Through observations, winks and anecdotes, the Carnets de Paris immerse you in the heart of the Olympic Games.
Even if nothing is ever perfect, the Paris Games seem to mark a certain return to the Olympic forefront of French, which was in a process of decline in favor of English.
These Summer Games are the first to be held in a French-speaking city since Montreal in 1976. Given the French’s habit of borrowing all sorts of words from English to seem trendy, there was reason to fear that it would not go as well as hoped. The announcement in 2019 that its slogan would be ” Made for sharing » (Made to be shared) seemed to confirm the worst apprehensions. The outcry raised would force the organizers to correct the situation and arrive, in 2022, with a new formula in the form of a play on words: “Let’s open the Games wide.”
Two and a half months before the Games, the French National Assembly adopted a resolution calling on organizers, participants, visitors and journalists to “use the French language” as much as possible.
Whenever this topic is discussed, we begin by recalling that the founding father of the modern Olympic Games was a Frenchman, Pierre de Courbertin, that France’s influence continued to be great in the early years and that, although it was joined by English in 1972, the French language takes precedence in the rules of the Olympic Charter in the event of a dispute. But this is far removed from the reality as it has generally been experienced on the ground for several years.
Steady decline
For at least thirty years, “there has been an undeniable decline in the use of the French language during the Olympic Games. It is clear that, like all major world sporting and other events, English is taking up more and more space,” a spokesperson for the International Organisation of La Francophonie (OIF) told France Info last month.
In the case of the Games, what we see is that French is always relatively present during the official opening and medal ceremonies. But in the signage at the competition sites and in the host cities, in the entertainment in the stadiums, among the reception staff and on the various daily communication platforms, it is often almost totally absent, with the organizers always favoring English and the local language.
The OIF cites as evidence the reports drawn up by key witnesses it sent to the Games, from Athens in 2004 to Tokyo in 2020, including Quebecers Lise Bissonnette (Turin 2006) and Michaëlle Jean (London 2012). Each time, these key witnesses saw that the organizers tended to avoid using French, citing the desire to give priority to the local language, for convenience and to reduce their expenses.
For years, the OIF has signed agreements with the organizing committees in which the latter promise to do everything in their power to better embody the place of French as the official language of the Games, in exchange for which the OIF offers its services for the translation and design of guides. In Paris, this has led, among other things, to the development of glossaries to speak in French of sports that have recently made their debut at the Games, such as skateboard (skateboard), whose first events began on Tuesday, and breaking, which will come later this week. The same exercise is already underway to Frenchify the vocabulary of baseball and flag football in view of the Los Angeles Games in 2028.
Very good, but things to improve
In Paris, there is no doubt that French occupies a place at least equal to English, if not predominant, in signage and communications with the public during the Games.
Nothing is perfect, of course. As good French people, commentators and crowd leaders sometimes have trouble suppressing expressions in English, while their English-speaking colleagues apparently do not feel the same desire to borrow words from the vernacular. We can also bet that, in the best case scenario, the terminology sheets proposed for the new Olympic sports will take time to percolate into the everyday language of the athletes and those who follow them.
The instructions apparently do not seem to have reached everyone in the organizing committee either. As evidence, its invitation, before the Games, to “watch live the Olympic Qualifier Series in breaking, skateboarding and BMX Freestyle” on its digital platforms, to visit its “megastore” on the Champs-Élysées or its “Pride House” in town.
Its team responsible for raising public awareness of good environmental practices has chosen a campaign based on bilingual puns that are not often successful, such as these: “Have a gourde day”, for water bottle; “One, two, tri”, to encourage people to sort their waste, and “No benne, no gain”, as in throw your waste in the trash.
The worst, however, are the big official sponsors of the Games, such as Toyota and Coca-Cola, whose accessories at competition venues and advertisements around the city are often in English only.
On the other hand — and more generally — organizers are imaginative when it comes to showcasing French culture, often in a playful and humorous way. Examples include these century-old photos of Olympic athletes who are made to sing Joséphine Baker thanks to artificial intelligence or this giant karaoke allowing the 80,000 spectators at the Stade de France from all over the world to sing Joe Dassin.
This report was financed with the support of the Transat International Journalism Fund-
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