A short while ago I decided to experiment with a multilingual comment policy on Grahnlaw. After a few days, comments in four languages and minor adjustments it reads like this:
In order to facilitate interaction in the Euroblogosphere, I do my best to read comments in Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish or Swedish, even if the Grahnlaw blog and my possible replies are in English.
Inclusive approaches
Babel is a fact of life in Europe. The European Union has 23 official languages, as well as a host of regional and minority languages. Wider Europe offers even more linguistic diversity.
Each blog has to make a basic choice: the language it is written in.
Further, every Euroblogger among the 635 aggregated on multilingual Bloggingportal.eu (and beyond) can reflect on how inclusive or exclusive it wants to be in relation to other languages and public spheres.
Mathew Lowry has blogged about building bridges to create a European online public space.
Inspired by Mathew Lowry and Grahnlaw, The European Citizen decided to open up his Euroblogging and to try to reach out a bit more across the blogosphere(s). He is opening up his blog to comments in different languages, and he will use machine translation to help with responding. He will also reach out by commenting [in English] on blogs in other languages, although he is not sure how this will be received.
In fact, reception for comments in other languages can vary. I experimented by posting a comment in English on an Arte blog (French), but the moderation team quickly banished it on boilerplate grounds that the comment was outside the subject of the blog entry or against editorial policy. As we see, exclusionary policies are still de rigeur in some places.
I have tried to run separate, but related blogs in Finnish and Swedish, such as Eurooppaoikeus and Grahnblawg. However, they have offered little in the way of informed readers and interaction. At the same time, it is hard work to present even a fraction of EU politics and events in a few policy areas in a single language, English, the closest thing we have to a lingua franca.
I respect the valiant individual Eurobloggers who run bilingual blogs. Here are a few examples:
Vihar Georgiev writes the European Union Law blog in English and in Bulgarian, with frequent short updates in parallel.
Another parallel blogger is Europasionaria, in English and in French. She has also added a Google Translate gadget to her pages in order to facilitate communication.
Greg Henning’s EU Weekly contains blog entries in both English and/or French.
Martin on Europaeum alternates between entries in German and English.
Pirate MEP Christian Engström blogs mainly in Swedish, but occasionally in English.
Spanish is the main language of Eva Peña’s Eva en Europa, but she has posted in Catalan as well, and her latest entry was in English.
Including nationals - excluding others
Cédric Puisney aka Un Européen jamais content offers a contrary view to the inclusionary efforts, at least if English is used as a bridging language. He deplores bloggers abandoning their mother tongue to blog in English. He sees linguistic poverty, the threat of impoverished debate and the abandonment of the average EU citizen (citoyen lambda européen).
According to Wikipedia, 51 per cent of the EU population speaks English, followed by German (32%) and French (26%). English is more widely spoken and understood worldwide than the other European languages. (About 20 per cent of Grahnlaw’s readers come from North America.)
We have seen a few examples of bridging policies of inclusion, as well as exclusionary reactions and arguments (Blogs Arte, Cédric Puisney).
Should we confine our Euroblogs and blog discussions to separate national or linguistic forums for Citizen Lambda, or should we do our best to lower barriers between Eurobloggers and to promote pan-European interaction?
Ralf Grahn
Posts
Il faut de tout pour faire un monde !
ReplyDeleteThanks for the mention Ralf :)
My belief is that we should all be blogging in our native language, to reach out to national audiences, and in English, to facilitate the networking among EU geeks. It's time consuming but I wouldn't imagine my blog otherwise. It's a matter of principle. I don't want to stick to the EU bubble!
Europasionaria,
ReplyDeleteYour blogging choices suit you perfectly, but I believe that individuals have their own temperaments, goals, interests and readerships which influence how they want to act.
At a more systemic level there are the issues of Euroblogging communities and comment policies - bridge building in different senses - the blog post discusses.
Like I wrote, it's only a question of knowing what we want to achieve...
ReplyDeleteSome EU-bloggers may think we should focus on creating interaction between us and generate some rich pan-european debate. Fair enough, this is a nice idea which I'm promoting right now btw while leaving a comment on your blog ;-)
But I don't think this greater interaction will be interesting anyway for "average" European citizens, nor make the EU more appealing or just understandable for them.
Cédric,
ReplyDeleteWe seem to share the view that more discussion about the EU is needed.
Fine, if some Eurobloggers find the means to engage 'citoyen lambda' in his own country or language.
My own efforts in this respect have not been very rewarding, but larger linguistic communities may have more potential for informed debate.
However, your negative views on English as a bridging language do not seem overly helpful for building bridges in Europe.