On 12 February 2011 the Montreal-based daily newspaper
Le Devoir published a manifesto
written by nine former terminologists at the Office québécois de la langue
française (OQLF, French Language Bureau). In the following days the first signers were joined by ten other former OQLF’s terminologists. They were
eventually supported by more than a hundred other terminologists, translators
and copy-editors.
This manifesto denounced the OQLF’s new orientation
adopted in the early 2000’s and favouring acceptance of loan-words and
loan-translations over proper standard terms already in use in French. The
joint signers argued that the new approach is in its core more lexicographical
than terminological. They complained that the OQLF had given up its time-proven
methodology. They also questioned the appearance in a terminological dictionary
of colloquial words; it could be added that the tag “langue
courante” – colloquial language –, already an oddity in such a specialised work, is not even systematically appended
to them.
Five years later, the OQLF has not
modified its approach. Its terminological dictionary (GDT, Grand
Dictionnaire Terminologique) continues to propose loan-translations that have long been criticised,
for example these word-for-word translations from English: comptoir
de cuisine (< kitchen
countertop, instead of plan de travail),
glace noire (< black ice,
instead of verglas), etc.
Compared with the GDT, Google’s automatic translator
would appear almost as reliable, providing at times the same word-for-word
translations, as evidenced by these examples:
In the latter case, Google’s automatic translator is
even more reliable than the GDT. Besides the word-for-word translation of black ice as glace noire, it suggests the standard word verglas:
As a matter of fact, over the years the OQLF chose to
correct only the most obvious spelling or grammatical mistakes that have been
pointed out to them. That is indeed the least that could be expected from
Quebec’s language watch dog.
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