later, we know the French were right.
Several years later, the French told the Americans they shouldn't get into Iraq because (1) there were no immediate danger from Iraq (no WMD), (2) invading Iraq would breed terrorism and destabilize the region in the long run. 100,000 Iraqi and 1,500 US deaths later, we are on track to prove the French right once again.
I know that in my country, Belgium, lots of our law come from the code Napoleon. I think all this change was possible because a smart and visionary man had the power to create something completely new. I don't mean that all what Napoleon did was great but the Code Napoleon is something that was great.
From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon
"Use cases are fairy tales..." I. S. 2005
How do you say hello in American-English? With your mouth full of fried food this is funny and the french comment is flamebait? come ON give me a break either its one or thing other bashing americans is no less offensive then bashing french. that said I was thinking it'd be more along the lines of with a fist or with the point of a missile.. but fried food? alrighty then btw I dissagree with all the stereotypes
Imagine that a company sells software and that the EULA is written in sanskrit, khmer, flemish or french what would be you reaction?
"Use cases are fairy tales..." I. S. 2005
I had a French roommate once. I used to tease him that English is now the Lingua Francaw of the world. Always got a rise. :)
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On the other hand, English keeps borrowing words from other languages on a massive scale -- and this is one of reasons of its success.
Its success is due to the fact that 'everybody knows some english'. Hence every halfwit can try to make him/herself understood in English. In most European Languages you have to know some grammar and some vocabulary before trying to speak.
http://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
One thing that many people forget is that a dictionary doesn't _define_ a language, it _describes_ a language. So, despite the best efforts of the Academie Francaise, the "real French language" consists of *gasp* words not of French origin...
It should be noted that French people still say e-mail. Don't judge a country by what their elite idiots say... the most that can be said about the French is that their elites are more vocal about such things.
Actually, birth rate in France is one of the highest of all of Europe.
That's due to the Arab/Persian and African immigration. You just affirmed the grand-parent's point. The French are disappearing - the people, the culture and the language. Paris today looks like Marseille did 10 years ago. Marseille today has in practice become an Algerian/Moroccan province.
That goes for all us European countries and cultures who are committing "multicultural" suicide in the name of political correctness.
Here in Sweden, the largest religion (active practitioners(?correct English?)) is Islam. We teach Arabic etc. in our tax-funded state schools, while a quarter of Swedish children don't qualify for high-school because they barely know how to read and write Swedish. "Honour murders", gang-rape, racially targeted (against Swedes) robberies are so common that there's simply no room to mention them every day in the newspapers (if it weren't illegal to report on them, due to our new anti-"agitation against ethnic group" legislation).
I was thinking it'd be more along the lines of with a fist or with the point of a missile
You sure wish it would have been that, wouldn't ya, fatass?
more along the lines of with a fist or with the point of a missile
LOL @ Americunt wanting to be portrayed as big bad man but really coming across as an obese, ignorant idiot.
Some people want their words to have sense, and to represent something. In France you can say sapm without being killed instantly. But some people prefer to say pourriel (yeah in Burger-Overweight country you can find people who say junk mail... but who cares...)
"Voici que s'affirme le risque d'une domination écrasante de l'Amérique dans la définition de l'idée que les prochaines générations se feront du monde."
"This affirms the risk of overwhelming American domination of global ideas that will impact future generations."
This isn't Anti-Americanism. It's pro-plurality of ideas. Maybe if you'd bothered to read beyond the opening sentence, you'd have seen this: "La production scientifique anglo-saxonne, déjà dominante dans une quantité de domaines, s'en trouvera forcément survalorisée, avec un avantage écrasant à l'anglais par rapport aux autres langues de culture, notamment européennes." He's talking about how european languages as a whole might be at risk because of Anglo-Saxon penetration throughout Europe. It's a LANGUAGE issue, not a nationalistic issue, you xenophobic twit.
And this part -- "Une autre politique s'impose. Et elle ne peut se déployer qu'à l'échelle de l'Europe. Une Europe décidée à n'être pas seulement un marché, mais un centre de culture rayonnante et d'influence politique sans pareille autour de la planète." -- talks about how Europe approaches the issue might impact on whether or not Europe decides to see itself as a centre of cultural and political leadership, or merely a market. Let me guess, a blatant attack on capitalism and America's place as top dog, hence, more anti-Americanism, right?
Dumbfuck. One hopes you don't pass off your over-inflated sense of French savoir-faire in real life, or that the people who have to put up with it there aren't as gullible as those modders who've given you points for this thinly-veiled piece of French-bashing. It's people like you who I as an Anglophone have to apologize for when I go out and interact with those of other cultures.
The motivation may be noble, but it comes off as bigotry, and it's dead wrong.
If there's anything bigotted here, it's the fact that you've super-imposed your bias in order to defame someone who's got a legitimate point.
Really, really sad that such blatant spin-doctoring got rewarded here.
I just reed the original editorial (in french). They mention google because google is the one doing it, but who doing it isn't important. What's important is that by making the anglo saxon available online, it make that culture a lot more accessible that any other. And being a private compagny with the revenu we know, google as far more resource to do it that any europeen public institution. The goal of Jean-Noel Jeanneney's editorial is not to judge google, it's to warn France and other Europeen that they will have to do as Anglo-saxon, or face the consequence.
If a company doesn't have a long-term plan, it's not likely that it will last in the long-term. Some might not be 40 years, but EVERYONE has a five year plan and most have ten and twenty year plans. The extended plan might not be anything more than a line or two of business-ese (i.e. grow market share through increased account penetration), but it's written down somewhere.
What use is any other language to me? I don't travel much, and not at all outside the USA. At least 85% of the internet is in English, and I bet much of the remaining 15% is just a dupe of the English pages. I can literally travel thousands of miles away and still be where English is the main language.
There's nothing wrong with learning other languages, but there's no compelling reason for most Americans to do so. The main reason Europeans are multilingual is because they can practically walk to where they speak a different language. That isn't the case here.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Not only do they wait to bring you the bill, they wait 'till you're done with your current course before bringing you the next one. What's more, they actually wait on their tables--they'll hover out-of-range of your group, but the moment a single head bobs up searchingly, they're right there, asking what they can do for you.
A little trick for folks faced with a snooty French waiter: ask him what he recommends off the menu and order it. Not only did this always instantly warm the waiter to your group, it rarely resulted in anything less than an excellent meal. The kicker about snooty waiters is that they're snooty because they think they're the shit, and you're just another goddamn noisy, boisterous American tourist whose idea of flavor is "add more salt!". Once you break that little myth, your cold-and-distant waiter turns almost instantly into your very bestest of friends for the next three hours.
(That's the other thing...I miss the three-hour dinner. Mealtime is sacred over there--the very concept of trying to chivvy your party out the door to fill your table with a new check is offensive...dammit, you had to go and make me miss the place! *grin*)
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
LOL @ Americunt wanting to be portrayed as big bad man but really coming across as an obese, ignorant idiot.
Which European country are you from that can't defend itself and owes it's freedom to the greatest generation?
While I understand his fears that googles digitalized archive will be biased towards the United States, I am happy with Google's response. Looks like they are going to digitalize other nation's libraries as well! This project will takes years and years, but I think once its done, it will be one of the most important accomplishments of internet.
half the time bush isn't speaking english.
the reason politicians in america speak english (mostly) is because they want to be understood (mostly) and have people relate to them... not because it is mandated.
heck... if you are paying attention you will notice many american politicians speaking spanish... we dont get it much in the north but in other parts of the country it is not uncommon.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
Switzerland
It looks like Google has registered froogle.com, so clearly a French version of Google is in the works ... ?
Je suis français aussi, et "courriel" est utilisé de temps en temps, de plus en plus à mon sens, parce que c'est quand même beaucoup plus français que "e-mail", qui est très très moche en français. "mél" était hideux et est mort dès que né.
En l'occurence, je remercie les cousins québéquois de nous avoir fournis celui-ci, qui a de plus l'avantage d'être compréhensible pour le néophyte. Quelle idée, cet auto-dénigrement systématique !
I am not Remy Mouton, unfortunately: http://remy.mouton.free.fr/art/
When will /. accept non-us characters ??? Sorry for the mess.
I am not Remy Mouton, unfortunately: http://remy.mouton.free.fr/art/
actually I was making fun of my country in saying that we immedietly result to war?? but you know even when we're agreeing with you you have to be a dick don't you? whatever I give up on the people on this board I really do I tried and you really are all crazy self centered shit heads
They said that government related communications must use "courriel" instead of "email". I'd say it's a good thing, official communications should use the correct vocabulary. Using "email" would be the same as using leet speak in official govt. communications for example.
Nope. They actually invented a word to replace one that had been around for years and used all over the world. In other words, they are speaking leet.
BTW, the word "courriel" was coined by the Quebecois.
Ah, that explains it -- the Quebecois have a predisposition for stupid names.
English: skateboard
French: planche à roulettes (board with wheels, fair enough)
Quebecois: rouli roulin (WTF?)
I know I was being defended with the previous comment but this response is hilarious
On the way home we had a Continental Airlines crew from New Jersey. They were almost unbelievably rude by comparison. Sitting amongst various French tourists, I felt embarrassed.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
unbelievable. a racist pig who called all Americans rednecks was moderated 'insightful' and on the same day this joke gets -1 100% Troll. Interesting use of your one eye Mr Moderator...
-- Howto: Get +5 (1) Whine about M$ (2) Namedrop Gentoo (3) Casually Abuse Mods (4) Namedrop Early Computer Model