Det Franske Akademi fraråder officiel brug af Franglais

The English-speaking press threw themselves, sarcastically, on a half-truth, to attack the French Academy and its supposed puritanism in terms of the use of Anglo-Saxon terms in electronic games and eSports in France . You have to put the measure back in its place.

The zealous "French-bashing" of a press organ

The Guardian was ferocious in denigrating the French and thus caused a storm in a teacup, with the headline: “France bans English gaming tech jargon in push to preserve language purity”. If we had to translate word for word, we could believe that the whole "France" Nation forbids the jargon of technological games by putting pressure (on the population) to preserve the purity of the language.

One could imagine that social media vigilantes would hunt down offenders, impose heavy fines on them, to establish that the language should, like the "Race" of yesteryear, remain biologically "pure".

Scholarly use reserved for the administration

In reality, the circular published, emanating from the commission for the enrichment of the French language, with the green light from the Academy, aimed only at state services and, in no case, at the general public of gamers to whom we were going. ban anything.

This commission does not only exercise its warnings on the sole subject of video games, but extends its prospecting to all areas of life, in particular, technical manuals, rarely translated correctly, or the advertising of large national companies.

Rather than prohibit, this commission tries to make life easier for those who do not have a very elaborate use of English, by adapting translations on the use of foreign terms. It is a refusal of discrimination by language.

French as the Language of the Republic

The teaching of French to all strata of the population is enshrined in the constitution. State administrative services must set an example. Perhaps then, enlightened citizens will bother to do their best.

But it is certainly not by banning Franglais on the internet that we will solve anything. This commission does not have the ambition to embark on a "witch hunt", whatever the unscrupulous Guardian thinks.

"The primary mission of the French language enrichment system is to create new terms and expressions in order to fill the gaps in our vocabulary and to designate in French the concepts and realities that appear under foreign names", confirms on this subject the Ministry of Culture.

It therefore creates a vocabulary corresponding to a need to adapt the French language to the modern world. The tool exists, it remains to disseminate the products.

Shift in incubation times

If there is indeed a problem with which this commission is confronted, it is that of the modes of penetration of foreign terms into the common language. It is the one spoken by people on the street, those who walk around on social networks and whose uses adopt the all-comers.

Paradoxically, language knows no borders, especially in the age of the internet.

French online game players adapt to the language of their counterparts in tournaments and adopt common language habits, depending on the situations encountered.

The commission mentioned has neither the time nor the space to intervene and propose counter-arguments against the expressions used by Internet users. On the other hand, it can encourage the administration not to approve these English formulas as "natural" and to offer them more or less satisfactory substitutes.

A divorce between official language and common uses?

The French State is not waging a desperate crusade against the presence of English technical terms during gameplay, but is proposing alternatives in French, so that the administration does not allow itself to be subjugated by these original reflex words. foreign.

The principle consists in preserving the expressive richness of the French language and escaping the "facilities" offered, like so many traps, by the usual English in technological, commercial and financial circles.

It operated as a distribution of roles between the dominant languages, French being considered as the chastised language of culture, while English took a preponderant part, in all areas of trade, economy and technical fields.

It is surely too late to reverse heavy trends. But the language must not lose its creativity and constantly seek to meet the needs of users. Even if the latter do not immediately or spontaneously adopt these expressions, they nevertheless remain available.