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> French Ambassador decided that English wasn't good enough for him You left out one important word: "only". Traditionally, all important meetings and records
by Xylakant 7y ago
> French Ambassador decided that English wasn't good enough for him
You left out one important word: "only". Traditionally, all important meetings and records in the EU are translated into the major languages, some of them are available in most, if not all official languages. That makes it easier for all european citizens to read the actual records. English might be widely spoken, but fluency varies massively among the population. There's an argument to be made that this makes sense. I certainly wouldn't trust quite a few german politicians to negotiate in english, given the lack of grasp on the language that some have repeatedly demonstrated.
- erk__ 7y agoIt is pretty known that the parliment have an army of translators. Both live translating and translating law documents into most languages.
- Xylakant 7y agoAbsolutely. But the decision that the Ambassador objected to was to use english-only for the records. And citizens don't have access to that army of translators and might be interested in the records too.
- jacquesm 7y agoThe same held for all the other countries. Except for the UK of course.
- Xylakant 7y agoWell, I have no objection on english being the de-facto lingua franca. But my position on english being the only official language is certainly not as simple. And the same is true for german, french or any of the other official languages of the EU - neither of them are or should be the only official language in such a multilingual construct as the EU. So I share the ambassadors rejection of the notion to only use english and I do not regard that as pettiness harmful to the EU. Sure, translation costs money, but it also makes records more accessible to the citizens, and I regard that as a good thing.
- jacquesm 7y agoMy country (NL) isn't small enough to have a realistic demand that everything be translated into Dutch as well. That means that for us here adaptation rather than rejection is the norm. To see other countries' representatives storm out of meetings because their linguistic preferences are not followed is one of those things that show me that the EU still has a very long way to go. To 'only use English' is not a dictate, if the French ambassador felt the need to have a French translation of the document then I'm sure he could have had one as fast as pens could write. The citizens of France have every right to access the proceedings but I really fail to see how they were denied that right by having the situation as sketched transpire. Besides that, leaving the meeting for sure had an effect against the French citizens' interest, effectively they were unrepresented and the damage of that action far outweighs the inconvenience of translation.
- Xylakant 7y agoI see your point, but I’d prefer if that was resolved in a different way. I’m absolutely in favor of translating all important records to all official languages in the EU.
- jacquesm 7y agoSo am I, but that was not infringed on. The EU already gave French, German and English a head start. Your typical Czech, Italian or Spanish representative would have a much better position to make that case than the French ambassador.
- anoncake 7y agoEnglish is an official language of Ireland and Malta.