France National Library Attacks Google Book Effort 899
An anonymous reader writes "The National Library of France is not happy with Google's effort to scan and integrate millions of books into its Web search. Jean-Noel Jeanneney, President of the library, wrote in an editorial that he is concerned Google's initiative to digitalize volumes at five leading libraries will reflect a unipolar worldview dominated by the English language and American culture. Jeanneney is pushing for European libraries to follow in Google's footsteps. Google said it was surprised by Jeanneney's remarks and noted, 'This is a first step for us; we can't do everything at once.'"
A little bit sore perhaps (Score:1, Interesting)
In French? (Score:2, Interesting)
The link in the article is to the original French in Le Monde. Do I speak/read French? Yes. Do I want to read some French guy whine about French becoming a minority language on the Web (like it isn't in real life)? No, not really
Très Grande Bibliothèque (Score:2, Interesting)
With that record in book preservation, I doubt that they would be a very effective judge of what Google has to offer.
Unipolar worldview? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Of course it "invokes French ire" (Score:3, Interesting)
It is the duty of the national librarys to preserve the literary history of the country , now what is stopping Them from doing this , im sure plenty of companys would be willing to sponsor such an initiative , not to mention state funding.
If you want the history of your land and the history of its views of the world preserved for the world to enjoy , then stop moaning and start scanning
Re:Don't panic. (Score:1, Interesting)
No doubt he's delighted to note that one European library, at Oxford University [ox.ac.uk], is way ahead of him on that.
Re:Americans already hate France (Score:1, Interesting)
That isn't why I hate the French. I hate them because of how I was treated when I traveled in Europe. Every country I traveled in had easy to get along with people, and ass hats. The French had a far greater percentage of ass-hats than the rest of Europe.
Maybe he should start with Wikipedia (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Great idea (Score:3, Interesting)
And I'm sure if they want to fund scanning their entire culture into databases, that Google will be willing to index them. However, since the half of the world that is shelling out cash for internet services isn't Chinese or Indian, can you really blame Google?
History is written by those with a sensable businuess plan.
Re:Don't panic. (Score:3, Interesting)
Quebecers understand that english is the business language, but in everyday life, they speak better french than the French themselves, although with their own slangs and all.
The 'american way' infiltrated France at the core, while in Quebec, people stood up to keep their own culture as the root, but adopted the rest. With the core(the youth) as it is today, France of tomorrow will probably be totally anglicized, while Quebec will fare better. By how much? I don't know, but there is a serious problem in France.
Read the Source, Luke (Score:5, Interesting)
Money-- and he has been. From an automatic translation (ironically via...) [google.com] of the editorial:
Or, in other words: "Hey, morons! I've been working on this, but I can't match their efforts when I'm being outspent by this much!!!This sensitivity tells you... (Score:3, Interesting)
If French has a word that English doesn't have, English speakers will happily pick it up, and it will soon appear in the Oxford English dictionary. The same is not true for French. And if the French are bad in this regard, the Quebecois are 10 times worse. The dream of the separatists in Quebec is a country inhabited only by "pur laine", descendants of the original French settlers. In fact, Quebec's cultural influence peaked in the late 60's, when Montreal was New Orleans North, a mixture of races, religions, languages, and traditions. After that the separtists started driving out, in Jacques Parizeau's words, "money and the ethnic vote."
If the French and the Quebecois get their wish, they may preserve their culture, but it will be dead, and no one will care.
Re:why does france hate google? (Score:4, Interesting)
The English language is full of englicized foreign word.
I really don't get why the "email -> courriel" ("email" stands for "electronic mail" and "courriel" stands for "courrier electronique" -- same logic) example gets thrown around as if it was evidence of something really terrible.
Re:why does france hate google? (Score:1, Interesting)
You want more examples?
Selling Nuclear reactors to oil rich countries that like to gas kurds. (Iraq)
Open Air Nuclear testing after the rest of the world has pledged not to do such things. Apparent reason for test? To prove that Chirac has big stones.
Invasions of African nations that piss them off. Which would be fine except for the small matter of criticizing Americans for unilateral invasions not supported by the "International Community". "International Community" apparently means "France".
Basically France is a country with an inferiority complex. Sort of like the Arab world although not as bad...
Re:Compete instead of Complain (Score:3, Interesting)
I am sure Google will not stop any French company or thier goverment from creating their own search engine and index all the books they want. If they end up making a better product even I'll start using thier engine instead of Google. And the money can come from the department they have for preserving the purity of French culture and language by banning the use of words like 'e-mail'. The bottom line is if they really care about it, they'll do something, but it seems that they just want to complain some more.
No, I'm afraid so. (Score:3, Interesting)
And the current Bush Administration propagandists have always made sure to refer to the Iraqi resistence as "insurgents" or "terrorists" or "rebels" rather than "resistence", which would have invoked memories of the bravery of the French Resistence as well as implying that Americans (er, excuse me, the Coalition of the Willing) were the invading Bad Guys.
On the other hand, "CheeseEating Surrender Monkeys" was quite definitely a joke.
The French still think they are a world power (Score:2, Interesting)
The Egos of country does not decrease at the same rate as their world influence.
The same will happen the United States. Right now the Americans have a Big Ego. Everything has to be their way because they think it is the most correct. In a 100 years when their economy is in the toilet and India or China is center stage the Americans will still have a big ego and will be bitching about same things the French are now. It happen to all nations and when they fall it can be particularly sad how they act.
the French are complaining about now.
Re:why does france hate google? (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, thank you for this explanation as I hadn't considered that this was what France was doing. I've been REALLY concerned about how the English language is going to look in 50 years.
I mean, languages evolve and change and so on, you can't stop it, but if I were to pick up and read something written 500 years ago in English I could probably make out what it says fairly easily. Some of the words will have changed, there may be some words I don't know, but in general it'll still be the English I use today.
But in the last 10 years alone the internet has made all sorts of abbreviations like "u, 2, thx, cya, teh, k, gtg" and so on so common that it scares me to think what the language will be like in the next decade, nevermind the next century.
Fragmentation is not degeneration (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, and I live in the Philippines, which seems to have its own dialect of English. They tend to treat mass nouns as count nouns, for example. They "take some medicines" or have "a bowl of fruits."
But there's a simple solution to all of this. Microsoft. Yes, Microsoft.
Most users of MS Word install the program with default US English, so they get corrected when using British English. A fair number don't know what's going on, and just think "Oh, so I was spelling it wrong all these years." Combine that with American movies and foreign call centers which service mostly Americans and standardize to American English, typically, and you'll see that this fragmentation problem is in the proces of reversing itself.
I've never been a fan of cultural hegemony, especially with folks as nice and friendly as the Brits, but I have to admit, it feels good.
Anyways, languages are natural. They're supposed to evolve and adapt. Degeneration is far too perjorative a word for the situation. It implies a lack of moral fiber which is simply irrelevant. Say what you will about the 'degeneration' of the English language, but I can understand Brits just fine. The problem that you present is a straw man with no real consequences.
Spelling rules (Score:3, Interesting)
Standard German is also decided [laborlawtalk.com] from on high, but not necessarily as efficiently as in France.
Linguistic minorities (Score:1, Interesting)
Using english words so that the originals are lost, replacing verbs tenses and sentence structures with the ones from english so that the correct way of expresisng something is forgotten are real problems and are indeed a case of a language degenerating.
It is degenerating because ma lot of the richness of a language is lost this way and the replacements form inspired from the english from the internet and such, not Shakespeare of even common newpaper and magazines english.
So in the end, the expressive power of the language is diminished. That is why I would agree with calling it degenerating.
There were times when my language was close to extinction, it is now getting much better but for a long time having a sloppy way of expressing yourself and using english terms were popular and seen as "cool". Hopefully no longer.
Re:"Domination Ecrasante" of the USA (Score:2, Interesting)
Moreover, you're absolutely correct that Jeanneney describes the Google initiative, praises it (as Messianic if I recall correctly -- there's your baroque expression), and encourages France, and all of Europe, to do the same.
Where we differ is how we perceive the manner in which he presented that message. I don't think, sans rose-tinted glasses, you can read the editorial and not see that the author is threatening the French people with an American stranglehold on the world of ideas. Moreover, irote, since you appear to be aware that a school called the ENA (l'école national d'administration) has produced somewhere between 25 and 50 percent of French senior government ministers over the past 20 years, I assume that you are also aware that almost 5 years ago, a farmer named José Bové destroyed a McDonalds (which, by the way, is an American company!), and became a national hero. Moroever, that the USA is right now engaged in a war in Iraq that France opposes strongly. So when a relatively high-level public minister publishes an editorial in France's leading daily damning one of the most significant developments in the world of ideas with faint praise, and suggesting that a parallel system be established to act as a counterweight, I start looking for subtext among the artifacts of French literary style.
The author is not merely saying that English is the lingua franca of academic and web discourse. As you point out, that's pretty obvious. He is saying that Google's initiative will warp French ideas to the American context. Reread this section:
Il eût été délétère et détestable pour l'équilibre de la nation, pour l'image et la connaissance qu'elle avait d'elle-même, de son passé, des événements, lumineux ou sombres, qu'il nous revenait de commémorer, d'aller chercher dans les seules bases de données anglaises ou américaines un récit et une interprétation qui y étaient biaisés de multiples façons : Le Mouron rouge écrasant Quatre-vingt-treize, les vaillants aristocrates britanniques triomphant des jacobins sanguinaires, la guillotine occultant les droits de l'homme et les intuitions fulgurantes de la Convention. Cet exemple est instructif, et il nous met en garde.
The author is alleging something stronger than an "Anglo-Saxon" discourse. He alleges a displacement of history and historical works from French culture by an American initiative to digitize American and English works. Presumably when Google gets to Madame Bovary (in the public domain, in the holdings of Harvard, etc.) they will translate the Baz Luhrmann version, and in Jean-Noël Jeanneney's mind, the French world of ideas will suffer a mortal blow.
Can you not see the absurdity in this situation? Google is digitizing books, and instead of suggesting the merest facade of an attempt at a cooperative measure, Jeanneney hopped on the "American domination" bandwagon. That may be the quickest way to get results in French politics, but I continue to find it contemptible. No matter how hard I try, I can't construe Jeanneney's remarks in a positive light.
Regards,
Astolpho