Ceci n'est pas une endive

Tell Me How You Eat I Will Tell You Who You Are

notafish — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 14:51:00 +0200

J'ai toujours trouvé intéressant d'observer comment les gens se tiennent à table dans les différents pays. Lorsqu'on se trouve à table dans un pays dont on ne connaît pas les manières, il est toujours difficile de savoir si ce qui relève du savoir-vivre chez soi ne sera pas interprété comme une action hautement impolie ailleurs. Mais peut-être est-ce seulement mon éducation française qui joue...

I just read an extremely interesting blogpost on a parallel drawn between how Americans and Japanese dine and what this means in the workplace. The whole table manners thing has been an interest of mine for a while now. Having lived in several countries, you realize how much of a difference there can be just in the way you eat. It all starts with how the meal is structured. When does the salad come, at the beginning of the meal? Or at the end? Is it served in a big bowl or rather in individual bowls? What about the cheese? Is it served in an individual plate? On a big plate in the center of the table? Not at all?

You then need to pay attention to the table manners proper. Do you put your bread on the table? Or on the plate? Is there salt on the table? If not, am I allowed to ask for it? Or is it considered impolite to do so (the idea being that asking for salt would actually demean the culinary abilities of your host). Hands on the table, or on your lap? Do you wait to be served? Or do you serve yourself? Do you eat with your fork or with your fingers? When you're finished, do you cross your fork and knife or do you put them parallel to each other? Hardly existential questions, you'll tell me, but questions nonetheless, which answers might make you the best or the worst educated of people.

What I find most interesting in this is that something that might be perfectly polite in a country, will be considered completely rude in another, which makes for difficult and sometimes painful times. I've always hated it, when in a country of which I don't master the table manners, to have the host tell me "go ahead", because I never know what first step I should be taking and I am always scared of doing the wrong thing. Maybe it's just because I'm French and the French do care about these things...

Faute de grammaire, on mange de la dessert

notafish — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 01:55:00 +0200

It is probably a marketing trick to be using French sounding names in countries where French is not spoken. Especially for food. The "Cuisine flair, I suppose". But what really really bothers me, is when marketing does not check its grammar and ends up using the wrong gender for a word, or making a pathetic spelling and grammar mistake. Two examples in Germany, where the gender of "dessert" has been changed, or where a mousse-like dessert is called Crème Composé when it should be Crème ComposéE.

J'ai toujours eu l'impression, à tort ou à raison, que le français jouissait d'une place particulière en Allemagne. Pas seulement en Allemagne d'ailleurs, un peu partout dans le monde. Du coup, il est utilisé dans un peu tous les domaines. Et plus particulièrement dans celui de la cuisine et de la nourriture. J'imagine que la cuisine française donne une image plutôt positive d'elle même et que donc par extension, utiliser le français quand on parle de nourriture permet de donner une image positive d'un produit.

Depuis quelques mois, la télévision allemande fait de la pub pour un dessert, dont le nom est "La Dessert". Et je dois avouer que cette grossière erreur de grammaire me hérisse le poil. Bien sûr, on peut imaginer que l'erreur n'en est pas une, mais plutôt un néologisme bidon destiné à permettre le dépôt de la marque. Je me dis que si ce "néologisme" avait été pensé par une marque française, je trouverais peut-être cela très spirituel. Mais du fait que ce produit soit exclusivement allemand, je ne peux m'empêcher de penser que les marketeux ont tout simplement mal fait leur boulot et qu'en voulant faire "français", ils ont sorti ce nom de leur chapeau sans penser plus avant.

Voilà pourtant que la semaine dernière, en faisant mes courses, je trouve dans les rayons de mon supermarché un nouveau produit (marque du distributeur, en l'occurrence REWE, le Leclerc du coin, genre) qui me fait à nouveau bondir. La crème composé (sic), si elle est fort bonne, me fait mal à l'oeil et à la grammaire. Il lui manque un "e" salutaire, que ma bonne âme de française qui corrigeait à l'école les dictées de ses copains a du mal à digérer (la crème elle, était bonne). Cela s'écrit "Crème composéE", bande de mauvais !

Je suppose qu'il y a des milliers d'exemples de grammaire hachée et torturée pour les besoins du marketing, mais ceux-là sont dans mon quotidien et ils m'énervent.

Animals Too Speak Foreign Languages

notafish — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 11:17:00 +0200

Les onomatopées utilisées pour les cris d'animaux sont très différentes d'une langue à l'autre. Entre le "cocorico" français, le "cocka doodle doo" anglais et le kikiriki français, je me demande comment notre fille va apprendre à faire parler les animaux.

Seriously. They do. There is something fantastic about bringing up a child in two languages, it is that you discover things about your own languages that you never really thought about.

When a child learns to speak, one of the first thing you do, is teach them the noises that animals make. I guess all parents have gone through this ordeal of making themselves ridiculous while imitating a dog, a cow or God knows what animal, instead of plainly saying "this is a dog", you'll go "this is a dog, wow wow".

Well, here comes the problem. As stated in this blogpost, German animals make different noises than English speaking ones. And to top it all, French ones say things differently as well. So how does a child make the difference? I mean, which are the true animal languages? Take the rooster for example. It goes Cocka doodle doo in English, Kikiriki in German, and Cocorico in French. Mind you, seeing that the rooster is one of the French national symbols (granted, due to a funny etymology history), I'm tempted to say that we (the French) know better what it really says^[1] Same for the frog (we are the ones eating frog legs, after all), which goes ribbit in English, kwock in German and coââ - coââ in French. Frankly, the English speaking frogs are strange, and I am pretty sure they can't understand the French or German ones, which seem to speak neighbour languages.

All in all, I find it interesting that such things as onomatopea are so different from one language to another. You'd think that with a few quirks, due to existing sounds in one or the other languages, animal talk would be transcribed in approaching ways. After all, it is just a matter of listening and reproducing. But no, that's not the way it works. I'm wondering how our daughter will handle those differences. Maybe her rooster will say something like Cocoriki?

Notes

[1] Image to prove my point: Coq gaulois from the statue of the Girondins, Place des Quinconces in Bordeaux © Jean-Marie DAVID Dinkley, CC-BY-SA 3.0.

Vorauseilender Gehorsam

notafish — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:36:00 +0200

While reading one of the blogs I follow from afar on the "intercultural" scene, I stumbled upon the concet of "vorauseilender Gehorsam" (obedience before the order), an interesting concept which the commenter on the blog thought could be an explanation for the rise in English words within other languages. The idea being that people obey soe "unknown boss" that expects them to strew their conversations with English words to be fashionable, because it is the thing to do.

Ne crisez pas, ce billet est en français, seul le titre est en allemand. Je me baladais sur l'un des blogs "interculturels" que je lis de temps en temps (je suis une piètre lectrice de blogs, mais c'est une autre histoire) et suis tombée sur ce billet qui fait écho à mes billets précédents sur la difficulté (ou le bonheur) de parler plusieurs langues.

Le phénomène de Vorausleidender Gehorsam (obéissance avant l'ordre), tel qu'expliqué par Matthias sur le billet de Caroline est un concept que je ne connaissais pas et que je trouve particulièrement intéressant. Je ne suis pas certaine qu'il s'applique à l'exemple donné par Caroline, qui me semble plutôt relever du "which language says it best". En l'occurrence, le contexte (conversation avec un américain) appelle le mot le plus proche du sens que l'on veut dire, facilité par le fait que l'on sait que la personne à qui l'on parle comprendra ce mot de toutes façons. Il suffit d'écouter les conversations de personnes à la langue maternelle commune mais vivant dans un pays étranger pour voir se profiler nombre des ces "localisations" sauvages. Combien de fois ai-je parlé du Finanzamt à un français d'Allemagne, parce que le Trésor Public est un concept franco-français...

En revanche, cette idée de "vorauseilender Gehorsam" me paraît intéressante pour expliquer la "montée" des mots anglais dans les autres langues. On peut imaginer que le "chef" désincarné dans le contexte actuel est le phénomène de mode. Il est de bon ton de truffer son vocabulaire de mots anglais, pour montrer qu'on est "in" (à la page !), même si on les utilise parfois à tort et à travers. Les allemands sont très forts pour ça, entre le Handy (cell phone) et le Beamer (projector) qui s'ils ont des consonnances anglophones, ne sont pas de vrais mots de la langue anglaise. Je me suis surprise parlant d'un beamer à des anglophones qui me regardaient dun air étrange. Bref, que ce soit la mode, le net ou tout autre "chef" qui nous pousse à mélanger les langues et les genres, je trouve ce concept développé par Matthias très intéressant.

Job Hunting: How Culturally Unconventional Can You Be?

notafish — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 12:51:00 +0200

La façon de répondre à une annonce pour un travail, si elle comporte dans plusieurs pays des composantes équivalentes (la lettre de motivation, le CV), comporte aussi des éléments spécifiques à la culture et au pays. Pourtant, je me dis que si je devais répondre à une annonce en Allemagne, je serai bien en peine de faire une candidature "dans les règles". Je crois, du coup, que je tenterai de répondre en étant calire sur le fait que mon parcours international m'empêche d'être conventionnelle dans ma candidature...

I've always wondered if I could find a job in Germany. Not so much because of my competence or lack thereof, but rather about whether I could, or couldn't, conform to the German way of answering a job ad.

Answering a job ad, in the countries where I've looked at it (mainly US, Germany and France) has a rather similar structure. Cover letter and CV are the core components. Basically, these are a letter stating why you're the best person for the job and a list of the positions you've occupied in the past X years.

However, there are rather important cultural differences to the way you do it. Not to mention that the recrudescence of social networks and other online tools needs to be thrown into the bargain, as it has somewhat changed the way of doing things.

The last time I applied for a job in a somewhat conventional way was probably about 6 years ago, in France. Which probably is a completely outdated way of doing it. I had the name of someone to send my application to, sent a cover letter, my CV and went on to an interview. Pretty simple and straightforward.

Here in Germany, I've watched with interest as my man was looking for a job, and how he was going about it. The "conventional" way of doing it in Germany is, apart from the CV and cover letter, to join to your application what the Germans call "Zeugnisse". The way I understood them, "Zeugnisse" are recommendations, of sorts. but not exactly. They are letters from the people you worked for, which reformulate the position you've occupied and tell how good you were in it. The further back you can go, the better. Which, for someone with a varied career, might amount to a lot of paper.

In the US, as I understand it, recommendations can be from virtually anyone. Your bosses of course, your colleagues, but also your friends (the more titles they can boast of the better) and why not, your family. Something that I believe is completely inconcievable in Germany. You probably would never ask a friend to write a Zeugnis for you.

In France, recommendations are (were?) definitely not the norm. While the "anglo-saxon" application has certainly taken on in the past few years, the diplomas you can align and the great names you can drop within your CV offer a much better chance of being noticed than having your Harvard-friend write a recommendation for you.

So the question is, how would I apply to a job here in Germany? I could of course go and read a whole load of online resources ^[1]about how to Zeugnisse should be written, or how to write your cover letter, and even how to organize your CV. But I'm thinking it would be conforming to something I am not, having worked in different countries, different fields and many different companies, for so many different customers. I'm thinking that in this ever changing and challenging global work market, being yourself, even if that means being culturally unconventional, is probably a better way to go about it. I probably couldn't produce many Zeugnisse (who knows what my boss from 10 years ago in France has become in 10 years?), but I can detail what I did and when, and even better, I can actually reflect on what I have done and what it has brought me for my job today. I would even say that being French, while I am sure that I am the right person for the job, I am not sure that the documents I provide are those that are expected, but that I am open to providing more information if needed. In short, I would try and be myself, rather than try and fit in a predefined frame.

I guess I have faith in recruiters, if they're looking for someone to do a job, they're not looking for anyone that can do that job and can lay it out on paper, but rather for someone who can reflect and think on what their experience is bringing to the table.

And frankly, in a world where a (the best) job can be had ^[2] with such applications, I do think there is potential for unconventional.

What's your experience with international applications?

Notes

[1] Those resources were chosen with a quick google search, I can't say anything about whether they're good or bad

[2] More info on The Best Job in The World in this BBC article

Which Language Says it Best?

notafish — Sat, 30 May 2009 16:14:00 +0200

Quand on apprend une langue étrangère dans le pays où elle est parlée, on apprend souvent des mots dans leur contexte étranger. Du coup, il devient extrêmement difficile de les traduire dans sa langue maternelle. C'est aussi le cas dans l'autre sens, de sa langue maternelle vers la langue étrangère. Certains mots n'ont simplement pas de traduction qui revête toutes les nuances d'un mot dans une autre langue. Quelques exemples.

A few days ago, I wrote about the extended meaning of words, and how some words in a language we learn take on a wider meaning because we have an approaching word in our own language. This made me think about the words that one learns in a foreign language which just don't have a satisfying translation.

Speaking another language is a difficult endeavour, but it is also a very rewarding one. However, while learning the language in the country it is spoken is probably the best way to learn it, rather than at school, it brings on whole new set of challenges in speaking your mother tongue.

There is a whole context to learning a new word, which we probably forget because we were too young when we learned words, or too engrossed in learning to remember the circumstances in which we learned them. My theory goes though, that you don't know a word fully until you have tried to translate it.

How many times have I come across words that just "say it best" in another language than the one I am speaking at the time?

Let me try a few examples.

Wilderness. Wilderness is a word I learned at the foot of the rockies, in the middle of nowhere. In the wilderness. But when I came back to France and had to translate it, I just couldn't. There is so much to the word that it takes at least a full French sentence to even come close to it. The wild, the fauna, the flora, the outdoors, what do I know. It's a concept that simply does not really exist in French. I noticed that for example, the translation of Jack London's White Fang in French used the Wild in English, because there is simply no French word that carries the same meaning.

Mensch. Mensch is a German word which means something like human being. But not really. Or rather, more than that. It's a human being which carries the whole of Humanity (notice the capital H) with it. A concept that neither French nor English really have.

N'importe quoi. N'importe quoi means "anything", but it also means "silly things" or "silly words". N'importe quoi is used as an interjection in French, which would mean something like 'nonsense". But it's also used in conjunction with the verb 'make'. you can "make n'importe quoi" but you can't make nonsense. Again, untranslatable.

I find it absolutely fantastic to be able to have an array of vocabulary that goes beyond one's mother tongue. It is also highly frustrating, to know of words, and the concept behind them, and not be able to translate them accurately in the language you are speaking at a moment M. It's a bit like looking at the world with a magnifying glass and seeing things which you can't show other people because you can't give them that magnifying glass.

There are probably thousands of other examples, which I simply can't think of right now, but I'll try to keep a list. I'd be interested to hear what words you have stumbled upon and which you have not been able to translate in one or the other language you speak.

I Am More French Here Than in France

notafish — Tue, 26 May 2009 14:15:00 +0200

Étonnamment, je me sens plus française à l'étranger que lorsque je suis en France. Un sentiment difficile à décrire, parce qu'il est fait de nombreuses choses quelque peu triviales, autant que de choses fondamentales, mais que je ne sais pas décrypter de façon objective.

While skimming through it again, this note in Nancy Adler's book hit me with a few thoughts. Executives are more national abroad than they would be at home.

I am always wondering what it is to be "French", really. What does it mean? What do people think when they realize that I am French? But most importantly, what does it mean to me to be French? I've asked myself this question many a times, and I have never really come up with a satisfying answer.

The first time I asked myself this question was in the US, when I left home to study for two years in an international environment. I remember extending my hand in the first few days, presenting myself "Hi, I'm Delphine, from France". This "from France" turned out to be the most qualifying thing I could say about myself. Mind you, all of us were doing it, adding our country of origin to our name, but I realized that where the first name really does not tell much about a person, the fact that they're "from a country" tells a lot more.

In that international environment, I started thinking about what it was to be French. And this has followed me through my international perigrinations. I realize that being French is really something I am actually a little proud of, but... only when I am abroad. In the end, one's nationality is somehow defined in a negative way (more in the photography sense of the word), against things that are different from what they are "at home". There is the language, of course, which probably taints my use of other languages (I tend to make never-ending sentences in English and use too many parentheses, a typical French thing), but there is more.

I could say that there is the food, and the wine. It's kind of trivial, I guess, but it's very true. I make a point of cooking "à la française" in my German home, for example. But that really isn't it. There are both so many things that make me feel French, and so little. The whole church saga made me realize how anchored in me the separation between spiritual and administrative was, for example. Or the difficulty I have using "du" (the informal "you' in German), because it exists in French too but social codes are very different about when you can use it in France and Germany.

But these are all things that I hardly think about when I'm in France. Actually, I tend to be rather un-French when in France. On the contrary to many French people, I speak several languages or I defend the US for example.

The thing is, I believe that my being French is made of many many little trivail things, as well as of many fundamental values, thoughts and behaviours. I just don't know how to list them objectively.

One thing is sure, I am more French here in Germany, than I have ever been in France. But please, don't ask me why. Maybe just because I am not German?

Pourquoi les français ne parlent pas de langues étrangères

notafish — Mon, 25 May 2009 13:54:00 +0200

A few months after writing my blog post Why The French Don't Speak Any Other Language, I read Jean-Benoît's Nadeau Les Français aussi ont un accent. Jean-Benoît Nadeau is French Canadian and lived two years in France to study the French. And he seemed to come to a conclusion similar to mine concerning why the French don't speak any other language, ie. that the mastery of the language is a very important thing for the French and unless they speak a foreign language perfectly, they just won't speak.

Il y a de cela quelques mois, j'ai commis un billet tentant d'expliquer pourquoi les français ne parlent pas de langues étrangères. Ma théorie est que le français est une langue qui supporte difficilement d'être mal parlée, parce qu'elle en devient difficile à comprendre.

Les français ont une réputation qui les précède de gens ne sachant pas parler les langues étrangères et surtout pas l'anglais. Et ce malgré un système scolaire qui met l'accent sur les langues étrangères dès la sixième (que l'on atteint à environ 11-12 ans) et pendant au moins cinq années si l'on passe son bac. Il y a quelques semaines, j'ai lu l'ouvrage de Jean-Benoît Nadeau Les Français aussi ont un accent, qui relate ses deux années en France. Il y aborde rapidement la question du blinguisme et le fait en ces termes :

J'ai ma petite théorie pour expliquer pourquoi on dit que les Français sont moins bilingues que les autres Européens. D'abord, je crois que c'est faux : je suis même convaincu que les Français ont toujours été aussi bilingues que les autres. Problème : le niveau de bilinguisme d'un peuple ne se mesure pas, objectivement. Toutes les études ne peuvent mesurer que ce que les gens pensent d'eux-mêmes. À la question : "Parlez-vous une autre langue ?" un Français aura tendance à répondre non, sauf s'il la parle bien, tout simplement parce que la maîtrise parfaite de la langue est fondamentale pour lui.^[1]

Je suis évidemment d'accord avec cette analyse. Je pense que les Français ont tout simplement un complexe d'infériorité lorsqu'il s'agit de parler une langue étrangère, notamment parce que dans la société française, la maîtrise de la langue (française) est un signe de distinction sociale et d'éucation. Du coup, le Français parlant mal une langue étrangère (ou pensant qu'il la parle mal), aura tendance à ne pas s'aventurer hors de la langue qu'il maîtrise.

En tant que Française parlant tous les jours une langue étrangère, c'est un état d'esprit que je connais bien. Bien que ma maîtrise de l'allemand soit bonne, elle est loin d'être parfaite et cela donne lieu de nombreuses frustrations, probablement exacerbées par le fait que je suis française.

Notes

[1] Les Français aussi ont un accent, Jean-Benoît Nadeau, Petite Bibliothèque Payot, p. 243

The Extended Meanings of Words

notafish — Thu, 21 May 2009 23:43:00 +0200

Les mots sont parfois plus parlants dans une langue que dans une autre et disent plus que leur simple définition. Mais ceci est souvent dû au fait que l'on ne peut apprendre une langue sans teinter certains mots avec ceux que l'on connaît déjà. Certains mots prennent ainsi dans notre esprit un sens élargi par rapport à leur défnition de base. Le mot embarazada en espagnol évoque l'embarras pour un français, alors qu'il veut dire "être enceinte", probablement sans aucune arrière pensée. De même le mot groß en allemand, qui veut dire grand mais que j'utilise rarement parce que j'ai toujours l'impression de qualifier quelqu'un de gros alors qu'il est simplement grand.

I was in Bordeaux a week ago, talking with a friend of mine, who loves lists. She makes lists about different funny things, but one that struck me, and which I might actually start on my own, was her list of words that "fit" in a language, better than in another, or that, on the contrary, just don't fit at all. She speaks Italian, Spanish, English and French (she's a native French speaker) and so we toyed with a few words and argued about them.

She started with a word I didn't know, the word for pollution in Italian. The word is inquinamento. To her, that word was much stronger than the French (or English for that matter) pollution. It has this kind of sticky ring to it, which evokes something crawling under your skin. I looked up the etymology of it, which refers to "stink" (puzzare) and "putrefaction" (putrefazione) in its indo-European roots. I must say that although I do not fully grasp the word, I can relate to the feeling by hearing it.

We then went on to the Spanish for pregnant, which is embarazada. I have to say that this is one of the most common faux-amis (false friends) for French speakers (I guess it works in English too). You find yourself embarrassed and end up ... pregnant, by using the wrong words. My friend thought the use of the word could be seen as a good illustration of women's condition in society, ie. they feel embarrassed (not at ease) because they're pregnant. Looking up the etymology brings interesting things. The Spanish word as well as the French word ''embarrasser'' seem to be derived from the same root, but have evolved differently. Embarazo in Spanish is really pregnancy, that's all. The interesting thing here is that one language actually taints the other, I suppose that Spanish speakers don't ever think of embarrassment when they use the word embarazada.

I found this to be the most interesting example. Because we speak another language, which may or may not share roots with the language we learn, some words simply take on much more (or many more) meaning(s) than they really have. Looking back, I realise it is simply impossible not to taint some of the words with those you already know. Which sometimes means that you have trouble using a perfectly harmless word because it just rings different bells in your own language. One good example in my everyday life is the word groß (pronounced gross and which means tall). In French, gros means fat. So it's always really strange for me to tell someone they are tall, because I always have second thoughts about the fact that I might just have called them fat. I guess that works in English too... Calling someone gross is not exactly very nice!

Quand la pub joue avec les stéréotypes culturels

notafish — Mon, 18 May 2009 15:15:00 +0200

I found it funny to find an ad in the last Géo issue, which appealed to the stereotypes that French people have about Americans and Germans. An intercultural ad if there was ever any. The ad is for an American-style refrigerator and the tagline reads "tall, cold and ecologist. No doubt, this American is German".

Cet après-midi, en buvant mon café, j'ai feuilleté le dernier numéro de Géo sur l'Islande. Comme souvent quand je lis un magazine, je me suis arrêtée sur certaines pubs et notamment sur une publicité pour un réfrigérateur Bosch. Je suppose que ce sont les mots "américain" et "allemand" qui ont attiré mon attention.

J'ai parlé ailleurs des stéréotypes et de l'intérêt qu'il y avait à en avoir. Cette pub fait appel, selon moi, à plusieurs stéréotypes, impliquant trois nationalités.

D'abord, il faut garder à l'esprit que la pub s'adresse à un public francophone (peut-être même français). La référence aux allemands et aux américains est donc par défaut teintée culturellement.

Mon interprétation : Pour le français, le stéréotype de l'allemand est souvent celui d'une personne de grande taille, d'abord plutôt froid et souvent porté sur l'écologie. Pour le même français, le stéréotype de l'américain est aussi celui d'une personne de grande taille (tout est démesuré aux États-Unis), d'un abord plutôt chaleureux mais assez peu intéressé par tout ce qui touche à l'environnement. On trouve donc dans le slogan trois stéréotypes, l'un commun aux deux pays et deux autres contraires dans les deux pays.

Ce que je trouve très fort ici, c'est l'équilibre entre l'utilisation des stéréoptypes positifs et négatifs. Ni l'allemand, ni l'américain ne sont dépeints de façon toute négative ou toute positive. On a :

grand = stéréotype commun
froid=stéréotype négatif pour une personne (ici l'allemand), mais bon pour un réfrigérateur
son contraire chaleureux=stéréotype positif suggéré pour l'américain
et enfin écolo=stéréotype ni vraiment positif, ni vraiment négatif, puisque "écolo" est teinté politiquement et culturellement et peut avoir, suivant l'interprétation qu'on en fait, une connotation positive (respectueux de l'environnement) ou plus négative (écolo militant qui casse des McDo).

Je ne sais pas si cette pub me ferait acheter un réfrigérateur, mais culturellement, je la trouve extrêmement bien faite.

Peau neuve

notafish — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 23:08:00 +0200

This post exists also in English :)

Bon, voilà enfin un billet en français, qui est le jumeau, ou presque, du précédent en anglais. Aujourd'hui est à marquer d'une pierre blanche, puisque c'est le jour où d'une part, ce blog fait peau neuve, grâce à ma copine Kozlika qui a développé le beau thème qui habille maintenant ce blog.

L'un des changements majeurs qu'apporte ce thème est la possibilité qu'il me donne, un peu comme le fait Stephanie sur son blog , de mettre pour chaque billet un résumé en anglais (ou en français, selon la langue d'origine du billet). Du coup, je vais pouvoir écrire en français et en anglais et essayer non pas de traduire (je ne sais pas faire) mais au moins de partager le contenu de mes billets dans les deux langues. Bien que la façon dont nous faisions ça ici ne soit pas encore la meilleure, elle a le mérite d'exister.

Mais le plus important est que je trouve ce thème fabuleux, il est beau et va bien à mon blog. J'espère qu'il vous plaira aussi.

New skin

notafish — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 23:07:00 +0200

Pour une fois, ce billet va être écrit en français aussi :)

This is going to be the only post I am ever going write again in French, because it marks quite a change in this blog. My friend Kozlika worked on a (beautiful) new theme for this blog, which you now can see if you come by.

One of the major improvements of this theme is that it will allow, along the lines of what Stephanie does on her blog, for a French (or English, depending on the post) summary of the post I write. While the way we've done it here is not yet the best way, it actually serves its purpose for now.

I am really happy with this new theme, I find it simply beautiful and fitting. I hope you enjoy it too.

Choosing a Name: The Last Name

notafish — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 10:40:00 +0100

Choisir un nom de famille pour son enfant. Il fut un temps où la chose était plutôt simple, mais la loi et les mouvements migratoires font de ce qui pourrait être une aventure simple un parcours du combattant. Entre le double nom et les doubles tirets, donner un nom de famille à notre fille aura été une vraie gageure.

Now, the first part of this was a long time ago. It was about the First Name. Here comes the story of the Last Name, prompted by the fact that I got my daughter's German a few weeks ago.

You'd think that having chosen the first name, we'd be done. But no. Even the last name is a culturally tainted venture, which bears in itself much more trouble than one would think, and not only cultural trouble.

Most of our societies are rather patriarcal. You get the name of your father. Even the ones that sometimes think themselves much more open and allow women to keep their names really are patriarchal. Take Portugal, which collates both the father's and the mother's name in a unique new name. This ends up in children having different names from that of their parents. Which isn't understood by French authorities, at least a few years back, who had no idea how to take care of my French cousin marrying a Portuguese man and which name was really his (different from both of his parents).

In Germany, you're only allowed to give the name of the father or the name of the mother. Not both. Fortunately, Germany recognizes foreign laws when it comes to names. In France, the law changed with a text passed in 2002 (that came into force in 2005) which basically opens a whole new realm of possibilities for last name transmission. Following French law, you can now give to your children either your name, that of your partner, or both together (in both the order you--him or him--you). The catch is the double hyphen that comes into play. Yes, you read that well, a double hyphen.

Now, it seems that French law requires this double hyphen ^[1] if both parents' names are chosen. It will allow the kid to drop one or the other name when they marry or have kids (for more information, see here, in French).

When we declared our daughter, we asked for the double hyphen. No need to say that the German authorities were a little puzzled about this rather freaky way of writing a name (an accent on my last name was already quite a challenge). But the German Ministry of the Interior had issued a text about that French specificity, which allowed us to get that straightened out. Our daughter's birth certificate displays the double-hyphen. And so does her German passport, which is quite a victory, since when I went to fill out the papers for her to have a passport, the woman at the desk did make it very clear that although she would try and see what she could do concerning my accent (on which I was very set), there was no way she could enter a double-hyphen in the system. We have indeed signed a disclaimer when we registered our kid that said we were aware of the fact that this funky double-hyphen might not be reproduced on official papers so I was prepared. And amazed when I saw that the passport bore both hyphens.

I am kind of looking forward how this name pattern plays out in the future. I am happy to have been able to give my name to my daughter, I am not sure she'll find that so cool when it comes to filling out administrative papers... Time will tell.

Notes

[1] I have come across a quick note which seems to say that this is not the case anymore... go figure. [edit] see here this relatively short ticker which confirms this, and this article pointed out by keriluamox in the comments

Wikimedia Fundraiser: Donating Close to Home

notafish — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 17:44:00 +0100

Ever since I have been working within Wikimedia, I have tried to understand what the best way to conduct a fundraising was. I mean, what are the tools and definitions people need in order to give and feel safe that they have given in a way that is close to them? For the first time this year, there is some testing being done on what works and what doesn't, which you can follow on the Wikimedia blog.

However, as far as I'm aware, these tests are only done on the English version of Wikipedia, and on the English version of the banners. I am pretty sure not every country/culture reacts to the same messages and it would probably be worth conducting the same kind of tests per language. Anyway.

I am French, I live in Germany and worked for an American organisation with local chapters across the world, which has given me some insight on the impact that Wikimedia as an international reaching organisation could have in different countries and cultures.

The Wikimedia organisations are spreading around the world through the establishment of locally-based "chapters". To this date, Wikimedia counts 21 official chapters, and about a dozen in the making. These chapters are local organisations, legally based in their countries, set up by convinced Wikimedians and people who believe in the cause of spreading free knowledge, and which operate on a local level to promote and support the Wikimedia projects. All of them are non-profit, some of them offer tax-deductibility in their country, all of them are dedicated to furthering the Wikimedia cause. And all of them are closer to the donor than the one in the next country.

To start with, I have observed that donors seem to be more comfortable giving to an organisation they understand. By understand, I mean an organisation that makes sense within their cultural scheme. As a French person, I would say that an "Association loi de 1901", which is the most common non-profit status in France, is something I understand. When you tell me "this is an association loi 1901", I know what you are talking about. This is, I suppose the case with a 501 c3 in the US, or an e.V. (eingetragener Verein) in Germany. Of course this is only about structure, there are many other cultural factors that play a role. It is always easier to check out an organisation which bylaws for example, or goals, or annual report is written in a language one understands.

The activities the chapters support and take part in are also closer to the donor. All of these activities (community animation, Wikipedia Academies, technical support for the projects, conferences and debates, workshops for editors, partnerships with free knowledge organisations etc.) happen within the donator cultural scheme, and the donor can go back to the local website and check out what has been done with their money.

And since we come to the subject of money, the logisitical ways put in place to allow to give money also seem very important to allow the donor to feel comfortable. If you don't think it through, it may seem like a given thing, and our world of Wikimedia projects contributors, with a high proportion of online-savvy people, will probably say "get Paypal" and be done with it.

The thing is, Paypal is only one solution out of many to get donations from one place to the other. And the online payment thing is not something that all cultures or countries particularly find easy, or even trust. I believe the French are not so keen on online payments, at least not with Paypal, and the Germans are not exactly credit card fans to start with. So another interesting thing is that the Wikimedia organisations offer means of supporting Wikimedia which are easier to put into practice for local donors. For example, the Germans can use the "Latschrift" technique, the French and Americans can send cheques, the Dutch can send to a Dutch bank account, the Italians can use Paypal, etc. In short, people can actually find the way to give that is most familiar to them.

The idea being that in the end, on very different scales, with different means and in different places of the world, donations made to any Wikimedia organisation end up being used for the same goal, that of empowering people by giving them access to free knowledge.

So, what's your preferred way of giving? Follow the links below to give close to you (only listed are the chapters with a donation page):

Australia: Wikimedia Australia
Deutschland: Wikimedia Deutschland e.V.
France: Wikimédia France
Italia: Wikimedia Italia
ישראל: Wikimedia ישראל
Magyarország: Wikimédia Magyarország
Nederland: Wikimedia Nederland
Österreich: Wikimedia Österreich
Poland: Wikimedia Polska
Suisse, Schweiz, Svizzera: Wikimedia CH en français, auf Deutsch, in italiano
Sverige: Wikimedia Sverige
US : Wikimedia Foundation

Think Globally Small or You Won't Be Global

notafish — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 12:26:00 +0100

My talk at Shift ^[1] was a success, at least according to my own little standards. It rambled about culture as the next challenge for companies, but also for social web services and even plain websites. The idea is that if success comes through making the user feel at home when they come and visit your website, that home has to be their home, and not yours.

I remember Ted Rheingold asking himself, at Reboot in 2007, why dogster.com was successful in the US and unexpectedly, in Singapore, but nowhere else really. Facebook has had a hard time getting into Germany to some extent, because studiVz has the lead on that market. Same occurs in Asia^[2], where other websites have the high hand on the social networking market.

The reason for this? It could well be that the lingering hegemonic Americanism of Facebook is the problem. As a French living in Germany, having studied in the US, France and Austria, I am stuck with a choice of network that amounts to a country and counts 567,732 people (Germany Network). Out of my 458 Facebook contacts, 20 are in that Germany network. Facebook won't even let me join the United World Colleges Network, of which about 100 of my contacts are issued, because it does not recognize the email address.

Mind you, Facebook is the one place where I've been able to gather most of the people I know, but it still lacks some basic features in terms of networking, which address particularities of countries such as France for example, where universities are not the main networking medium. A breakdown in cities or even more general geographic areas would already be a plus.

All of this is pure speculation of course, but I am rather convinced that in order to go global, you need to think global. And think global does not mean think in big chunks (ie. the world is mine), but rather be aware that the world is made of thousands of little bits and pieces that people are willing to associate with. For some people, it will be their universities, for others, it will be their Land or their département, even their home city.

Of the 8 points given as difficulties to enter the Asian market by Asiajin, I would say the three following are the most important:

1. No formal internationalization/ ...enter specific country here entry strategy
4. Incomplete localization（Translation, Content, Pricing, Branding(name, colours, etc.), Features, Business model)
8. Local legislation

And I would add a fourth:

Humility, ie. being convinced that other cultures have different needs and don't necessarily want to "adapt" to your ways.

Notes

[1] See presentation attached

[2] via Thomas Wanhoff

Immigrants, What Countries Are Importing People?

notafish — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 12:10:00 +0100

It's interesting to see how people are migrating across the globe. I came across this map thanks to Alexandra while we were socializing at the Frankfurt Girl Geek Dinner.

International immigrants
The size of each territory indicates the number of international immigrants living there. The United States receives the highest number of international immigrants, while Andorra has the highest proportion - four out of five people in Andorra are immigrants. The Philippines and Guyuna have the lowest proportion - just one in 500.
source: telegraph.co.uk, map from The Atlas of the Real World: Mapping the Way We Live by Daniel Dorling, Mark Newman and Anna Barford

I leave it to your appreciation. There are millions (ok, hundreds) of cool maps on World Mapper.

Trick Question: Where Do You Come From?

notafish — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 12:54:00 +0200

I arrived yesterday afternoon in sunny Lisbon, Portugal for the Shift Conference where I am giving a talk. Lisbon, for what I have seen so far (the modern part), is a very beautiful city and I'm already loving it. As I arrived, I joined up with a few Shiftians and we started introducing ourselves. After the name bit, we very naturally came to What do you do? and Where do you come from?. I always find the Where do you come from? to be a rather tricky question, because in today's small world, people hardly know where they are from. Or rather, it all depends on how you ask the question.

When asked where I come from, I usually ask Where from as in, where was I yesterday? or Where am I from as in where do I live? or Where am I from as in what is the nationality my passport displays?. I guess you could even add to that Where am I from as in where my cultural roots are?.

Sure enough, there were a few of us with many different answers to those different questions. There was a born-Hungarian living in Italy working mainly in the US, a born Dutch living in Copenhagen, otherwise known as a European Dutchman and a Dane living in Copenhagen at the moment, having lived in Ireland, Florida and the UK. I was born in France, where my cultural roots are. Southern France to be precise. I come from Germany as in I was in Germany yesterday. That about sums it up.

And where do you come from?

The Bowl Theory

notafish — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 15:32:00 +0200

I'm being lazy today, and I am just translating an article I wrote quite some time ago on my other (dead) blog, which explores the way words are interpreted with a cultural filter.

The full title for this post was The Bowl Theory, or The Dictionary Has its Reasons Which Reason Does Not Know ^[1]

Let us take the French word "bol". If you flip through (even virtually) a bunch of dictionaries, you will find the following definitions:

In French :

BOL, subst. masc.
A. 1. Pièce de vaisselle de forme généralement hémisphérique servant à prendre certaines boissons
A piece of china generaly of a hemispheric shape, used to take in some beverages.

In English :

bowl –noun
1.a rather deep, round dish or basin, used chiefly for holding liquids, food, etc.

In German, it's already a bit more complicated. Leo translates bol by Schale which my dictionary ^[2] describes in the following terms:

Schale -n
1 - eine relativ flache Schüssel
''a relatively flat "Schüssel"^[3]
2 - Tasse
A cup

Which brings us back to the definition of Schüssel, still in that Langenscheidts dictionary

Schüssel -n
1 - ein tiefes, rundes Gefäß, das oben offen ist und in dem man Speisen auf dem Tisch stellt.
A deep and round recipient, often open at the top, which is used to serve food on the table (see image provided).

So. If you stop at the base definition of the word bol, you end up on roughly the same thing. A round and hollow utensil. So far, so good. However, it becomes complicated when you start using the word in every day life.

Imagine the simple sentence :

Tous les matins, je prends un bol de chocolat. (Every morning, I take a bowl of chocolate).

For a French person, no problem, it's a rather logical use of the word bol. It is even, one could say, the primary use of the word bol. In France, you drink a bow of coffee, or a bowl of tea, preferably with a croissant in the morning. Occasionaly you have a bowl of soup, that works too.

Except that when you tell an English speaker I'm drinking a bowl of chocolate., they're bound to look at you funny. Because bowl in English speaking countries is more often used for soup than it os for coffee. For coffee at breakfast, you have cups or mugs, not bowls.

Let me not even speak about the Germans, which only know the Tasse (cup) for chocolate and have only heard about Schale or Schüssel in relation with fruits, icecream or even salad. Not to mention that they probably have never seen a bol as I know it.

All of this to illustrate how much culture influences language and the difficulty that you may face trying to translate a word without explaining the context. Even words that we might use on an every day basis carry way much more history and cultural influences than you'd think. I can't imagine what the British would do if I asked them for a bowl of tea, or the Germans if I asked for a bowl of coffee...

I'd be interested though, what the meaning of bol is in other languages. Are there more meanings of the word out there?

Notes

[1] This is actually a pun on a French phrase: "Le coeur a sa raison que la raison ne connaît pas" which I might explain one day or another.

[2] Langenscheidts Großwörterbuch - Deutsch als Fremdschprache (German as a foreign language)

[3] Dictionaries make a point of referring to an equivalent object to explain a word. If you don't know the definition of said object, you're dead. When of course said object does not refer in turn to the word you were looking for in the first place...

Of Values and Grades

notafish — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 10:02:00 +0200

A few days ago, as I was surfing along the message board The Local, I ended up on this survey (which I can't take, cos I'm too old, *pout*). So I browsed the different questionnaires, to see.

One thing struck me about the value scales (1 to 5) and how the 1 was to represent the worst and the 5 the best. I was wondering whether this was not problematic for some people. The Germans, for example, have a value scale of 1 to 6 in school, 1 being the best, and 6 being the worst. The French note system goes on a scale of 10 or 20, 0 being the worst and 10 or 20 being the best. I've relaised that when I take a poll, I tend to be confused when the answers proposed use number scales that don't fit with my way of grading (ie. the best being the highest number, the worst the smallest). This said, it is usually easier to get away from my inherited scale values as there are rarely scales over 10 or 20 levels. So I asked my partner whether a value scale of 1 to 5 would confuse him if it was backwards (he's German). He said that as long as there weren't 6 levels, he would actually expect to use 1 as the worst value, I would have thought the contrary.

In the same line fo thought, I've always found it very funny that one of the most common marketing argument here in Germany is the result that a product got at the Stiftung Wahrentest. On products, you find a little label^[1] that tells you how well the product fared in the tests. These tests rate products following the German grading system. I must say that at the beginning, in my French mind, a product which got a note of 2 didn't really prompt a positive reaction, on the contrary. I also realize that the subtleties of the number after the coma are lost on me. The French system usually only allows for half points, so a 2,4 translates automatically into a 2,5 for me, or a 1,6 into a 2, etc.

What's interesting here is how values which are in objectively the same (a 2 is a two, whatever the language and the country) are affected by subjective and unconscious values shaped by education, language and culture.

As an aside note, a search through the different possible layouts of this label is also very interesting, as it shows that depending on the note the product obtained, the actual number will be displayed or not. When a note of 1 to 2 is obtained, the number is usually displayed, when the note is closer to 2,4, it's usally "forgotten". Nice marketing trick.

Notes

[1] label image from Wikipedia with a funky licence

Why the French Don't Speak Any Other Language

notafish — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 15:42:00 +0200

Now here is a commonplace. I believe I have heard this a million times.

The French are terrible, they won't ever speak to you in English or any other language and if you address them in English, they'll be very unpolite and unfriendly.

I have been thinking about this a lot, and I thought I'd share with you the fruit of my thinking. Trying to un-common the commonplace.

Any French person who's studied as far as the baccalaureate has had at least 7^[1] years of classes in a foreign language and possibly 2 to 5 years in another. Now make that studied until they were 15 (not as far as high school), that's still 3 years in a language. The statistics are amazing. In 2006 ^[2], 99% of French students in the secondary education are learning a language,

The French educational system introduces the first foreign language (première langue vivante) at the beginning of the secondary cycle (classe de sixième - around 11/12 years old). The first language learned is English 92%, followed by German, 7.5%. A second language is then introduced two years later (classe de quatrième - 13/14 years old). Spanish mostly (70%), then German (14%).

So how come the French won't ever speak to you in another language?

Well here is my theory.

French is a language which, if you don't speak it properly, is difficult to understand. Structure being so important and all. So French speakers are afraid, when they don't master a foreign language, that they won't be understood. That's the first reason, I think.

Then comes the "proud" factor. The French educational system, while not being the worst, is definitely not the best when it comes to languages. French students are usually really good at grammar, but can't say a word, because they are rarely taught in a conversational way. And the French are convinced that they are really bad at languages (a stereotype that sticks). So when you go to a French person in the street and ask, in English:

Hi, do you speak English?

You're bound to get the answer:

Non.

And that's it. So try this. Next time you're wandering French streets and are lost, find someone and tell them, in the worst French you can master:

Bonjour, je suis désolé(e) je ne parle pas français, est-ce que vous parlez anglais ? (Hi, I'm sorry, I don't speak French, do you speak English?)

I bet you that the French will then answer, in a broken, accent-ridden, but totally bearable English

Yes, a little bit.

The thing is, if you put yourself at the level of knowledge the French think they're at when it comes to speaking a foreign language (ie. me no speak), you're showing them that you are as bad as they (think they) are in a foreign language. Doing this, you break the barrier and show them that you are willing to admit that you're the one who does not speak their language in the first place and that if they speak to you in English, however wrong their grammar or accent is, they won't be utterly ridiculous.

It's all about putting yourself on the same level, to avoid any kind of hierarchy that would hinder the communication channel.

Notes

[1] [edit 22 May 2009], it's 7, not 8, as was written here previously

[2] See the file: Etude des langues vivantes dans le second degré