La France en déclin

France being the only country in the world with a majority of French native speakers, la Francophonie relies heavily on France for its prestige. But what if France itself is in steep decline?

Plus de sept Français sur dix estiment que la France est "en déclin", même si elle dispose de "beaucoup d'atouts" aux yeux de 79% d'entre eux. C'est qui ressort d'un sondage Ifop réalisé pour le Journal du Dimanche.

Pour cette enquête, l'institut a repris les questions posées il y a cinq ans, en 2005, après le rejet par référendum de la Constitution européenne. A 71 %, les Français voient la France "en déclin", soit cinq points de plus qu'en 2005 (66 %). 28% expriment un sentiment contraire.
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Ce sondage, publié dimanche dans le JDD, a été réalisé les 2 et 3 juillet auprès d'un échantillon représentatif de 958 personnes majeures (méthode des quotas).

LA FRANCE "MANQUE DE CONFIANCE EN ELLE"

Invités à dire si la France a "beaucoup d'atouts", 79 % répondent positivement (contre 21 %). Ce chiffre reste élevé mais recule de dix points par rapport au sondage de 2005, où 89 % des personnes interrogées avaient répondu oui.

Les Français sont très légèrement plus nombreux (7 0% contre 69 % en 2005) à penser que le pays "est capable de se réformer" mais une forte majorité (62%) des personnes interrogées considèrent que la France "manque de confiance en elle", un chiffre en baisse de trois points par rapport à 2005.

En revanche, seul 46 % des personnes interrogées estiment que la France "constitue un modèle pour de nombreux pays". En 2005, 59% le pensaient.

PARIS HAS PLENTY TO READ (IN ENGLISH)

While New-York's French-language bookstores close down, Paris offers a huge choice of books in English:

There are surely as many good English-language bookstores in Paris as in all but a handful of cities in the United States. Whatever that may tell us about relative cultural priorities, it's also an indication of the American (and British) presence in Paris, the importance of American literature to literate Parisians and the large number of Americans visiting and living there.

I discovered 10 bookstores in Paris that specialize, more or less - a few exclusively - in English-language books, four on the Right Bank and six on the Left. One can visit them all in a long day's walk. For a city of its size, compared to New York or London, Paris is readily accessible by foot.

A useful place to start our walking tour would be on the Right Bank, on the Rue de Rivoli where, at Rue Cambon, one finds W. H. Smith (subtitle: The English Bookstore), a larger, more glamorous version of the stationery shops in the notable British chain. The Paris Smith's is a place to get English newspapers and The New York Times, best sellers and a wide range of English paperbacks - Penguin, Pan, Methuen, Virago. There is an imitation English tea shop on the second floor. The books, which are mostly imported from England (Penguin has a terrific list of American titles), cost about half again as much as they do in London, which means they cost about the same as paperbacks in the United States. W. H. Smith is similar to American chains like B. Dalton, a good place to pick up a recent book of no great obscurity but hardly a hangout for book lovers. Still, for a mass market store, Smith's stocks a large number of interesting paperbacks, including American titles generally unavailable in the States. The Louvre is a few minutes' walk from Smith's, though perhaps too great a distraction on this particular tour.

Walking east on the Rue de Rivoli, two blocks or so from W. H. Smith, one comes to the oldest and most elegant English-language bookstore in Paris, the Librairie Galignani. If W. H. Smith has the feel of an upscale Dalton, Galignani is reminiscent of Scribner or Rizzoli in New York. Galignani, lined with dark wood shelves and with a skylight overhead, is easy to move around in, well-stocked, a mix of shelves and tables displaying few if any best sellers. Unlike the chains, it is a store for which books are objects of respect and affection. Galignani has a good selection of poetry and a small though impressive selection of art books. Its prices are generally comparable to Smith's. The staff is knowledgeable and helpful. Browsing is encouraged. Originated in 1805, and at the present address since 1856, Galignani carries 15,000 volumes in English and 15,000 in French. It is a favorite among American writers living in Paris and a place to visit for those who love bookstores as esthetic objects in themselves.

Walking north on the Rue des Pyramides, turning left on Avenue de l'Opera, one comes to the huge, mass market bookstore, Brentano, which appropriately has a golden facade. On entering the store, customers are confronted by records, key chains and souvenirs, as if the absence of books were a selling point. If W. H. Smith is a bit of England on the Continent, Brentano might be perceived as its American counterpart, a bookshop seemingly embarrassed to display books. In the back, however, is a winding blind alley of paperbacks, a first-rate collection hidden away like a secret vice. Brentano's thousands of books in English include a travel shelf comparable to Smith's and a considerably more extensive children's books section. (The other shops on this tour are less rewarding than Smith and Brentano for visitors seeking maps and travel guides in English.) Although disguised as an upscale tourist bazaar, Brentano is, in fact, a fairly substantial store of its kind. Prices are about the same as Smith's and slightly higher than the least expensive of the Left Bank bookstores. Brentano is a short walk from the American Express offices and the Paris Opera.

The one other English-language bookstore on the Right Bank, Librairie Albion, is an anomalous presence. It is a store you are not likely to stumble on unless thoroughly lost. The way to find it is to take Avenue de l'Opera south to Rue de Rivoli, walk east for about 12 blocks along Rivoli until it becomes Rue St. Antoine and then ask directions to Rue Charles V, a street with no other shops but Librairie Albion. From a distance, Albion looks something like an English pub. The front door was locked when my companion and I arrived and an employee let us in through the back. Although Albion exists to serve the University of Paris, which is nearby, stocking French, German and Spanish texts in addition to English, it is a real bookstore - a place of books - cramped, charming, incomplete, eccentric, the expression of a personality. If you are after a particular volume, Brentano and Smith are more likely to have it, but if you are willing to discover what you might want, Albion is a sweet place to browse.

Crossing the Seine to the Left Bank at

Pont Marie and working one's way past Notre Dame, the walker comes to the Rue de la Bucherie and Shakespeare and Company, namesake and self-styled spiritual heir to the legendary Sylvia Beach bookstore of the expatriate 1920's. Shakespeare has stalls in front selling used books, starting at about 60 cents. There may be books of interest among the long forgotten popular novels, mysteries and outdated anthologies, of interest to someone - there are always browsers on display - but I found virtually none. The crowded interior, an olio of old and new books, seems somewhat more promising, though chaos seems to be the shop's reigning principle of organization. Run by George Whitman, a theatrically bohemian septuagenarian with an avowed sense of mission, the store regularly sponsors readings, offers free shelter to young writers (and potential writers) in its apartments upstairs and invites selected visitors to browse in its private library, reputedly totaling 50,000 volumes.

It is, in its own way, a service bookstore, a haven to the errant literary spirit, a place to rub shoulders with literary ghosts. Most of the writers in Paris I talked to thought Shakespeare and Company, for all its good intentions, was of negligible use. Originally called Mistral (one of the celebratory articles I was shown called it Mistrial), Mr. Whitman's shop changed its name to Shakespeare and Company in 1964 to make connection with the original in which, legend says, James Joyce wrote ''Ulysses.'' The 13-room house that Shakespeare occupies, a beautiful building in bohemian disrepair, was, in one of its lives, a monastery and in another an Arab grocery. Today it is a kind of shrine in the guise of a bookstore.

Moving south on Rue St. Jacques, crossing the Boulevard St. Michel, then turning left on Rue des Ecoles, one arrives at Attica, in the Sorbonne district, a former avant-garde bookstore domesticated by the needs of survival. French intellectuals are particularly interested in new American fiction and Attica reflects that interest. There are more books from American publishers here and more small-press books than in the Right Bank supermarkets. Visitors who remember with great affection the haphazard and highly personal collection at Attica's original store will be somewhat disappointed by the relative impersonality of its present quarters. What started out as an obsession of the owner, Stephan Levy, has metamorphosed into a better than average English-language paperback bookstore, a good example of what you might find in an American university town. The difference is that English is not the primary language of Paris. Browsing is welcome. Prices are reasonable. Next on the tour is the Librairie Internationale on the Boulevard St. Germain. To get there, one backtracks on the Rue des Ecoles to Boulevard St. Michel, turns right toward Boulevard Saint Germain, going by the enormous Chez Gibert (a good place to buy inexpensive maps and travel guides - in French), and arrives after a five-minute walk. The elegant Librairie Internationale, which has a high-tech look, specializes in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish books, the English texts making up 40 percent of the stock. The place has achieved a certain notoriety among some writers. Two American poets were evicted from Internationale for having taken books off the shelves to look at the texts. A visit to the shop readily conjures the scene. The manager, a former finance specialist, presides over the store like a grim schoolmaster. Although Internationale has an impressive stock of almost 50,000 books, it is a place without definition or focus or passion. The shop has books on economics (in English) and philosophy that are probably not available elsewhere in Paris. It is, clearly, not a place to browse.

One continues on the Boulevard St. Germain, turning left on the Rue de Rennes, and arrives after about a half-mile at the main branch of the department store FNAC. Among its seemingly endless stock of French books are a half-dozen English-language shelves, broken up into the rubrics: Policiers, Science Fiction and Literature. It is an efficiency bookstore without pretensions, an amusing place to browse and shop. Moreover, it is air-conditioned; it was the only bookstore I visited with the air-conditioning switched on. The selection is smaller than at Smith or Brentano, but in a sampling I took the prices were two to five percent cheaper. FNAC is a part of a chain that sells electronic and photographic equipment and develops film overnight.

Going right on the Rue de Vaugirard, taking the occasion to cross the Jardin du Luxembourg - a particularly pleasant walk - to the Boulevard St. Michel, the stroller turns south and comes to the Nouveau Quartier Latin, a large, sprawling store that, like Attica, serves the students and faculty at the Sorbonne. The Nouveau also distributes English-language texts to most of the other bookstores. An inelegant, spacious shop of some 50,000 volumes, it is particularly good for hardcover cinema books and for coffee-table books on American popular culture. It is neither mass market, like Smith and Brentano, nor literary, like Attica, but something in between, a solid middlebrow way station, an Americanized French-English language bookstore. The service is low key and helpful. Browsing is acceptable and prices are somewhat lower than those of the Right Bank shops.

The last stop on our tour is the cafe-bookstore on the Rue Princesse, a side street off Boulevard St. Germain, a place called the Village Voice, which provides a center for much of the American literary activity in Paris. On my visit, I was shown three recently established literary periodicals, ''Frank,'' ''Paris Exiles'' and ''Moving Letter,'' containing work primarily of American writers living in the city. A reading given by the contributors to ''Paris Exiles'' while I was there - Village Voice sponsors six to eight readings a month - drew a crowd that overflowed the store. The owner and proprietor, Odile Hellier, a translator, has made Village Voice into the kind of place Shakespeare and Company merely imagines itself to be. Although small, the cafe-store has an impressively varied collection of large and small press publications. It carries The Village Voice (no relation) and The New York Times Book Review. In existence less than three years, Village Voice best exemplifies the new literary vitality among Americans in Paris. Alone among English-language bookstores there, it also carries European literature in translation.

It is a telling paradox that the United States is a source of some of the most exciting serious literature available in France. Largely this is thanks to English paperbacks, the intermediary in what is a fairly complex cultural transaction. A further reason to visit this beautiful city - as if one needed one - is to discover the vitality of one's own culture when separated from it by over 3,000 miles and hundreds of years of tradition.

The following is a postscript, a separate tour, a rundown of French-language bookstores of passing interest to the visitor. The Librairie Dupuis on the corner of Rue St. Jacques and Boulevard St. Germain is a shop devoted solely to cartoon books, a hot item in Paris. Some are wonderfully inventive while others seem merely excuses for avoiding the written word. There are two fairly good movie bookstores, Le Minotaure on Rue Beaux Arts (near Rue de Seine) and City Lights, Rue de la Gaite. For chess enthusiasts, the Librairie St. Germain on the boulevard is a place given over to chess books and texts dealing with games of strategy. According to ''Passion,'' the English-language magazine of Paris, Librairie Ulysse on the Ile St. Louis is the best travel bookstore in the city. And for bookstore aficionados I recommend a visit to La Hune or Le Divan, both on the Boulevard St. Germain, to see what a serious French bookshop is like. For the book lover, a browse through the beautiful Hune is a two-star meal. La Hune has a large, perhaps complete, collection of French art magazines and literary journals. I had the feeling, browsing in the hospitable store, that there is not a book on its shelves or tables that is not of some interest to the serious reader. A reader's guide Right Bank W. H. Smith (English Bookstore), 248 Rue de Rivoli (1st arrondissement). Telephone: 42.60.37.97. Metro: Concorde. Hours: 9 A.M. to 6 P.M. Monday to Saturday; closed Sunday.

Librairie Galignani, 224 Rue de Rivoli (1st arrondissement; 42.60.52.37. Metro: Concorde. Hours: 9:30 to 6:30; closed Monday.

Brentano, 37 Avenue de l'Opera, (2d arrondissement); 42.61.52.50. Metro: Pyramides or Opera. Hours: 10 to 7 daily.

Librairie Albion, 13 Rue Charles V (4th arrondissement); 42.72.50.71. Metro: St. Paul or Pont Marie. Hours: 9:30 to 7:30 Sunday to Friday; 10 to 6 Saturday. Left Bank Librairie Internationale, 141 Boulevard St. Germain (6th arrondissement); 43.29.38.20. Metro: St. Germain-des-Pres-Mabillon. Hours: 10 A.M. to 1 P.M., 2 to 7 P.M. Tuesday to Saturday; closed Sunday and Monday.

Village Voice, 6 Rue Princesse (6th arrondissement); 46.33.36.47. Metro: St. Germain-des-Pres-Mabillon. Hours: 11 A.M. to 8 P.M. Tuesday to Saturday; closed Sunday and Monday.

Librairie Attica, 34 Rue des Ecoles (5th arrondissement); 43.26.09.53. Metro: Maubert Mutualite. Hours: 2 to 7 P.M. Monday; 10 A.M. to 7 P.M. Tuesday to Friday; 10 A.M. to 1 P.M., 2 to 7 P.M. Saturday; closed Sunday.

Shakespeare and Company, 37 Rue de la Bucherie (5th arrondissement); no telephone. Metro: St. Michel. Hours: Open every day, noon to midnight, approximately.

FNAC, 136 Rue de Rennes (6th arrondissement); 45.44.39.12. Metro: Montparnasse. Hours: 10 A.M. to 7 P.M. Monday to Saturday; closed Sunday.

Nouveau Quartier Latin, 78 Boulevard St.Michel, near Rue Auguste-Comte (6th arrondissement); 43.26.42.70. Metro: Port-Royal or Luxembourg. Hours: 10 A.M. to 7 P.M. Monday to Saturday; closed Sunday.

Hat tip: Edward J. Cunningham

Hervé Bourges: Francophonie In Crisis

RTL info ran this story on June 4th, 2008:

France “is not protecting its language” and la Francophonie is in a crisis: a report submitted Wednesday to the government calls for a broad and “uninhibited” francophone campaign against English-language dominance, and especially for giving more importance to Southern countries.

“La Francophonie is little known. It gets little notice because in France we do not believe in la Francophonie, and the country does not protect its language”, explained Herve Bourges, author of the report submitted to Secretary of State for Co-operation and Francophonie Alain Joyandet.

“In France Francophonie appears dated, obsolete, out of touch with the young”, this one-time high ranking official for audio-visual affairs wrote, now a left-wing public figure and a Third-World activist.

According to him, France bears her share of the blame for this “unease” within the French-speaking community, one that claims more than 200 million from Haiti to Vietnam.

France is “too self-centered”, especially due to the “burden of its colonizing past” it “is perceived more and more as hostile by the French-speaking populations of the South”, he observed.

Herve Bourges advocates “ridding the Francophonie of its inhibitions”, making the work of the International Francophonie organization with its 68 States and governments more noticeable, and launching a “linguistic counter-attack, while emulating the US in pushing for commercial or diplomatic agreements to include as many French-language provisions as possible.

“We ought to regain the offensive and further the French tongue in an uninhibited way, the English way, because the linguistic battle is not only about culture or aesthetics: the real stakes are political influence and economic growth”, he wrote.

He stressed that the British Council had just launched a program aiming at increasing the number of English speakers from 2 to 3 billion with an investment of 150 million euros, whereas the OIF programs for the teaching and promotion of French amounted to about 6 million.

To protect the French language, Herve Bourges suggests among other things that Francophonie be taught at school and junior high and that a “French-speaking Academy” be created on the model of the French Academy, but where French writers would be in the minority, along with an “Erasmus program” that would foster exchanges between the universities of the North and those of the South.
(...)
We need to ask Southern countries for “a financial contribution and to allow them to be part of the decision-making process”, he explained.

All in all, the Francophonie must be less financially reliant on France “which today shoulders 50% of the Francophonie budget”, he said.

He proposes the creation of a “Francophone Foundation” which would report to the OIF but could raise private funding for language programs.

Germany and France Drifting Apart Linguistically

Eurotopics summarizes a recent Le Monde article as follows:

The two neighbors drifting apart linguistically

Le Monde daily newspaper addresses the decline of French and German as foreign languages in both Germany and France. “The bad news is that co-operation is going through difficult times. There is the recurring issue of French teaching in Germany and of German teaching in France being both in parallel decline for all the promises repeated with each summit. … Even deserving efforts in border areas often result in failure, as the students' parents tend to favor English when choosing a first foreign language [for their children]. … Don't count on cultural institutes to compensate for the school system's failures, since they, on both sides of the Rhine, have been hit by budget cuts ordered by overscrupulous accountants in foreign affairs ministries' budget departments. The network of French cultural institutes in Germany has shrunk to next to nothing in the last few years, while the Goethe Institutes in France have fallen prey to similar belt-tightening measures.”

New Defeats For Francophoniacs

In the BBC, 08:04 GMT, Friday, 23 January 2009:

New lingua franca upsets French

That the French resent the global supremacy of the English language is nothing new, but as Hugh Schofield finds out, a newly evolved business-speak version is taking over.

They were giving out the annual Prix de la Carpette Anglaise the other day. Literally it means the English Rug Prize, but doormat would be the better translation.

Lord Nelson
Quel horreur! Lord Nelson is the inspiration for a French rock band

As the citation explains, the award goes to the French person or institution who has given the best display of "fawning servility" to further the insinuation into France of the accursed English language.

Among the runners-up this year: the supermarket company Carrefour ­which changed the name of its Champion chain of stores to Carrefour Market, as in not the French word "marche".

Also the provocatively-named Paris band Nelson (the Admiral, not Mr Mandela is who they have in mind) whose frontman J.B. sings in English because, he says, French does not have the right cadences for true rock.

Worst offender

But topping the poll for grave disservices to the mother tongue: France's higher education minister, Valerie Pecresse.

Valerie Pecresse
Valerie Pecresse has decided if you cannot beat then, join them

Her crime: proclaiming to the press that she had no intention of speaking French when attending European meetings in Brussels, because, she said, it was quite obvious that English was now the easiest mode of communication.

The rise and rise of the English language is a sensitive subject for many here in France, who believe: one, that French has every bit as much right to be considered a global tongue.

And two, even conceding to English victory in the war for linguistic supremacy, the least the French themselves can do is defend their own territory and keep the ghastly invader at a decent remove.


The same group that sponsors the Prix de la Carpette also brings legal actions against companies that, it says, breach the law.

For example, by not issuing French language versions of instructions to staff.

(...)

Recently I have spent a lot of time in French multinational companies, and what is inescapable is the stranglehold that English already has on the world of business here.

French executives draft reports, send e-mails, converse with their international colleagues - and increasingly even amongst themselves - in English.

It is of course a kind of bastardised, runty form of business-speak full of words like "drivers" and "deliverables" and "outcomes" to be "valorised", but nonetheless quite definitely not French.

A Proud Failure

It's not only yours truly, more and more French are becoming unable to continue to deny their increasing loss of cultural radiance and their failure to establish their language as the other global lingua franca. It was to be expected from Gallic vanity that one of those would find in this sorry state of affairs another reason to blow their own horn:   

Ici gît un peuple orgueilleux. (Hommage au déclin de la langue française.)

J’aime l’idée d’appartenir à une civilisation mourante. D’être le dernier d’une lignée. Vivre les derniers âges d’une culture ancienne qui est passée par tous les états d’âme. Nous avons construit des cathédrales et défriché les forêts de hêtres. Nous avons porté la guerre hors de nos contrées pour verser le sang dans les sillons de glaise. Nous avons eu la prétention insensée de porter nos lumières, brillantes sur le métal de nos baïonnettes. Nos marches militaires ont résonné comme la foudre à mille lieux de nos vergers. Tandis que le feu nous consumait, nous avons rédigé des textes immortels conservés dans nos encyclopédies. Nous avons associé le bois et la pierre dans nos demeures et chéri les arts plus que notre propre sang.

Puissions-nous disparaître aujourd’hui comme une fleur se fane après avoir connu la beauté et blessé de ses épines la main qui la voulait caresser. Que l’on oublie le chant du français ! Qu’il devienne la langue morte d’un peuple oublié ! Que l’on se souvienne de nous comme des Sumériens, sans plus de haine ou de tristesse ou alors avec un peu de tendresse.

Je veux m’endormir comme un ancien celte [sic] dans une forêt de Bretagne, statue de pierre grise couverte de mousses dans des dentelles de lumière au pied des grands arbres et des ruisseaux paisibles. Je veux que mes pensées deviennent des croyances oubliées et mes rêves de sombres contes pour les soirs d’orage où le vent rappellera notre passage.

H. le Khan (Né en 1979, on ne sait trop où)

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Que Reste-t-il de la Culture Française ?

Donald Morrison, author of the controversial Times piece on the decline of French culture, talks to le Monde about the French culture's loss of global significance and why it matters so much to France:

Donald Morrison, journaliste, auteur de "Que reste-t-il de la culture française ?" 

C comme culture, D comme déclin, E comme erreur ?

LE MONDE | 29.11.08 | 20h48 • Mis à jour le 30.11.08 | 11h01

Dans votre livre, Que reste-t-il de la culture française ?, qui prolonge votre article de Time Magazine, vous précisez que celui-ci vous avait été commandé par des Anglais et que "la rivalité historique entre les deux pays" peut faire peser un certain soupçon sur cette demande. Pourquoi alors avoir accepté la commande ?

J'ai d'abord refusé, je trouvais qu'il n'y avait pas là de sujet, je vis à Paris plusieurs mois par an et la culture est partout, bien vivante. Mais quand j'ai regardé l'impact de cette riche culture outre-Atlantique, j'ai vu qu'il était quasi nul, surtout si on le compare au rayonnement français de la fin du XIX^e siècle et de la première moitié du XX^e. Alors, j'ai cherché à comprendre. J'ai constaté, en premier lieu, le déclin de la langue française.

Il faut pourtant attendre la page 100 pour voir surgir cet argument. Lorsqu'une langue n'est plus dominante, le rayonnement culturel est moindre.

C'est tout à fait vrai pour la littérature, mais ça ne devrait pas jouer pour les autres arts. Or, à l'exception des architectes, les artistes français, plasticiens, musiciens, sont moins cotés que leurs contemporains britanniques ou américains.

"L'art n'est plus considéré avec le sérieux nécessaire en France", écrivez-vous. N'est-ce pas là le vrai problème, non pas la culture française, mais la France et son déni de sa propre culture, son manque d'intérêt pour la culture ?

Si, en partie. Je cite le cas du photographe Helmut Newton, qui a vécu en France, aimait la France et a voulu donner des photos à la France. On a refusé, il les a données à Berlin. Et que dire de François Pinault emportant sa collection à Venise ?

Est-ce que votre article et votre livre - dans une moindre mesure parce que plus nuancé - ont exaspéré les Français parce que vous leur montrez, en creux, une image d'eux-mêmes qui les dérange ?

Celle de gens qui, tout en proclamant le contraire, n'aiment pas leur culture. Il suffit de voir la sévérité des critiques sur la production française, et leur indulgence à l'égard de ce qui vient d'ailleurs, notamment des Etats-Unis, en particulier en littérature. Si on camouflait certains textes français en textes américains, ils feraient la couverture des magazines branchés. Et inversement, un roman américain moyen transformé en production française serait, à coup sûr, démoli.

C'est vrai, mais ce n'est qu'une partie du problème. Il faut aller plus loin dans le rapport de la France à sa culture. Même si les critiques font ce que vous décrivez, la France assiste sa culture, et il est facile d'être célèbre en France avec des romans médiocres, nombrilistes, des films que personne ne voit sauf sur Canal+. Les artistes n'ont pas à se battre, pas plus que les éditeurs, les producteurs, les galeristes. Il est bien plus facile ici d'être un artiste, singulièrement un écrivain, qu'aux Etats-Unis.

On voit pourtant moins d'à-valoir colossaux.

Parce qu'il n'y a pas d'agents. Mais ici tout le monde écrit, tout le monde peut et veut écrire. Et il est facile d'être publié, j'en suis la preuve.

Il est vrai que trop de Français se croient écrivains. Mais certains le sont. Pas toujours avec un mode de narration semblable à celui des Américains, modèle désormais dominant. Le roman américain aujourd'hui - sauf pour quelques grands écrivains - c'est souvent avoir "a story", une bonne histoire, déjà prête pour le cinéma.

Oui, mais c'est une narration empruntée aux grands auteurs français du XIX^e siècle, Balzac par exemple.

Peut-être. Alors, comment expliquez-vous que les critiques littéraires de langue anglaise, à travers le monde, en 2000, aient désigné comme plus grand écrivain de langue anglaise du XX^e siècle James Joyce, dont on ne peut pas dire qu'il soit un tenant de ce type de narration ?

Je l'ignorais... C'est très français... En France, c'est le Nouveau Roman qui a fait du mal à la littérature. Certes, il était lu à l'étranger, mais les plus jeunes ont voulu le continuer et c'est devenu l'autofiction.

Claude Simon, précurseur de l'autofiction ? La plupart des jeunes auteurs ne font pas d'autofiction. Quant à la génération qui suit immédiatement celle du Nouveau Roman - Le Clézio, Modiano, Sollers et quelques autres - elle est aussi très loin de ce que vous suggérez. Ils sont plus traduits que vous ne le pensez, sauf aux Etats-Unis. Mais, comme le dit Philip Roth, où sont les lecteurs ?

Enfin, pourquoi n'avoir critiqué que la France ? Vous auriez pu dire aussi, peut-être à tort, que l'Allemagne n'avait pas trouvé ses nouveaux Robert Musil, Thomas Mann...

C'est le fond de l'affaire. La France est le seul pays au monde pour lequel la grandeur signifie la grandeur de la culture. C'est un pays qui n'a pas seulement été fondé sur des principes politiques, mais sur la pensée, sur les Lumières. La "francité" passe par la culture, et c'est ça que j'ai touché dans mon article de Time. Sans une culture supérieure, la France devient un autre pays.

Dans le livre, le sous-titre de votre article du Time est traduit ainsi : "Qui peut citer le nom d'un artiste ou d'un écrivain français vivant ayant une dimension internationale ?".

Or le propos en anglais, "global significance", était plus dévalorisant.

J'aurais dû dire "reputation" et non "significance".

A propos de "global significance", que pensez-vous du Nobel de Le Clézio ?

Je m'en réjouis, il écrit une littérature ouverte sur l'extérieur, pas franco-centrée.

Pensez-vous l'avoir aidé par vos critiques de la France ? Vous avez entendu les déclarations de l'Académie Nobel sur la culture américaine.

Les Nobel ont raison sur un point, le manque de curiosité des Américains pour tout ce qui vient de l'étranger. Mais ils ont tort sur la littérature américaine elle-même. Quoi qu'il en soit, le Nobel est un prix assez politique, et de plus en plus politiquement correct. Et je ne crois pas avoir influencé le vote.

En revanche je suis heureux de prendre ma part des prix littéraires français de cette année, un Goncourt afghan, un Renaudot guinéen et un Médicis avec un gros livre pas du tout narcissique.

Là où les tigres sont chez eux, de Jean-Marie Blas de Roblès, qui a reçu le Médicis, a pourtant été étrillé par ceux qui délirent devant tout ce qui vient d'Amérique.

Je ne conteste pas cette réalité. Mais convenez que les écrivains américains se saisissent beaucoup plus que les français des grands problèmes du monde. La Shoah, la seconde guerre mondiale, le Vietnam, les questions du développement, du terrorisme...

On a le sentiment que vous faites ce constat sans lire les auteurs français. Et dans le livre, dans les remerciements, ne figure qu'un seul écrivain français, Marc Levy. En avez-vous rencontré d'autres ?

... J'aurais pu mentionner Bernard-Henri Lévy, mais nous ne nous connaissons pas assez.

Un point de détail : que voulez-vous dire en affirmant qu'à sa mort Françoise Sagan n'avait rien écrit d'intéressant depuis cinquante ans ?

Je ne suis pas le seul hors de France à penser cela.

Elle est morte en 2004, elle a publié Bonjour tristesse en 1954, elle aurait donc écrit un seul bon livre ?

Aimez-vous Brahms..., c'est plus tard ?

1959.

... Alors disons quarante-cinq ans.

Croyez-vous ? Avec mon meilleur souvenir, très bon livre, est de 1984... Et toute ma sympathie, de 1993, et Derrière l'épaule, où elle juge son oeuvre avec beaucoup de sévérité, de 1998...

Peut-être, mais c'est encore une qui a écrit sur elle-même et ses amis, rien de plus.

Passons au théâtre. Que veut dire "malheureusement la France produit plus de Soulier de satin que de Fugueuses" ?

Je n'aurais pas dû prendre comme exemple Le Soulier de satin, magnifique pièce de Claudel - mais pas accessible. Je voulais dire qu'en France, il y a trop peu de pièces intelligentes accessibles à un large public. Il y a du théâtre très populaire et du théâtre élitiste, c'est tout. Et la Comédie-Française, qui monte le répertoire. A Londres et aux Etats-Unis, c'est autre chose, on a du jeune théâtre intelligent sans être élitiste.

Les architectes, vous le disiez, échappent au déclin que vous décrivez. Pourtant vous estimez que la France privilégie ses propres architectes pour des projets médiocres.

Oui, la bibliothèque François-Mitterrand, l'Opéra-Bastille...

... Dont l'architecte est canadien.

Qu'avez-vous pensé de la réaction de Bernard-Henri Lévy à votre article ? Il y voyait une crainte de la culture américaine sur elle-même.

J'ai une mauvaise nouvelle pour lui : les Américains ne pensent plus du tout à la France, les Américains ne se préoccupent pas de savoir comment leur culture est reçue à l'étranger. C'est un pays suffisamment grand pour qu'ils se sentent assurés de ce qu'est être américain et avoir une culture qui se porte très bien. Ils regardent l'Asie, mais pas pour sa culture. Ils ne craignent pas les romans indiens, les films chinois, etc.

Moi j'enseigne depuis quelque temps en Chine. La culture y est en expansion. Mais il y a du chemin à faire.

Après tout ce que vous dites de la France, pourquoi donc aimez-vous y vivre ?

Mais pour la culture, bien sûr !

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Can French compete with France's local tongues?

The French elites love posturing as protectors of language diversity on the world stage, but everyone knows that there is nothing they fear more than competition, starting at home:

Right after the French Academy strongly denounced a constitutional revision recognizing linguistic diversity as part of France’s heritage, the French Senate voted 2-to-1 to kill the measure. Article 1 of the French Constitution defines France as an indivisible, secular, democratic republic. On May 22, the French National Assembly voted all-but-unanimously – there was one negative vote – to modify that formula by adding the nation’s many local languages to the short list of constitutionally-protected civic virtues: “[France’s] regional languages belong to its patrimony.” But on Monday the Académie Française rejected any attempt to constitutionalize local languages as “an attack on French national identity.”  Article 2 of the French Constitution clearly states, “The language of the Republic is French.” As the Academy reads it, the national identity can only be expressed through French. 

 In an uncharacteristic comment on pending legislation, the 40 Immortals of the French Academy called constitutional recognition of regional languages “an attack on national identity.” While France has always been a linguistically-diverse country – the nation is even named after the Franks, a medieval Germanic tribe – the French government has often denied that heritage, preferring the myth of one nation speaking one language. After the French Revolution, the government actively sought to eradicate local patois, replacing them with French. But at the start of World War I, French army officials were shocked to discover that many of their new recruits still could not understand the language of command (as Monty Python might have asked, how do you say, “Run away,” in French?).

By 1930, one quarter of the French were still speaking a regional language, and even today, a good 10 million of France’s 60 million residents don’t speak French at home. Not counting the languages of immigrants, there are 29 local languages spoken in the Hexagon, as the French call mainland France.  (Another 45 or so native languages are spoken in current French territories and in its former colonies.) According to Ethnologue,the regional languages of France include Alemannisch, or Aslatian (1.5 million speakers); Auvergnat, or Occitan (1.3 million); Breton (500,000); Provençal (250,000); Romani (about 50,000); Corsican (340,000) and Yiddish (numbers not available). Historically, students in French schools were punished for speaking Breton, Alsatian, and Occitan (while speakers of Yiddish were simply deported), and France is one of the few nations refusing to sign the European Union’s charter giving legal rights to minority-language speakers. Linguistic diversity in the Hexagon The government of President Nicolas Sarkozy urged Parliament to support regional-language protection, as did many community activists.

Even the rigid national educational system makes allowance for linguistic diversity. According to Radio France, on Tuesday almost 6,000 students took their Baccalauréat, or national high school exit exams, in a regional language. But the senators were not convinced, and on Wednesday they shut down the regional languages protection clause with a resounding “Non!”   Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a prominent Socialist Party senator who opposes constitutional protections for regional languages (photo: Le Figaro) While both the Senate and the Académie admit that other languages are spoken in France, they insist that constitutional recognition of this fact would imperil national unity and subvert the principles of the revolution, which sought to subsume individual variation in order to achieve liberté, égalité, and fraternité, a process which caused many French citizens to lose their heads. The French newspaper le Monde editorialized that living languages don’t need constitutional notice in order to exist, and opponents of regional language support observed that regional languages, like a religions, were a matter of personal choice, not something to be privileged in the Constitution. Others mocked the language proposal by calling for constitutional recognition of France’s highly-regarded regional cuisines. And several argued that instead of quibbling over the rights of Breton or Auvergnat speakers, France needed to unite under the banner of French to fight the real linguistic danger to national identity, world English. Of course none of the defenders of French against the onslaught of both local and international languages acknowledged that English managed to achieve the status of a world language without constitutional recognition in either the United States or Great Britain. 

English wasn’t even a regional language when it started out, just an insignificant dialect spoken on a tiny island off the coast of Europe. It grew to its present position not through legal protection but through the power of guns, dollars, computers, and rock ‘n’ roll. French was the language on every cultured European’s lips when the English were still wondering whether their language was mature enough to have grammatical structure. But today French itself has become one of the world’s regional languages, with fewer speakers than Chinese, Hindi, English, Spanish, or Russian. Clearly the Académie Française and the French Sénat think that French needs all the constitutional help it can get, though the editors of le Monde must surely realize that, just as living languages don’t require constitutional protection to exist, constitutional privilege can’t protect French as it competes against the living languages of France, not to mention the languages of the rest of the world. 

UPDATE: On Monday, July 21, the French Senate reconsidered and passed the Constitutional reform package, which includes recognition of regional languages, by one vote more than the required 3/5ths majority. Article 75.1 of the Constitution now reads:"Les langues régionales appartiennent au patrimoine de la France."

20 Jun 2008

debaron@uiuc.edu

Edited Date: 23 Jul 2008

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The Globalization of Language

Technorati:Spread of English,Japanese obsession with English

BY AMIN GHADIMI
PUBLISHED OCTOBER 29, 2008 on the columbiaspectator.com

In case anyone had any doubt, the contagiousness of our current economic crisis has made it painfully clear how integrated our global neighborhood is. It doesn’t make much sense, though, that we can’t all speak about this world-embracing problem in the same language—literally. It is time that all nations swallow their pride and agree to adopt a common language, one that every person on Earth would speak, read, and write.
Visceral reactions to such a call for language commonality are understandably indignant. What about national sovereignty, cultural identity, or tradition and history? On the surface, demanding that everyone speak the same language seems bigoted and culturally imperialistic—who can say that one language is better than all others?
A universal language does not, however, mean the extermination of linguistic diversity.
It is possible to maintain bilingualism or even multilingualism in a society. Everyone at Columbia, for instance, speaks English, but we are all required to learn a foreign language as well. Rather than linguistically and culturally homogenizing the world, speaking a common language would increase opportunities for cross-cultural dialogue and intercultural understanding, as it would allow direct dialogue between people of different origins.
Furthermore, times of economic suffering remind us that being rational and pragmatic is sometimes more important than clinging to tradition. It is inevitable that some feeling of national sovereignty and distinction will be lost if everyone speaks the same language, but it is naive to believe that the conception of cultures as discrete entities has not already been significantly eroded. The fact of the matter is that adopting a universal language is not too large of a step from where we already find ourselves in our globalized world—English has already infiltrated societies across the globe.
Evidence for the proliferation of English abounds. France has found itself so inundated by English that one of the branches of its Ministry of Culture, the Commission Générale de Terminologie et de Néologie, has devoted itself to preventing the contamination of the French language by English words. Although it maintains Web sites intended to encourage French speakers to use native alternatives for words such as “podcasting” and for phrases like “beach volleyball,” it is difficult to be optimistic about its chances for success when words such as “Internet” have become so universally ingrained.
Indeed, if the French backlash against English only hints at the extent of the globalization of English, the Japanese obsession with English offers unequivocal evidence. It is not only words for things that are un-Japanese, such as “pizza” or “necktie,” that the Japanese borrow from English. Using English in Japan has become so trendy that English words regularly replace Japanese ones in pop culture: for example, “getto,” Japan’s adaptation of the word “get,” is so frequently used that it has become part of the vocabulary of the average Japanese youth. With English so prevalent in societies across the globe, it isn’t as huge a leap as one would expect to call for a more formalized, codified role of a global language. The obstacles are largely ideological and psychological—the will rather than the way seems to be the largest barrier to linguistic unity.
Yet the fact that English has become increasingly globalized does not in itself justify a more formal role for universal language. The reasons for a global language are more fundamental and more pressing. A common language would be a significant step towards the elimination, or at least the diminution, of racial and cultural prejudices that have no place in our contemporary world. When people are technologically capable of communicating with essentially anyone in the world with Internet access, why should they be linguistically deprived of this opportunity?
More importantly, a single global language makes economic sense. According to an article in July 2006 in British newspaper the Independent, the European Union budgeted one billion euros for translation of documents into each of what was then its 20 official languages. One billion euros is only the budget for one year in the EU—the cumulative cost of translation for small and large businesses and organizations across the globe must be staggering. With world economies slipping into recession, it is the right time to reconsider the wisdom of allocating resources to the culturally symbolic but highly impractical and difficult service of translation.
Of course, some may rightly argue that adopting a universal language would also incur costs. Would the staggering one-time cost of translating already-existing documents in all countries to a single global language really be less than the cumulative daily costs of translation? What would happen to translators and interpreters whose jobs would be demoded? How feasible would such a shift to a common language be? How many generations would it take? All these questions are profound and challenging, but they are nonetheless—or therefore—ones that multinational organizations should consider carefully.
Our global economic recession reminds us that we are all interconnected on this planet, and it is detrimental to seek to sustain anachronistic and artificial linguistic barriers merely for the sake of the antiquated concept of cultural autonomy. Each nation, of course, should value its own culture highly and seek to preserve it, but not at the cost of the welfare and progress of our world. Perhaps the United Nations could put the question of language on its agenda. To avoid having English or any other language inadvertently or arbitrarily imposed upon them, nations must proactively and cooperatively decide their own linguistic destiny.

The author is a Columbia College first-year.

You cannot dictate to ordinary people what words and coins they use

The Spectator, Jun 5, 1999 by Johnson, Paul:

The European Union is an anti-democratic institution run by bureaucrats, lawyers and political elites. When it is put to the democratic test - that is, when the people have a genuine choice about whether or not to abide by its wishes - it invariably gets the thumbs-down. Two particular instances are language and currency. You cannot dictate to ordinary people what words and coins they use. These two things go right to the root of their beings and they decide for themselves. At French insistence, the EU refuses even to consider using English as the common language, though it is the obvious choice, and the Academie francaise makes continual efforts, often assisted by law and government, to ban English. Yet the French themselves, led by their own teenagers, use more and more Anglo-Saxon expressions. Not long ago I spotted Le Monde, which huffs and puffs about the purity of the language, using 'stopper' in a front-page headline, though there is a perfectly good French word. In the same paper, in a front-page article complaining about Anglo-Saxon `cultural imperialism', the author employed the noun 'manager', though again there are two or three acceptable French alternatives.

More and more organisations inside continental Europe use English in their handouts because it makes sense. In Germany and Sweden, important companies with worldwide business now conduct their board meetings in English because it saves time and avoids misunderstandings. A few years ago, a journalist from Scandinavia, where all speak English and very few French, complained to Jacques Delors at a Brussels press conference that he answered questions only in French and had no simultaneous translation. Why? Delors answered that French was `the language of diplomacy', adding under his breath `et de la civilisation'. Neither statement has been true for a very long time.

The currency issue is more acute because the EU has deliberately chosen a common currency as the first step towards a federal superstate. It has identified its future with the success of the euro. This bureaucratic artefact has not even been subjected to the real judgment of the people since it does not yet circulate from palm to palm. But the traders do not want it because they know governments will not stick to the bankers' rules, which must be observed if it is to succeed, and in five months the sceptics have been proved absolutely right. Currency, like language, is demotic. In parts of East Africa villagers still trade and save in Maria Theresa silver thalers from 18th-century Austria because they trust them. In Russia, even under the old Communist regime and long before the rouble officially collapsed, ordinary people used dollars if they could get hold of them. Even Brezhnev had a dollar credit card; so did Mrs Gorbachev; Soviet cruise liners accepted only dollars. It made sense. It's not clear whether we need an official world currency yet but, if we do, the dollar is the obvious candidate. There is no reason why many small countries should have their own currency, any more than their own airline. Bermuda has used the dollar for many years with great success. Argentina, which has managed to keep the peso at parity with the dollar, now wants to join the dollar zone; so does Peru. I foresee a future in which all Latin American countries which contrive to run stable, successful economies will in practice treat the dollar as their own coin.

The Toubon Laws: Language Protection At Its Unpopular Worst

French language protection as advocated by the likes of Chirac always was a thing of the undemocratic elites. The Toubon laws never had a basis in French public opinion. Language and Nationalism in Europe by Stephen Barbour, Cathie Carmichael:




Language and Nationalism in Europe
By Stephen Barbour, Cathie Carmichael
Contributor Stephen Barbour, Cathie Carmichael
Published by Oxford University Press, 2000
ISBN 0198236719, 9780198236719
319 pages

Tiberge: "French literature today does not exist, nor does poetry"

Noted blogger Lawrence Auster Tiberge on the decline of French, December 03, 2005:

As for the French language, of course it was richer, clearer and more full-bodied (if I may compare it to wine) in the centuries of the monarchy and into the nineteenth century. Learning to read French literature was one of the joys of my life, and I was so impressed precisely by that “clarté” you speak of. The language has declined terribly in the latter half of the 20th century. Reading these French websites is often an agony. The slang, the acronyms, the horrible spelling, and the tendency to get entangled in specious “raisonnements” are all indicators of the collapse of their culture. French literature today does not exist, nor does poetry. And those who do attempt to write well are under the spell of political correctness, so they speak without saying anything. French magazines and newspapers are boring and often written in short elliptical phrases for those who can’t stand long sentences.
I believe the rise of totalitarian ideologies in the 19th century had something to do with all this. French writers and philosophers were suddenly dealing with terrifying ideas that had dreadful consequences and they could not cope. They tried to be more intelligent, more piercing than they were capable of and the result is boring and contradictory garbage that young people loved and quoted as if it were Gospel. I tried to read Sartre and couldn’t follow it. But he’s clear compared to others. The mutation of their culture meant the end of their language as well. Without great writers, you won’t have a great language.

Also, they are in such fierce competition with us that they twist whatever they say to ensure it does not sound too much like what an American would say. Recently on CNN Dominique de Villepin said that the riots were not real riots because nobody was killed, unlike American riots where people were killed (in 1992). He said the rioters were between the ages of 12 and 20, so it was a completely different type of event. What he was saying was that France’s riots are superior to America’s riots. When you think like this, how can you speak clearly?

Actually, Auster Tiberge could have pointed out that people did die in the 2005 French riots. So did one native Frenchman make the mistake of going out of the building he lived in to try and do some damage control when he was beaten up by youth and subsequently died of his injuries. All such incidents were initially reported, yet French and liberal media were not too keen to call the French government on its lie when it later claimed in interviews with foreign media that what it called "civil unrests" didn't cause any fatalities.
Don't believe me? Here you are, courtesy of the Beeb 

Ten policemen were injured by shots and stones when they confronted 200 rioters in the Paris suburb of Grigny, with two policemen seriously hurt.

President Jacques Chirac has said restoring order is his top priority.

Meanwhile a man who fell into a coma after being beaten last week is thought to be the first fatality of the unrest.

Jean-Jacques Le Chenadec, 61, was reportedly struck by a hooded man in the street after he and a neighbour went to inspect damage to bins near their apartment block in the town of Stains, in the Seine-Saint-Denis region outside Paris.

In the New York Times:

France's growing urban unrest claimed its first life today and Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin later indicated on French television that the government was near a decision to allow local officials to impose curfews.

The dead man, Jean-Jacques Le Chenadec, 61, had been in a coma since he was attacked by a hooded youth last week while talking with a neighbor about their cars near a working-class housing development in the Parisian suburb of Stains.

First Lady Carla Bruni Heaps Scorn On French Obsession With Language

The Times Of India, 20 Jan 2008:

"I like to be Italian. I like the Italian temperament and I like Italian food. French people are in a bad mood for some reason, and the Italian people are in a good mood.

"French people are always negative. They're also crazy about their own language, so every time there's something that's not in French, they get so mad about it," the 'Daily Mail' quoted Bruni as saying.

When asked if the famously elegant Paris was a nicer city than London, she said: "I don't think so. I've really been surprised at how beautiful London is.

"And in London you don't feel the pollution because there are so many parks. In Paris, I live on the edge of the city because it's the only place where you have green spaces. In the middle of Paris, it's really hard, really unbearable."

In France, the French language is being reduced to a local dialect.

BBC's Caroline Wyatt, 08 Feb 07:

A group of trades unions and language lobbyists say the French language is being reduced to a local dialect.
"We can no longer tolerate this," said Albert Salon, president of the French-speaking campaigning group, Forum Francophone International.

"We are not against influences of one language by another, or the occasional borrowing of words, but now there is a wholesale substitution of the French language for English."

He said in many companies it had become standard practice for native French speakers to use English even among themselves and French scientists were forced to publish their research, in English, in leading US journals.

"We have nothing against the Brits or the Americans," Mr Salon said.

"But we simply cannot accept that our language is reduced to a local dialect"
(...)
But Pierre Kosciusko-Morizet, CEO and founder of French site Priceminister.com, accepts that having English as a global business language enables him to converse with foreign colleagues in a common tongue.

"Some things are facts and you can't fight against them," Mr Kosciusko-Morizet said.

"We can promote French but I don't see very efficient ways of fighting English. English didn't become the global language of business by fighting other languages," he added.

Author David Sedaris Doesn't Like Living In France

By ANDREW DANSBY, Houston Chronicle 2008:

Question: So do you still like living in France?
Sedaris: Oh, I don't know. I applied for citizenship in England. I just found that France as I get older makes me crabby. (...)
In France people are more selfish. ``I'm the center of the universe. I'm going to stand in front of the turnstile of the subway and call a friend because I feel lonely and you need to go around me.'' Or ``I'm going to allow my dog to defecate in the doorway of your store, and he's an animal, and you need to understand that.''

The French language risks becoming obsolete in the 21st century

in the Guardian, 2001:

The French language risks becoming obsolete in the 21st century, overwhelmed by a bastardised English which has itself been ruined by neologisms and barbarisms.
The warning came from the historian Alain Decaux, a member of of the elite Académie Française, during a debate at the Institut de France in Paris in which the French language and culture were deemed to be in a state of crisis.

"Is French going to find itself in the same situation as those American Indian languages whose memory Chateaubriand said was kept alive only by a few old parrots on the Orinoco river?" Mr Decaux asked.

"Anglo-American is taking hold in the economy, advertising, research, public services, the army, training, international institutions."

Mr Decaux recalled that French was once the language of diplomacy and European culture, but that had changed, thanks to President Georges Clemenceau's peace negotiations after the first world war.

"He wanted to pay homage to our British and American allies by allowing the treaty of Versailles to be written in both French and English," said Mr Decaux. "This first surrender can be regarded as being at the start of lots of others." Now, 90% of UN documents are in English.

The True Face of France

This blog is more on the scholarly side, but sometimes ones needs a good, unpretentious laugh, so check out this vid by CharvelRepsol2:



Or you can find it here on youtube. Enjoy!

The Futility of Defending French

The futility of defending languages has been amply demonstrated by France à son corps défendant, as Robin Adamson's The Defence of French: A Language in Crisis? describes in a number of passages. Here is a selection:














The Defence of French: A Language in Crisis?
By Robin Adamson
Published by Multilingual Matters, 2007
ISBN 1853599492, 9781853599491
199 pages

French TV Won't Give Shows French Names

In the noted blog la Petite Anglaise:

The CSA (French broadcasting watchdog), which counts among its missions the responsibility for protecting and regulating the use of French on television and radio, has requested that television channels make more of an effort to give their shows French titles. If an English title is used, the CSA recommends an accompanying translation into French.

This is the latest manifestation of a futile ongoing battle against la surabondance de termes anglais ou anglicisés à la télévision et à la radio. In the firing line are a whole host of mostly Endemol-produced reality TV shows with names like ‘Star Academy’, ‘Loft Story’, ‘Popstars’ and ‘Fear factor’.
(...)
An amusing article in Libération points out that the literal translation of “Loft Story’ would give us the following catchy title: ‘Loft Story: Une histoire de local a usage commercial ou industriel amenage en local d’habitation’.

Probably not. The CSA is not actually planning to use its power to sanction TV production companies who do not toe the line. TF1 have already made a statement to the effect that Star Academy, the show responsible for inflicting Jennifer and Nolwenn on the French pop music scene, will not undergo a name change.
(...)
The CSA is worried that the use of English words in TV programme titles devalues French language and culture, making programmes with French titles seem inferior or old-fashioned in comparison.

Personally, I can’t help thinking that the CSA is missing the point. Perhaps more attention needs to be paid to the quality of French TV production itself, and not simply the language of titles. Why are so many shows and reality TV formats being imported, I wonder? Could it possibly be *whispers* that home-grown productions are actually Not Very Good?

Some comments there:
sra:

I always found it so strange that so much of French television was dubbed (usually from English, but sometimes from German - I would wonder why this show didn’t look familiar until the credits rolled and they were all named Helmut or something). Why don’t they make anything of their own? Actually, I’ve seen Sous le Soleil or whatever it is, so maybe it’s best if they stick with imports.

kim:

I agree though that french programming is just pathetic. There is some series that was on M6 recently called something like “Thom et Léo, flics et jumeaux.” Not only is the premise incredibly stupid, but they couldn’t even be bothered to find a title that could possibly intrigue people to watch it!

Gamera:

With my bilingual friends we used to make up a game where you would try to guess how the French or the Italians would have translated/massacred that movie title. Sometimes we’ve got hillarious title names that had no connection whatsover with the original title. But the scarriest thing was to go back to France and realise that they have been using titles that are even more ridiculous. Same goes for all the dozens of English titles one Japanese or Chinese film can have.

But all in all dubbing, outside of Holand and Scandinavia, is an economical necessity as it is the way local French, German, Italian, etc.. actors make most of their money. UK actors already have it tough unless they leave to the US like Minnie Driver and her sis did. Imagine what it is for German or French actors who are maybe offered one good role in one good film every 5 years. Most of the time they have to do voice over jobs, some can survive by doing theater, and a lot get only jobs for those god awful French or German TV-Dramas.

So without dubbing, there would be no jobs for European actors. They would be like their peers in Blighty forced to immigrate to Hollowood. Except that have you ever heard a French actor speaking English? OUCH!

As for anglicismes. In some fields like marketing or IT the French or the Germans love them, except that these are words which just don’t mean squat in English. So I’m having a very very tough time re-adapting to French professional life and trying to not offend them by pretending to ignore their crap anglicism fade and their god awfull English. I did work for the European Space Agency and Eumetsat. Now, I’m not a yank/brit making fun of the French, I ‘m a European (French) comparing France with the rest of Europe and realising that there is a huge widening gap between France and the rest of Europe (the political and executive Europe). And one of these days France will just be way behind everyone else in Europe that it will have to split away from it to survive unless it adapts.

Ribby:

In the year and a half that I’ve been here, I’ve come to realise that the majority of homegrown French TV is rubbish.

How to Circumvent the Toubon Law

In French Food vs. fast Food, by Rixa Ann Spencer Freeze: