[WSIS CS-Plenary] Re: [WSIS CS-Plenary] Consultations de Genève (en français) : Partie II

[Vittorio Bertola]

EOn Thu, 23 Sep 2004 19:18:41 +0000, Joseph Sarr <jsarr at refer.sn> wrote:

>Chers Collègues
>Je vous transmets, en fichier attaché et en deuxième partie (Partie II), le
>texte intégral de l’intervention que j’ai effectuée au cours des consultations

I think that the first part of your intervention, focused on
multilingualism, is particularly important, so I tried to translate it for
those who cannot read French.

-----
The situation of non-English-speaking people is hard. That of
French-speaking (not French) is worse than that of French people. In
international conferences, it is almost a dishonour when you are not
English-speaking. 

In French-speaking Africa, in general, French is the second or third
language. For example, for what regards myself, I have as mother tongue
Serere; I have later learned Wolof to be able to communicate with the rest
of Senegal, and finally French as international language.

During an international meeting, when you make a contribution or an
intervention in French, the participants believe it is a provocation. There
are tens of millions of people throughout the world, mainly in Africa, that
don't have anything but French as international language to communicate and
share with other peoples.

In Senegal, we have a long tradition of defense of the French language:
Léopold Sedar Senghor, Abdou Diouf, etc. It is not to please you, Mister
Chairman. It is a vital question.

On the other hand, we are very sensitive to the efforts made by the
Secretariat of Internet Governance and to its commitments to ensure a full
participation by non-English speaking people, and particularly by
French-speaking people, to the working group. We take note of this.

We sincerely thank the Secretariat for having deployed an effective system
of interpretation that allows us to follow with much interest the present
meeting.

I take advantage of this tribune to appeal to this honourable assembly so
that it favours inclusive advances regarding multilingualism in the
development of Internet governance. Let me forget that, when you do not know
English, you are often considered like an analphabetic or a weird person.
-- 
vb.               [Vittorio Bertola - v.bertola [a] bertola.eu.org]<------
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