Two requirements, hard to reconcile. Our bulletin summed up the latest row over language use in the EU, caused by a few measures relating to how the press room works, but this column left well alone. Why? Because I have no solution to offer. I haven't forgotten that having made a few reasonable suggestions to be taken at Community level, a former French Minister for European Affairs (today a member of the European Parliament) was attacked from all sides and withdrew from the fray, promising (himself, first and foremost) never to get involved in it again. Ten years ago, Jean-Louis Bourlanges said, with his usual irony: “the only way the problem of languages can be resolved is if it is never raised”. The Council as an institution took position once, in June 1995, but got no further than reaffirming the equality of the official languages and the working languages, stressing that “for the citizen, accession to Europe involves the guarantee that all the languages of the Union will be taken into account”. Nothing official can be added to this, because there is no solution which is able to take account, satisfactorily and simultaneously, of two equally legitimate but contradictory requirements: on the one hand, the people's right to claim the equality of their languages and their cultures, rejecting the dominance of one over all the others; and on the other, the fact that it is impossible for the Union to run smoothly using twenty-five languages or more. We must, therefore, accept partial compromises, which may fulfil one of the requirements, but will never manage both.
An unchanging scenario. The scenario is always, unavoidably, the same. The admin people take a few measures from time to time to keep the wheels greased; these measures don't stem from any kind of bureaucratic fixation, but are a political necessity. For example, during various difficult negotiations within the institutions, or when a foreign dignitary comes over to conclude an agreement of great importance, time is very often of the essence: the decision has to be made, you can't wait for several translations, the last compromise on any given detail has to be discussed and approved in just one language version (most often English, occasionally French), all negotiators know this. Administrative measures limiting the number of languages are usually met with understanding or resignation, but occasionally they are met by a storm; in such cases, the decision-markers realise that they've gone too far and take a step backwards. The scenario never changes, though it might seem new to the youngest.
Nor should we forget that for the so-called “minor” languages, the idea of systematic translation is no longer the best, at least in oral debates, because simultaneous interpretation is rarely direct: a speech in Finnish, Slovakian, Maltese or one of the Baltic languages, or similar, is most likely to be interpreted into English first, and then from English into the other languages. The inevitable loss of precision, or of subtle undertones, is thus doubled, occasionally even trebled. Last week, the Finnish MEP Piia-Noora Kauppi announced to the plenary session of the EP that she would speak only English from now on, because some of her colleagues, who had heard her message after it had been through the filter of a couple of other languages from its original Finnish, criticised her lack of clarity and her failure to get her point across.
A mystery. Things being how they are, I don't believe in a miracle cure, so it is with a certain amount of scepticism and disconnection that I observe certain heated discussions, for or against Esperanto, for instance. The language is a mystery even to specialists, physiologists and philosophers. At a certain point in the development of a child, something happens in the brain, they acquire language that in no time they've learned just as many words as an educated adult knows. Words learnt and syntax mastered will, for the whole of their lives, lie at the heart of how they reason and feel. A person, or a people, sometimes lose their rational points of reference when separated from their language, and their reactions are dictated by passion rather than by reason. For language, secular traditions aren't what matters most; the “historical memory” isn't much of a factor. The main thing is the language in which one learnt how to express oneself, what's known as the “mother tongue”. Very often, the States form groups on the basis of the language they use, on the basis of all being English speakers, or French speakers, or Portuguese speakers.
Considering language as a communication tool misses half the story. For any people, language is a symbol of liberty and autonomy. In Belgium, where I write these lines, the only real boundaries are linguistic ones. Taking a people's language away is like stealing their identity.
At the same time, it is entirely possible to create an intimate link with two languages, or even more in some cases. To give you a few examples off the top of my head, Joseph Conrad of Poland and the Russian Vladimir Nabokov are considered to be masters of the English language. Kafka, a Czech, always wrote in German. William Apollinaire's first language was Italian, which did not harm his extraordinary and innovative gifts to the French language. Even dead languages count: Dante and Petrarc wrote in Italian or Latin interchangeably, depending on the nature of the work in question: a few centuries later, Newton and Spinoza also wrote much of their works in Latin. How can these superficial considerations help to resolve the problem of language usage in the European Union? They can't, clearly, other than that they help to demonstrate that the problem isn't unsolvable. All that can, and should, be done is to use one's sense.
Don't confuse the causes. The last time we heard a politican say anything sensible in this field we owe to Jean-Claude Juncker. During a meeting in Luxembourg, he had been asked about the European patent, which has been at an impasse for a good while- despite its importance to the Lisbon Strategy- due to linguistic differences, Spain demanding that Spanish be one of the official languages for the patent. As I have already said (see this column of 2 February), the Luxembourg Prime Minister has voiced his sympathy and understanding for the national stances defending the cultural identity of each Member State, down to the smallest, but at the same time, he felt that in this case Spain had its causes mixed up: the patent is not an instrument to defend a country's national culture, it is a technical and legal instrument for businesses and for lawyers, something for the business world of all the Member States to understand. In this specific case, the use of English can be defended; it is also very much in the interests of all nationalities. What I didn't add is that Mr Juncker went beyond the case of the European patent to talk more generally about the languages to be used in official Community texts. He pointed out that his country had never asked for Luxembourgish to be an official Union language. All his countrymen and women speak French and German (and, increasingly, English; for official texts, this is more than enough). Mr Juncker regretted the fact that Malta, which is in a similar position to Luxembourg, did not follow its example, demanding instead that Maltese be recognised as an official language of the Union, with all the attendant complications and costs. The Member States should be able to draw a distinction between the legitimate and incontrovertible defence of their cultural identity on the one hand and bureaucratic complications on the other, which will make the smooth running of the European Union even harder whilst making its decision-making process less clear.
Our solution. I don't really know where I'm going with this. I have no opinion on Spain's plans to foot the bill for Community texts to be translated into its regional languages. To avoid any charge of preaching comprehension and reason at a purely theoretical level, may I remind you that all the writers and commentators at Agence Europe write in French, regardless of their mother tongue, to allow our bulletin to be published in all the languages we offer our subscribers at the same time. It would be impossible to translate all texts “in real time” from several different languages into French. Our team of writers is multinational, but there is just one working language; our translators are there so that our subscribers can get the bulletin in the language of their choice. What you are reading was written in French and then translated into my mother tongue, Italian, by someone else. This is not a solution, it is a compromise decreed by the needs of a press agency. The European institutions have entirely different requirements (and means to pay for them…), but in all cases, one must face facts. Without giving up on the principles of cultural and linguistic identity, but with a good healthy dose of pragmatism. I have read some excellent and intelligent texts on the use of languages in the Community institutions, I can remember one by a Mr Defraigne, another by Ms Campogrande, and yet others. Last week, a French newspaper suggested Latin's comeback as lingua franca, now that the Roman Catholic Church has dropped it. All are partly right, even the Eurocrats who are trying to impose restrictions. But the ideal solution does not exist and we must make do with imperfect arrangements. Whilst continuing to love and try to promote one's own language, but unaware that its success is down to poets and writers, not to circulars.
(F.R.)