Brasier sur le forum

Publié le 3 février 2010 | Temps de lecture : 9 minutes
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L’allumette

Le tout a commencé par le message ci-dessus, intitulé « Introduction aux caméras µ4/3 », posté la semaine dernière sur un forum de discussion de la revue électronique DPReview (où les lettres DP signifient Digital Photography). En somme, il s’agissait d’une invitation à lire le billet « Engouement pour les appareils photo µ4/3 » publié dans ce blogue mardi dernier.

Ce que j’ignorais, c’est que mon message était le premier message publié en français sur ce forum de discussion. La réaction a été plutôt inattendue. Jugez-en par vous-même.

L’incendie

Entremêlées de quelques remerciements et félicitations, voici quelques unes des réactions suscitées par mon message, précédées du pseudonyme de leur auteur :

  • Hansplast26 (Pays-Bas) : Allergic to french. Lets just talk english.
  • JPV Irvine (États-Unis) : If allergic to French, WHY do you click on a French thread, then go in and request English? That’s like purposely walking into a French bar and asking everybody to speak English. ??? Ça va pas, non?
  • Hansplast26 (Pays-Bas) : Well your comparison is nice but not right. this is an english website after all. (…) If there is any country that is too protective regarding their own language, it must be the french (and yes protectiveness is a bad thing). I don’t want to offend anyone here, but having everyone talk in their own language doesn’t serve any purpose.
  • JPV Irvine (États-Unis): You voluntarily chose to enter a French-looking/sounding thread. Once you realized the thread was written in French, you could have chosen to do 1 of 3 things:
    1- Click out of it and move on. There are so many other English threads to join.
    2- Be courteous about it and maybe point out that the thread will get a lot more participation if English was used. This would have been polite and helpful.

    3- State your contempt of the French language by saying you’re “ALLERGIC” to it? How rude is that? You say you don’t want to offend anyone but that “allergic” remark sounds pretty offensive! And then you go on to bash the French!
    This is a photo site, not a political forum.
  • AlexV74 (Belgique) : Here’s the translation. Not very interesting anyway…
  • farrukh (Royaume-Uni) : While I’ve not spoken French for many years, it is a shame that at time we chose to use language as a barrier. Those of us interested in reading what JP has to say in his blog can easily use an on-line translation service, a couple of clicks and voilà.
  • marcusaxlund (Chine) : If myself and everyone else here can stick to English, why cannot the frenchmen? Do they have a special superior language right? (…) I think it is rude, impolite and really stupid to suddenly start native language threads other than english. Only a few of us speak french, and using that language deliberately excludes the rest of us from that particular thread. For what reason????? If we can speak English, so can the frenchmen! If not, stay out of dpreview…
  • RobbieW (Pays-Bas) : Just stick to english, everyone here can read it and understand it. I won’t be making threads in dutch language and expect from others to use the translation tool. It’s an english forum and it has to stay that way, at least to my opinion.
  • tregix (Japon) : Je suis d’accord. Si vous voulez un forum en Français, il y a chasseur d’images. Just stick to English. The article was interesting though.
  • Hansplast26 (Pays-Bas) : I travel a lot, I visit many countries, without too much problems, very often in broken, but understandable english. I never came accross such a persistent unwillingness to communicate in a foreign language as in France. Which is a pity, because talking in another language doesn’t hurt you. it can only bring you further.
  • doady (Canada) : If you can’t read french, then don’t click on the thread, it is as simple as that. The thread title is clearly not English. If you want English then don’t click on a thread with a non-English title. Not so hard is it? Or maybe you just want to start trouble.
  • Pennanhuo (Finlande) : You could have specified at least something in english. Like a title “A french article/blog about micro 4/3”. It is polite to take notice that this place is mainly a english speaking community. I think that way you could have avoided the negative comments, or at least some of them. A lot of people are prejudiced against the french language, because it is quite common for french people to be arrogant regarding other languages. I have lived in an international community, and the french quite often veer into speaking french among themselves. This can be very frustrating.
  • Hansplast26 (Pays-Bas) : As a foreigner in France I was walking at the airport Charles DeGaulle with my passport in my hand. All the time at counters (Customs, Security personnel, Airline personnel), I was approached in French (despite their view on my passport). I can understand French perfectly, I even can make up a few sentences, but I just don’t do. In fact I look at them with staring brainless view in my eyes and wait till they understand that it’s not working with me. It usually takes them 10 seconds (with complete silence) after they start in english.
  • Erick L (Canada) : So you go to France, you can understand the language, even speak it a little but you don’t want to. The airport staff does switch to English when they realize you don’t speak French and somehow they are rude for that?
  • HWB (Allemagne) : Excellent reply.
  • Hansplast26 (Pays-Bas) : I don’t want to talk in French because these people should not tell me that French is the language to use. It is just one of many arrogant encounters, at some point I decided that I would not say anything in French anymore. P.S. — I was in transit, not going there…
  • Michael J Davis (Royame-Uni) : The only time I flew Air France – Manchester to Paris, the French stewardess just ignored any requests made to her in English, however politely. (I know the English aren’t so good at languages, but the example was deliberate and distainful!)
  • brunobarolo (Allemagne) : You were in France, and you found it arrogant that French people spoke French, and not your language? Who is arrogant???
  • marcusaxlund (Chine) : The title or message could have included at least a bit of English. It’s about not showing respect to other people. If everyone understands english, why even consider to speak anything else? Arrogance?
  • jfjal (États-Unis) : Well, here is the typical american arrogance, demanding to be adresed in their language, no matter where they travel. Being a non-american I am so fed up by Americans coming to my country adressing people in english, in 9 out of 10 cases assuming that they will be understood, not even asking if I (or other people) do speak english. Very unpolite! Hurrah for the French who try to protect their language (I am not french).
  • marcusaxlund (Chine) : Everyone here speaks english, but lets speak in only our native languages so the whole forum becomes obsolete and totally looses its international touch and value! Suck, att man skall vara omgiven av idel idioter.
  • Knight Palm (Suède) : Are you located in the hall of mirrors?
  • Julieng (Canada) : Brukade språker i forum här och handlingssätt i flygplats elle i generell är två olika säker… Some of the reactions were over the roof and did not deserve any anwers. (…) English will prevail in this forum, with or without anyone complaining out loud nor anyone making any special effort to display their class. In fact I recall having seen a sub-thread in Swedish: no one ever complained and so far I can tell, things never got out of hands.
  • RobbieW (Pays-Bas) : Why don’t we ask dpreview for a French section, as well as a Dutch, Swedish, Italian, Korean, Japanese, German one. Then we can all put it through Google translation and read really funny sentences, that would be great and really informative not to mention take all of my time of which I have plenty. That is the main reason for me to keep it plain english here, otherwise I would loose interest in this forum really soon and I think i wouldn’t be alone in this. And to the Threadstarter, if you really have the intention to inform all forum members with your informative link, why wouldn’t you make sure everyone can understand it? We can decide ourselves to translate it, and at least we knew what it was about. The way you did it now it looks like you only wanted to inform the French talking or reading people. I’m sure you didn’t.
  • brunobarolo (Allemagne) : Im quite confident that dpreview will remain an English language site, and I really appreciate that, since my French is very poor. But, is it really so hard to tolerate one thread that is not in English??? Don’t you have to ignore most of the threads anyway, since there are just too many to read all of them? Why not ignore this one because it is in French?

Conclusion

Il est intéressant de constater que quelques uns des messages les plus hostiles, l’ont été de personnes dont la langue maternelle n’est parlée que par quelques millions de personnes Par exemple, Marcus Axlund semble être un Finlandais habitant en Chine. Je présume que pour ces peuples, la langue anglaise est l’Esperanto moderne qui leur permet d’être en contact avec le reste du Monde. La standardisation mondiale vers l’anglais comme langue seconde est donc pour eux rassurante et bénéfique.

Par ailleurs, pour d’autres personnes, la France toute entière devrait se mettre à parler anglais dès qu’ils y mettent les pieds. Pour ces personnes, l’entêtement des Français à parler leur langue chez eux — ou entre eux à l’étranger — est alors une source de frustration et conséquemment, d’animosité.

J’ai eu l’occasion d’effectuer un vol de Barcelone à Paris sur Ryanair et personne parmi les employés de cette compagnie aérienne irlandaise ne parlait ni l’espagnol (i.e. le castillan), ni le catalan, ni le français.

Cette controverse m’a beaucoup amusé. J’ai même songé à aller sur le site chassimages.com et y publier un message en anglais, simplement pour pouvoir comparer avec la réaction sur DPReview. Mais je n’ai pas osé. Peut-être aurais-je dû…

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Écrit par Jean-Pierre Martel