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French Media goes Quebecois On The EU

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  • French Media goes Quebecois On The EU

    .French irked by EU use of English
    AFP – 17 hours ago.

    The Brussels-based French-language press corps reacted with fury Wednesday to the release in English of the EU's annual report cards on the bloc's 27 economies.

    In an angry open e-mail to the European Commission, the correspondent for the daily Liberation newspaper Jean Quatremer said -- in French: "Once again, all the documents published today are available only in English. This is unacceptable."

    The Commission released 1,500 pages of hotly-awaited reports on the state of the bloc's economies along with proposals to redress public finances as Europe fights the debt crisis threatening some of its biggest economies.

    "I can't see why the Anglo-Saxon media should benefit from such an unbelievable competitive edge on the remainder of the other media and I can't see any practical reason for the Commission's incapacity to do this work."

    "The right to be informed in one's own language about the social and budgetary sacrifices demanded by the EU executive is a minimum right," he added.

    His protest was backed by most of his French colleagues.

    A spokesperson for the Commission told AFP that "the translations are coming."

    The correspondent for English-language magazine The Economist agreed with French colleagues.

    "More insulting than telling France to reform," the correspondent wrote on the Twitter account @econCharlemagne, referring to the Commission's growing powers to give orders on economic reforms to national governments.


    I must admit, I was surprised that they didn't publish them for every language in the EU, but why just one language, and English at that?
    No, I did not steal that from somebody on Something Awful.

  • #2
    well it says that translations are coming, but yeah it's strange.
    "The Christian way has not been tried and found wanting, it has been found to be hard and left untried" - GK Chesterton.

    "The most obvious predicition about the future is that it will be mostly like the past" - Alain de Botton

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    • #3
      1. Pissing of the french is fun.
      2. It is the international language in here as well.

      Bottom line, the French need to come of their high horse and learn other languages. Every ****ing where they are there is a language issue.
      "Ceterum censeo Ben esse expellendum."

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      • #4
        Originally posted by The Mad Monk View Post
        http://ca.news.yahoo.com/french-irke...205346768.html

        I must admit, I was surprised that they didn't publish them for every language in the EU, but why just one language, and English at that?
        This is purely a guess but I suspect English is effectively the lingua franca when you have to get so many people from so many counties with so many languages to all work together. Also for legal reasons it's also to write it originally in one language and then translate it into others but if a dispute arises over exactly what some part of it means then it's nice to only deal with one original text rather than trying to parse the text in 15 different languages.

        As to why English... What other language would possibly work as well? Also English is already required for all NATO joint commands and all people working in the airline business globally (yes, when a Chinese plane wants to talk to the traffic control tower in Chile by law they've all agreed to do it in English to avoid confusion) plus it's the most widely known second language on Earth so it seems an easy choice.
        Try http://wordforge.net/index.php for discussion and debate.

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