Several months ago, I walked down the Rue de Trèves in Brussels and a rather large poster displayed on the windows next to the entrance of one building of the European Committee of the Regions (CoR) caught my eye. Umberto Eco’s statement: “The language of Europe is translation” (“La lingua dell'Europa è la traduzione”) was written on the poster. It read as an invitation to push the door and pop into their event room where an exhibition on the work of translators and linguists was held. Although not very spectacular, the exhibit was enjoyable and raised questions about languages and linguistics in Brussels…
The Belgian capital has become the perfect example of a melting pot which cannot avoid a Babel-like cacophony. And that's a fact! More than ever, with Brexit underway, a lingua franca for Brussels has become a hot topic. EU-speak has become a reality and is more and more spoken in Belgium’s capital, also known as the capital of Europe. If you add the never-ending domestic debate around languages spoken in Brussels and its region (French vs. Flemish), you would quickly understand that arguing on the quality of the English language spoken in Brussels can also generate passionate exchanges among linguists, language teachers and translators in Belgium.
On the whole, English spoken in Brussels is rather all right when you stick to basic communication. When it comes to more complicated speeches and when people try to raise their level of speech, it is then a totally different story.
It might be necessary to explain Eco’s statement “La lingua dell'Europa è la traduzione” with one single sentence: (one of) the key(s) to languages is translation. Therefore, translation would also be the key to plurilingualism. It is indeed in this sense that we interpret the meaning of Umberto Eco’s formula. Should translation consequently be learned by everyone? Plurilingualism, as it is promoted by the European Union via its Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, seems to be a catchall term which belongs more to the domain of the utopia or even the unnecessary use than to the one of the attainability. Many people wonder why they should learn several languages when only one language (most of us would tend to say it is English nowadays) can serve as the language of universal communication?
Baroness Jean Coussins (House of Lords, London, UK) and Philip Harding-Esch (Secretariat, All-Party Parliamentary Group on Modern Languages, London, UK) wrote the following lines as an introduction to the book entitled Languages After Brexit: How the UK Speaks to the World, edited by Michael Kelly; Palgrave Macmillan - ISBN 978-3-319-65168-2:
[…] The trouble with languages is that too many Brits seem to think English will do. Since the referendum on EU membership, there have even been media reports of school students sighing with relief that they don't need to bother with their French lessons any more because they won't need it in future. What a contradictory world these young people live in: on the one hand retreating into a post-Brexit 'little island' mindset, and on the other, being in instant contact every second of the day via their smart digital devices with anyone and everyone in the world.
Someone needs to tell them that there are more blogs in Japanese than English; that Arabic is the fastest-growing language across all social media platforms; that the proportion of web content in English is diminishing, while the share of Mandarin is rapidly expanding; that French and German top the list of UK employers' language skill-set wish list; and that only 6% of the world's population are native English speakers, with 75% speaking no English at all. […]
Someone needs to tell them that there are more blogs in Japanese than English; that Arabic is the fastest-growing language across all social media platforms; that the proportion of web content in English is diminishing, while the share of Mandarin is rapidly expanding; that French and German top the list of UK employers' language skill-set wish list; and that only 6% of the world's population are native English speakers, with 75% speaking no English at all. […]
In addition, the poor quality of English spoken in the EU (and more specifically in the European institutions or bodies in Brussels, Strasbourg or Luxembourg City) is a real problem, especially now when Brexit is underway and the influence of native speakers could become less and less important.
As already mentioned in one of my previous posts, Jeremy Gardner, a British senior translator at the European Court of Auditors, pointed out examples of what might be called EU-speak. His memo entitled “Misused English words and expressions in EU publications” which was published in 2013 and edited in May 2016 appears to reflect years of frustration at the poor use of English in EU documents (check the post entitled “Will Brexit also mean Brexit as far as English language is concerned?“ – 2016-11-22).
As a matter of fact, I can also dress a rather long list of excellent examples of problems with English being spoken or written in Brussels nowadays. I know that we all do mistakes and errors but as Sophocles (Antigone, The Theban Plays #3) told in the past: “All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only crime is pride.”
Nobody’s perfect!
Nevertheless, it makes us wonder what the future of English language in non-English speaking Europe will be when professors, politicians, engineers, doctors, experts, etc. do mistakes like the ones listed here below on a daily basis:
- double negations (“I don’t’ do nothing”, “It won’t change nothing”, etc.) often applied during informal talks during a lunch with members of a professional association
- a German secretary general at the head of a lobby often unnecessarily hyphenates words like bi-lingual, un-necessary, etc.
- she and he are mixed up by a Greek manager of an association dealing with quality management in the agro-chemical business
- French experts often pronouncing words with aspirated “h” during conferences
- the wrong use of homonyms like lose and loose, for and four, hear and here, know and no, right and write, meet and meat, there, their and they’re or to, two and too in e-mails
- a secretary had printed banners with mention “Feed Addictives” to announce a conference on feed additives
- prepositions since often incorrectly used with periods of time and for often wrongly used with specific points in time
- the word self-life appearing in a report on classification, labelling and packaging (CLP) of agro-chemical products instead of shelf life (or maybe the industry deals with selfish substances nowadays…)
- it should be reminded to the vast majority of civil servants or employees working in Brussels that, except for modal verbs, the third person singular in the simple present tense in English always ends with “s” -- many native English speakers would ground their children for talking that way; it is not proper English and it is a part of hip-hop society just like wearing your pants half down the crack of your butt (imagine that at the office in Brussels or at a job interview); dropping the “s” is the form of the present subjunctive third person singular (not so common in Modern English anymore)
- not to mention the obnoxious habit of also dropping the “s” in the plural form
- some people also seem to struggle with the difference between plural and possessive in their e-mails, they often add an apostrophe after plural words when they have no possessive feature
- not to mention the use of false friends and wrong terminology as mentioned in Jeremy Gardner’s guide entitled “Misused English words and expressions in EU publications” (it gives excellent examples of the vocabulary developed by the European institutions that differs from that of any recognised form of English)
- the need to insist for getting species always written with an “s” at the end (either singular or plural) in scientific studies not to mix up with specie which is a separate word that means coin money and is not the singular version of species
- etc.
- a German secretary general at the head of a lobby often unnecessarily hyphenates words like bi-lingual, un-necessary, etc.
- she and he are mixed up by a Greek manager of an association dealing with quality management in the agro-chemical business
- French experts often pronouncing words with aspirated “h” during conferences
- the wrong use of homonyms like lose and loose, for and four, hear and here, know and no, right and write, meet and meat, there, their and they’re or to, two and too in e-mails
- a secretary had printed banners with mention “Feed Addictives” to announce a conference on feed additives
- prepositions since often incorrectly used with periods of time and for often wrongly used with specific points in time
- the word self-life appearing in a report on classification, labelling and packaging (CLP) of agro-chemical products instead of shelf life (or maybe the industry deals with selfish substances nowadays…)
- it should be reminded to the vast majority of civil servants or employees working in Brussels that, except for modal verbs, the third person singular in the simple present tense in English always ends with “s” -- many native English speakers would ground their children for talking that way; it is not proper English and it is a part of hip-hop society just like wearing your pants half down the crack of your butt (imagine that at the office in Brussels or at a job interview); dropping the “s” is the form of the present subjunctive third person singular (not so common in Modern English anymore)
- not to mention the obnoxious habit of also dropping the “s” in the plural form
- some people also seem to struggle with the difference between plural and possessive in their e-mails, they often add an apostrophe after plural words when they have no possessive feature
- not to mention the use of false friends and wrong terminology as mentioned in Jeremy Gardner’s guide entitled “Misused English words and expressions in EU publications” (it gives excellent examples of the vocabulary developed by the European institutions that differs from that of any recognised form of English)
- the need to insist for getting species always written with an “s” at the end (either singular or plural) in scientific studies not to mix up with specie which is a separate word that means coin money and is not the singular version of species
- etc.
No wonder why British people sometimes get the feeling that another language than English is currently being spoken by EU expats and Brussels bubblers!
According to me, language learning and teaching are absolutely crucial nowadays. There is a need to get back to basics: grammar, punctuation and style! More than ever, we should also highlight the fact that language learning goes together with openness, culture, awareness, peace and tolerance.
What Lazgin Kheder Barany (Department of English, College of Arts University of Duhok, Kurdistan Region, Iraq) writes about intercultural awareness and linguistic awareness in the conclusion of his article entitled “Language Awareness, Intercultural Awareness and Communicative Language Teaching: Towards Language Education” at p. 275 of the International Journal of Humanities and Cultural Studies - ISSN 2356-5926, Volume 2 Issue 4, March 2016 (go to http://www.ijhcs.com/index.php/ijhcs/article/view/183 for more information) is very interesting:
[…] Both intercultural awareness (IA) and linguistic awareness (LA) are crucial and vital in foreign language teaching if one wants to learn and understand a language properly and appropriately, and they should be included in an intercultural communicative approach to foreign language teaching. There is a need to raise cultural awareness about both the target culture and the learners’ own culture. Learning a Foreign Language is an intercultural experience “because it allows to know another language but above all to enter in contact with another reality” (Longo, 2008, p. 113).
The prime aim of foreign language teaching should enable learners to communicate effectively with people from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds in a diverse and multicultural world. This requires new methodological approaches that can provide learners with the means and ways of accessing and analyzing a wide range of cultural practices and meanings; can help learners develop understanding of the processes involved when interact with people from different cultural backgrounds (Humphrey, 2002); can promote and develop critical and creative thinking, mutual understanding, tolerance, acceptance, human rights, democracy and prepare learners to cope with and face life at large outside and beyond the classroom; those learners who are equipped with knowledge about their own culture and the target culture.
Foreign language teachers should be trained in language education programs that afford not only linguistic expertise (skills, knowledge and proficiency) in the structural aspects of the language, but also in the appropriate usage of language in diverse socio-cultural contexts, and to be enrolled in workshops dealing with general cultural issues, anthropology and human rights aspects. Teachers, before learners, must have intercultural communicative awareness and competence so that they will be able to teach and raise both linguistic and intercultural awareness in foreign languages classes effectively and competently. Learning foreign languages must be linked to the lives of the students; it should go beyond the classroom in order to be able to inquire into their worlds; to interact and cope with life at large confidently. […]
The prime aim of foreign language teaching should enable learners to communicate effectively with people from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds in a diverse and multicultural world. This requires new methodological approaches that can provide learners with the means and ways of accessing and analyzing a wide range of cultural practices and meanings; can help learners develop understanding of the processes involved when interact with people from different cultural backgrounds (Humphrey, 2002); can promote and develop critical and creative thinking, mutual understanding, tolerance, acceptance, human rights, democracy and prepare learners to cope with and face life at large outside and beyond the classroom; those learners who are equipped with knowledge about their own culture and the target culture.
Foreign language teachers should be trained in language education programs that afford not only linguistic expertise (skills, knowledge and proficiency) in the structural aspects of the language, but also in the appropriate usage of language in diverse socio-cultural contexts, and to be enrolled in workshops dealing with general cultural issues, anthropology and human rights aspects. Teachers, before learners, must have intercultural communicative awareness and competence so that they will be able to teach and raise both linguistic and intercultural awareness in foreign languages classes effectively and competently. Learning foreign languages must be linked to the lives of the students; it should go beyond the classroom in order to be able to inquire into their worlds; to interact and cope with life at large confidently. […]
The richness and vitality of Europe's languages confined to an area which is rather limited in comparison with other continents is a real challenge faced by translators. Plurilingualism in Europe is also a humanist and cultural challenge.
Babel means confusion in Hebrew. Is Babel, the diversity of languages a curse or a chance? I would say that it is a chance, provided you translate. Translation is one of the major cultural and societal issues of today’s globalized world. Although it is an expensive and baffling work on the difference of languages, cultures, and visions of the world in order to compare and put them in harmony, translation is more preferable than a fast and basic communication in a more or less artificial dominant language (globish).
First of all, translation is an historical fact: the roads to translation, via Greek, Latin or Arabic, are those of the transfer of knowledge and power. Umberto Eco said: "La lingua dell'Europa è la traduzione.” The European and Mediterranean civilizations were built on the following paradoxical practice: trying to say "almost" the same thing and inventing on the basis of a convergence model of knowledge and languages.
Translation succeeds in reversing the general belief. Translation shows how much cultural awareness and sensitivity are an excellent model for the present citizenship.
The idea that will be developed in the future is that learning at least two foreign languages is not only essential but also possible. This is the goal already set by many countries (e.g. France).
And what if Brexit would be a real boost to the language and translation industry at the end of the day? And don't come with the other Italian saying “Tradutore, traditore” this time…
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