Après Le Deluge: French Battle Anglo Terms in Web Age

Experts struggle to create equivalents for terms like 'cloud computing'

By Rob Quinn, Newser Staff

Posted Oct 14, 2009 4:27 AM CDT

(Newser) – Defenders of the French language are fighting a rear-guard action against a flood of Anglo-Saxon computing terms. In a process that lags far behind advances in technology, experts are tasked with finding French equivalents for new computing technology. The terms must then be passed by a panel of linguists and professors, who are often puzzled by the concepts involved. The new term must then be approved by the Academie Française, the official authority on the French language.

Experts were recently ordered to go back to the drawing board when, after 18 months, they came up with informatique en nuage—literally, computing in cloud—as the French term for cloud computing. "What? This means nothing to me. I put a 'cloud' of milk in my tea!" scoffed one member of the Terminology Commission. The process may be time-consuming, but "rigor cannot be compromised," the commission's head tells the Wall Street Journal. He is currently seeking a French phrase for "web widgets."

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"We won't cut people's heads off if they don't use it," the head of the Terminology Committe says, but "language is what brought this country together." (Shutter Stock)

Terms including "cyberinformatique," "cybergerance," "cybercalcul," and "cyberservice" were rejected in the hunt for a French term for "cloud computing."

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Our citizens have a right to communicate without speaking English.
- Xavier North, head of France's General Commission of Terminology and Neology

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COMMENTS

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Showing 3 of 7 comments

super_soft_wizard

Oct 19, 2009 9:01 AM CDT

Mark.... you mean quarter pounder.. because of the metric system. "A Big Mac is still a Big Mac. They just call it Le Big Mac." -- Jules Winnfield (Pulp Fiction.)

SilenceDogood

Oct 15, 2009 10:24 AM CDT

BleeBloo, is it racism? I think not. The Muslim society is 90% peaceful and benign; there are important aspects to their increasing number in French and other societies. The French are a society proud of their history; this is being diluted quickly by the massive influx of the Islamic immigration into France. I have read that there are now more mosques than churches in the south of France! The last time I checked racism was a determination or belief of a superiority of one racial group over another. I have not stated that, I stated that the Muslim immigration into France will with certitude, dilute the French culture to a vague resemblance of their former society; and this is sad. So at what point in our human existence can one utter a phrase or statement regarding anything with Race involved and not have society’s watchdogs pointing their finger damning the perpetrator as a racial bigot?

mehrheit

Oct 14, 2009 11:29 AM CDT

Ceci n'est pas un commentaire.

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Après Le Deluge: French Battle Anglo Terms in Web Age