法國人終于不再抵制英語

France Gives In to the Hashtag

法國人終于不再抵制英語

Cardinal Richelieu, the 17th century power behind the French throne, must be rolling in his grave after the stunning announcement that France is giving up the fight to keep English words out of the French language.

法國宣布將不再拒絕英語詞匯進入法語，17世紀王朝實權(quán)人物黎塞留樞機主教(Cardinal Richelieu)泉下有知，恐怕要氣活過來。

This sudden reversal of four centuries of French linguistic policy was issued by the minister of culture, Fleur Pellerin, who declared that France’s resistance to the incursion of English words was harming — rather than preserving — the language. “French is not in danger, and my responsibility as minister is not to erect ineffective barriers against languages but to give all our citizens the means to make it live on,” Ms. Pellerin told an audience assembled for the opening of French Language and Francophonie Week in March, acknowledging in one sentence both the futility and misguidedness of the battle.

這個由文化部長弗勒爾·佩爾蘭(Fleur Pellerin)發(fā)布的驚人決定，猛然推翻了沿襲400年的法國語言政策，佩爾蘭表示，抵抗英文詞的入侵對法語非但起不到保護作用，反而有害。在3月的法語和法語人周(French Language and Francophonie Week)開幕式上發(fā)言的佩爾蘭，用一句話承認了這場語言戰(zhàn)斗的無謂與誤導(dǎo)性：“法語并未陷入險境，作為部長，我的職責不是給語言筑起無效的壁壘，而是要讓我們的全體公民都參與進來，從而維持它的生命力。”

“French is not in danger” is a remarkable assertion from the chief language guardian of the country that in 2006 fined the French subsidiary of General Electric Medical Systems more than 500,000 euros for issuing software manuals in English; that has officially banned the use of anglicisms for decades; and whose official determination to “keep French French” dates to King Louis XIII, who reigned from 1610 to 1643. Back then, of course, the task wasn’t so much to keep English out but to get control of the variations of French floating around and to decide what was to be codified as official French.

“法語并未陷入險境”的觀點從法國最高語言捍衛(wèi)者口中道出，是不同尋常的，在這個國家，通用電氣醫(yī)療系統(tǒng)公司(General Electric Medical Systems)法國子公司曾在2006年因用英語發(fā)布軟件說明書，被課以逾50萬歐元(約合333萬元人民幣)的罰款;官方幾十年來一直禁用英語詞; “法語就是法語”這樣的官方口徑，最早可溯至1610到1643年在位的路易十三世時代。當然，那時候主要的工作不是抵制英語，而是對流傳各地的法語變種加以控制，以確立一套官方法語規(guī)范。

Louis gave the job to his eager adviser, Cardinal Richelieu, who in 1635 founded the Académie Française to rule once and for all whether cheese would be spelled “fromage” or “formage,” formalize the diacritics — those accents that bedevil students of French to this day — and just generally, in the words of the academy’s charter, “clean the language of all the filth it has caught” and make French “pure [and] eloquent.”

路易十三把這項任務(wù)交給了躍躍欲試的黎塞留，此人1635年創(chuàng)立法蘭西學(xué)院(Académie Française)，負責對奶酪應(yīng)該是“fromage”還是“formage”這樣的問題做出最終裁決，以及規(guī)范變音——也就是那些至今仍讓法語學(xué)習(xí)者頭疼不已的重音——此外，學(xué)院章程有這樣的表述：它需要從總體上“把這門語言沾染的污穢清洗干凈”，讓法語“純粹[而]傳神”。

Nearly 400 years later the 40 “Immortels” of the French Academy, clad in velvet robes and Napoleonic bicornes for their annual meetings, continue to strive to meet this noble if elusive goal. But in recent decades the academy has been less concerned with what to include in French than with what to exclude: namely, English.

將近400年后，法蘭西學(xué)院那40位身著天鵝絨長袍、頭戴拿破侖式雙角帽參加年會的“不朽者”(Immortel)，仍然在盡力履行這項高貴但又有些令人費解的使命。不過在近幾十年里，學(xué)院最關(guān)心不是應(yīng)該把什么包括到法語中，而是要把一門語言排除出去：那就是英語。

Most of the debate today centers on dealing with English technology terms such as “hashtag” and “cloud computing.” But in fact the backlash against English encroachment into French started in the pre-computer age, when officials became alarmed over the country’s infatuation with “le jogging” and eating “les cheeseburgers” on “le week-end.” Realizing that the academy, which as an advisory body has no legal standing, wasn’t doing all that super a job with keeping out “the filth,” France formed a commission on terminology in 1970. That was followed five years later by the Maintenance of the Purity of the French Language act, which introduced fines for the use of banned anglicisms, then in 1984 by the General Commission for the French Language, which in turn was followed by the 1994 Toubon Law, mandating the use of the French language in all official government publications, commercial contracts, and in advertisements, workplaces and public schools.

如今引起爭議最多的是英語的科技術(shù)語，比如“hashtag”(標簽)和“cloud computing”(云計算)。然而，這場抵制英語入侵的運動，在前電腦時代就已經(jīng)開始，當時像“le week-end”(周末)去“le jogging”(慢跑)和吃“le cheeseburgers”(漢堡)這樣的說法在國內(nèi)很流行，引起了官方的警覺。作為一個顧問機構(gòu)，法蘭西學(xué)院是不具備法律資格的，在意識到它的“污穢”清理工作差強人意后，法國在1970年成立了一個術(shù)語委員會。五年后通過的《維護法語純粹性》法案(Maintenance of the Purity of the French Language)規(guī)定，使用明令禁止的英語詞會被課以罰款，而后是1984年法語總務(wù)委員會(General Commission for the French Language)成立，再之后是1994年的《都蓬法》(Toubon Law)，規(guī)定所有政府正式出版物、商業(yè)合同以及廣告、工作場所和公立學(xué)校等場合都必須使用法語。

Yet despite these many laws and commissions (at least 20 that govern the French language) there’s still that vexing “hashtag” (or as the Ministry of Culture would have you call it — at least up until a couple of weeks ago — mot-dièse) problem. The ministry relies on specialized terminology commissions for finding French replacements for new words of foreign influence, and in theory the task is straightforward: take a foreign term such as “Wi-Fi” and come up with a French equivalent other than “le Wi-Fi.” Unfortunately, the tendency of the French to be verbose works greatly to their disadvantage, especially in the Twitter age. The recommended replacement for “Wi-Fi” (which the French so adorably pronounce “wee-fee”) was the mouthful “accès sans fil à l’Internet,” literally “access without wire to the Internet.” Which is why you see signs for “Wi-Fi” all over France.

盡管有這么多的法律和委員會(管轄法語的委員會至少有20個)，卻還是無法擺脫討厭的“hashtag”(或者根據(jù)文化部要求，你得說mot- dièse——這個情況至少到幾周前還未改變)。文化部需要靠專門的術(shù)語委員會來為外來新詞找到法語替代項，理論上講這是個很簡單的任務(wù)：找到一個像 “Wi-Fi”這樣的外來詞，想出一個法語中的對應(yīng)詞，當然不能用“le Wi-Fi”。不幸的是，法語趨于冗繁的特點對它們很不利，尤其是在Twitter時代。政府建議“Wi-Fi”(法國人把這個詞讀作“wee- fee”，十分可愛)的法語對應(yīng)是“accès sans fil à l’Internet”，直譯就是“無線接入互聯(lián)網(wǎng)”。這就是為什么你在法國到處看到牌示上還是寫著“Wi-Fi”。

I suspect that the French don’t realize that “Wi-Fi” doesn’t even make sense in English. The term exists only because someone in a manufacturer’s marketing department, having been given the assignment to come up with a word or phrase short enough for a sticker on a computer to describe a wireless network connection, was old enough to remember playing his Charlie Parker albums on his spiffy “Hi-Fi.” Yet it is precisely this past history of near-obsessive adherence to doctrine that makes Ms. Pellerin’s announcement so shocking.

我估計法國人還不知道，“Wi-Fi”在英語里也是莫名其妙的。這個詞的存在無非是因為，某個制造商的市場部的某個人接到任務(wù)，要想出一個描述無線網(wǎng)絡(luò)連接的詞或短語，這個詞要足夠短，短到能做成標簽貼在電腦上，而這個人又足夠老，老到還記得當年用炫酷的“Hi-Fi”音響放他的查理·帕克 (Charlie Parker)唱片。然而，恰恰是這種歷史上對律條的近乎執(zhí)迷的堅持，讓佩爾蘭的發(fā)言顯得格外驚人。