The EU’s Babbling Tower
claire daley, 9 July 2008
Following Wales’ request last year, the EU is close to recognising Scottish, Gaelic and Welsh alongside the current 23 languages officially used by the EU institutions.
Welsh is already used in the country’s own Assembly and spoken by one in five members of the Welsh population, but under the new proposal, Scottish and Welsh citizens will be able to correspond with the EU Council of Ministers in their native language – a similar arrangement to the one negotiated for Spain’s regional languages – Basque, Catalan and Galician – in 2005.
The added translation costs will be financed by the Scottish and Welsh governments.
The EU hopes the changes will symbolize its protection of local interests, but will the new arrangement bring 580,000 Welsh and 60,000 Gaelic speakers closer to the European Union? Or will the new proposal simply obstruct the functioning of the EU?
For example, the Welsh language is famous for containing the world’s longest name – ‘Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch’, the name of a Welsh town meaning literally; “The church of St. Mary in the hollow of white hazel trees near the rapid whirlpool by St. Tysilio’s of the red cave”. Is the EU really ready to tackle that kind of tongue twister? Perhaps brevity is overrated. After all when a name can capture an entire scene there is almost no need to visit the place.
However, brevity often generates clarity. For example, Immanuel “why use a short word when you can use several long ones” Kant’s tendency to use vocabulary ‘ad absurdum’ requires many German philosophy students to use more succinct English translations to decipher his complicated texts.
At least Scottish Gaelic’s comprehensive vocabulary is equipped for EU politics. For example ‘Argie-Bargie’ meaning “to dispute” or “argue”, would prove a handy tool for translating the recent exchanges between French President Nicholas Sarkozy and the UK’s Commissioner for Trade, Peter Mandelson. “Auld Claes an Parritch” could be also be useful, as it roughly translates as “After a holiday (i.e. Parliamentary relocations to Strasbourg!) we return to old cloths (the flailing EU flag, recently dropped from the Lisbon Treaty) and porridge (Brussels as imprisoning national freedoms)”.
To be fair, jibes at the language should be balanced with accounts of the more useful phrases the new languages will offer, for example: “Brigadoonery”, meaning “gaudy and beyond good taste” is a fitting addition, and I’m pretty sure “Fantoosh” [“posh, swanky, possibly above one’s class”] will come in handy.
However, the proposal seems to be at odds with the European project’s professed objective of greater integration and unity. Perhaps this “parlance” proposal will safeguard unique national cultures and halt the standardisation of globalisation? Or promoting division within the union could lead to fragmentation, and absurdity – if it could lead to the recognition of more “official EU languages” than “official EU member states”?
The proposal might not enable “Unity in diversity”. For example, the media has widely compared the proposed increase of official EU languages with the Old Testament story of the Tower of Babel. Genesis recounts how following the great flood, survivors’ attempted to build a tower to reach the heavens. However, God punished man’s arrogant challenge to his power. He instigated a multiplicity of tongues to confound communication and halt the project. Thus the use of more languages compromised “the project” and divided humanity, scattering man across the world.
The moral of the story could be that differentiated languages can be a source of incredible differences, and that when men attempt grand projects, the powers that be often intervene to confuse and obstruct. But the workings of the EU are already infamously bewildering. For example, the English version of the Lisbon Treaty provides a lesson in confusion; a Gaelic/Welsh interpretation would sound like a long-lost verse from Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody.
The Times Online kindly kicked off the translation process with an essential entry for any pan-European phrase book:
Is that banana sufficiently curved to pass EU inspection?
Gaelic: A bheil caime gu leòr sa bhanana ud airson riaghailtean an EU?
Welsh: Ydy’r tro sydd yn y ffrwchnedd yna’n addas ar gyfer safonau’r UE?
Sounds like a load of “Neeps and Tatties” (“mashed turnips and potatoes”) to me.
Clare Daley makes an important point but it is hampered by two things: (a) the examples she gives are from Scots, a dialect of English which has nothing to do with Scots Gaelic and (b) it is the Member State that asks for a language to become official, or co-official, not the other way around. The EU does not seek to add languages, the Member States do, so fair is fair please and lay the blame at the door of your own government for this unwelcome development. Anyway, one would think that the anti-EU brigade would welcome ever more languages since, if the analogy with the Tower of Babel is correct, the EU will collapse in confusion.
I wonder if the EU’s proposed recognition of Gaelic will make it any easier for the European Union to understand what the citizens of Eire meant when they voted “No” in the recent referendum?
As Humpty-Dumpty said to Alice: “When I use a word, it means what I want it to mean. The question is: Who’s to be master? That’s all.”
The Eurocrats have made it very clear who they want to be master. Perhaps the rest of us need to remind them what happened to Humpty-Dumpty.