ERCIM News No.26 - July 1996

In Favour of Multilinguism

by Bernard Quemada

The linguistic unification of Europe is no longer a necessary requisite to overcome language barriers; the identity of Europe can only be represented adequately by respecting its diversity. And only the promotion of all its national languages will allow us to preserve the richness of the culture of which these languages are the privileged means of expression. The multilingual policy adopted by Europe is thus a critical test for the European Union.

In 1995, the European Council officially recognised the importance of multilinguality by twice taking a strong position in its favour. At Corfu, the importance of linguistic questions in the Information Society was underlined; in Cannes, the intention to support linguistic diversity and to promote multilinguality in all the strategic decisions and actions of the Union was confirmed. In this way, the Council explicitly recognised the separate identity, the intellectual resources and national heritage legitimately associated with each of the European languages. It was acknowledged that the cultural, economic, social and political values involved are so considerable that they cannot be ignored or neglected.

Faced with the need to provide means for standardization with respect to the worldwide diffusion of communications in the Information Society, the preservation of multilingualism is both a priority and a strategic objective. Although, it cannot be denied that a simplified version of English is currently used in most scientific, technical, financial, and commercial exchanges of information, the consequences must be evaluated. The apparent convenience does not and cannot compensate for the impoverishment of the quality of such exchanges and the constraints imposed on the intellectual products that result from this type of exchange. This kind of impoverishment increasingly concerns the whole world, not even the English language can be considered as immune p; its very identity is threatened by this tendency towards simplification. Immediate measures and a plan for action are now essential in order to safeguard, in the first place, the scientific and technical national languages which are those most severely threatened by this trend.

Paradoxically, the new information technologies are also being challenged by this situation; their impact on language will be even more important than that of printing during the last centuries. They represent both a danger for those languages which are unable to adopt them in time, while at the same time promise to be a means for their safeguard and promotion. The tools for automatic processing of natural language which are now being developed are certainly the best guarantee for the future of our languages.

In this spirit, a priority plan for action should be stipulated by the relevant national and European authorities, both public and private. In fact, although numerous programmes supported by the European Commission are already considering aspects of this question, the actions aimed at promoting multilinguism should be reinforced and coordinated with more consistency.

Here below, we give an indication of some of the main points to be borne in mind and objectives to be pursued:

Necessary conditions

Intensify research and development in the processing of national languages: support original industrial applications in preference to adapting imported products; not give priority only to the market laws to the detriment of language quality.
Make the linguistic resources needed for multilingual language processing in priority domains available, ie specialised corpora, lexicons1, multilingual terminologies.

Multilinguality in special domains

Implement multimedia tools for foreign language learning in science and technology, first aiming at the rapid acquisition of passive skills, ie comprehension of written texts, and then at oral competence.
Develop tools for the writing, reading and translation of specialised texts, to be implemented, for example, in office workstations.
Create programmes that make it possible to access information in foreign language texts with queries formulated in the native language.
Promote the creation of electronic journals, newsletters and forums on the network (Internet etc.) in the national languages, and, if this is not appropriate, make computational aids available to read them (mini-grammars and special lexicons1).

Valorisation of the cultural heritage

Encourage the digitizing of old and new text resources as well as the automatic acquisition of textual data in order to promote the development of digital libraries; study and develop the corresponding tools for access and querying.
Stimulate the production of tools for a renewed literary education of the public; encourage hypertextual and multimedia publications of the great European authors.

Necessary actions for all languages

Within the framework of European and global cooperation:

Intensify networking, which has already proved its effectiveness by connecting complementary projects even when coming from different programmes.
Define, generalise and promote the use of the still insufficient international standards (character sets, data structures, harmonisation of thesauri used in multilingual query systems).

The European Union is unquestionably the authority that can make these actions become fully effective. But it is still necessary that for all European languages, widely used or not, in each member state, the decision makers are made aware of the importance of stakes and above all of the urgency. Time is short, very short.

Bernard Quemada
Vice-President du Conseil Supérieur de la Langue Française http://www.culture.fr/culture/dglf/cslf.htm

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