MIL OSI Translation. Government of the Republic of France statements from French to English –
Majesty, Monsignor, Ladies and Gentlemen Heads of State and Government, Madam Secretary General, dear Louise, Ladies and Gentlemen Ministers, Ladies and Gentlemen Heads of Delegation, Ladies and Gentlemen Parliamentarians, Ladies and Gentlemen Ambassadors, Mr. Prefect, Mr. Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen in your ranks and capacities.
Protocol places me here, at this lectern, to welcome you and wish you a warm welcome. It is an honour for me. And as you have understood, no one had anticipated, in the middle of October, that the sun, with the castle of Villers-Cotterêts, would welcome you. But the truth is that you are at home here. Yes, in a place where reigns greater than us, a very old lady of more than five centuries, ancestral and yet eternally young, our language. Welcome to her home. Welcome to this summit which celebrates her and which celebrates all of you, speakers of French from the 5 continents.
This castle of Villers-Cotterêts, as you have just recalled, is the one where in August 1539, a royal decree marked the first official milestone in the expansion of our language. It was here that François I began to build the unity of the French Nation through its language, an instrument of unity, of power, decisive for our country. If you had come just 5 years ago, you would have seen here only a castle on the verge of ruin, a piece of petrified archive whose plaster was falling off, whose doors were barricaded. Today, it has become this living place, an exhibition and reception center, dedicated to the history and teaching of our language to all. I would like to thank all those who have worked during these years to rebuild, restore, but also to think about and invent this place which is not, as you have seen, simply a museum, but a city. A place of welcome, research, exploration. We are all citizens of this place, because we are all citizens of the French language.
Yes, we have much in common, more than phonemes, morphemes, lexemes. More than shared tergiversations on the use of the pluperfect subjunctive and the same despair when it comes to agreeing past participles after pronominal verbs. We possess a Rabelaisian heritage in perpetual innovation, combining scholarly culture and its creative verve with that indefinable grain of salt of humor that spans the ages. Our language, from Quebec, Acadia, Louisiana and Haiti, from the heart of the African continent, from Morocco and Tunisia, to the Congo River basin, from Madagascar and Reunion, to Vietnam or Cambodia, from our Oceania, from French Polynesia to Vanuatu, on this language, the sun never sets. There are more than 300 million women and men who speak the French language on 5 continents. More than 300 million women and men who are constantly perfecting it, modernizing it, and enriching it.
On the vault of the great courtyard, you saw earlier, in huge steel letters, the French words forged by all parts of the world, “zibulateur”, “camberé”, “techniquer”, as they say in Rwanda, dear Paul. This Francophonie that unites us was thought of and desired, I always repeat, by others than France itself. It was first desired by our writers, then our journalists and our radios. It was then promoted and institutionalized in 1970, in Niamey, by Presidents Senghor, Bourguiba, and by Prince Sihanouk.
Today, 88 States are part of it. I congratulate in advance those who will join us tomorrow, Madam Secretary-General. From the beginning, it has been a decentralized organization that, as a child of decolonization, wanted to claim a language that we share. This is why the French language continues to constitute itself in the Francophonie as well, by equipping itself with its own tools, by structuring itself, by building its own influence. Our language is a space that is being built. So, of course, there is our Académie française and I salute the immortals here present, which is the institution, but there is also the Dictionnaire des francophones et de la francophonie, which we built, not as a competition, but as a tool that made it possible to bring together all the words that are invented. Our language is also a space for learning, understanding the world.
Since yesterday, we have had the joy of welcoming another face to our family photo, since the presidency of TV Monde, our French-speaking television channel, is now held by Mrs. Kim YOUNES. I would like to thank Canada, Switzerland, Belgium, Monaco, Canada, Quebec and Wallonia, as well as Brussels, for their contribution to this magnificent project of informing the world and sharing our common understanding. We also want to allow new partners, particularly from the entire African continent who pay the same attention to supporting free and independent journalism, to join us. This is a discussion that we have been conducting with President OUATTARA for several years and which is, I believe, a great project.
Our language is also a space to create. The Francophonie is the treasure of our literature, of our authors that we share, whether at the foot of the cedar or at the top of our mountains. Because beyond language, our authors have built worlds, imaginations, which are those that structure the Francophonie. Sharing them beyond our borders is a duty. In this respect, I am delighted with the development, supported by our partners, of a collection of literary works of reference of the Francophonie that will be made available in several languages, the “Fenêtres” collection. To begin with, it will contain French-language works translated into Arabic, distributed in paper format, at $2, and via press channels, in order to allow everyone to access the ideas, imaginations and values conveyed by French-language works. This is, I believe, an equally important step forward, in the same way that in 2018, at the Académie française, we launched this support program for our interpreters and translators.
This language, our language, is more than a tool, it is a universe. It is a space of opportunity to create, offered to those who write it, sing it, plough it as a field of artistic expression. I know your attachment, Madam Secretary-General, to cultural and creative industries, and we will have the opportunity to hear it throughout the day. In a moment, Guillaume GALLIENNE will read us some magnificent texts, and the Comédie Française will be there, in Villers-Cotterêts, to share these texts with us, and throughout the day we will have French-speaking artists who will be with us to carry this creativity.
Our language is also a language for doing business, for trading. First, because it is a great conduit. Take the African continent, take Oceania. French is the language of passage par excellence. It is the one that allows you to switch between all the regional or local languages, the one that sometimes allows you to unify the commercial universe of a country or an entire sub-region. In this respect, it is a great lever of opportunity, and I say this for all our young people, all those who are moving towards trade. Don’t just think English. Think French to trade and reunify it across the Indian Ocean. And from Madagascar to Mauritius, via Reunion or Mayotte and the Comoros, it is a language that unifies this regional space in the same way for Oceania, in the same way for all of West Africa.
So yes, if the 330 million people we have today in our space will double in the coming decades, it is because this will make French a deeply attractive language in terms of commercial and economic power. Attractiveness is a French word. Entrepreneur is a French word, despite what our English-speaking friends think. And that is why I salute with great respect all the entrepreneurs and innovators who have joined us for this Summit. And I really want to salute the extraordinary energy of our partners at the FrancoTech Show. Thank you, dear Geoffroy ROUX DE BÉZIEUX. Thank you to the summit teams, whom I congratulate, and to its Secretary General, to the Business France teams. You have demonstrated that it has the capacity to innovate in all areas of technology, innovation and sustainable development. That it allowed the entire French-speaking area to move forward and create opportunities. Bravo to you! Yes, innovation is a French word. Invention too. This is why we have worked hard in recent months with our partners, and in particular the World Intellectual Property Organization, dear Daren TANG, to facilitate the launch of a French-speaking intellectual property alliance.
Our language is also a space for transmission. And I want to pay tribute here to the professors, to the teachers who, in the four corners of the world, teach the language of French speakers.
Whether French is our mother tongue or whether we have learned it, it has become a piece of our intimate life. It carries our thoughts, our hopes, our ambitions, our revolts, our emotions. The words we speak condition the ideas we deploy, which themselves condition the freedom we have. This is why we must support its teaching more than ever, quality teaching, in order to allow each and every French speaker to build their academic and professional paths. And we will continue to support the educational systems of French-speaking countries on other continents through the OIF, our bilateral actions, as we have also done through the reform of the AEFE. These are shared objectives within our organization. I am of course thinking of the actions of the regional education and training centers with which, at a national level, our cultural network cooperates. I am thinking of the actions of TV5Monde, the Agence universitaire de la Francophonie, and Senghor University, in the beautiful city of Alexandria. And allow me in this regard to address the delegation of Egypt to welcome the support of your authorities for the upcoming installation of Senghor University in this brand new campus of Borg el Arab.
But also right here, in this Cité internationale de la langue française, in Villers-Cotterêts. You will not only have a wonderful heritage site that we have renovated. You will not only have a wonderful place of culture, of permanent creation. And I congratulate the teams, dear Paul, and all the artists who, all year round, bring this place to life. You will have artist residencies, training places. And we will create, on the occasion of this summit, the Collège international de Villers-Cotterêts. Next year, the Cité internationale de la langue française will itself become a laboratory of excellence for training teachers of and in French, future French-speaking education executives, translators, interpreters, while welcoming researchers and experts in didactics in residence. It will be a place of innovation, of transmission, which will allow to irrigate everything that is done in our capitals, but also in our regions, to allow to boost teaching in French and the teaching of French. Because teaching and translating French are the vectors of our language. And I want to thank Kamel DAOUD in particular for his inspiration, his vision on the importance of translation to give everyone access to our wealth and diversity. Because yes, if there is one thing that also characterizes the Francophonie, it is both its hospitality, we welcome in our language, and it is that it thinks and has always thought in multilingualism, in translation. And as important as teaching French everywhere in the world, it is our ability to teach in our regions, in our countries, English, Mandarin, Arabic, Spanish.
Because it is this ability to think about language and its passages. A language is not thought of as isolated, closed. Our language is open and opens a space to communicate, share, be a hyphen. Yes, the Francophonie, everywhere, is in some way a trick, it is this language that allows us to build the mesh, the network of friendship, a human understanding, a diplomacy of action, of analysis. It is also, and we always see it, I was in Canada a few days ago, and it is always fascinating to see the love of French that is carried in this wonderful country. And it is carried in Montreal as in Ottawa in different ways. But I was able to measure it. Because it is a language of resistance, of combat, sometimes of contraband, always of invention and reinvention. Yes. This is why the Francophonie and this brotherhood are without exclusivity that only aspires to share its values. It is this utopia that opens its place today among us. It is this great current of air across the world that is constantly in crossbreeding, in creolization, in reinvention. And it is this wonderful place that allows writers like François CHENG, who learned our language at the age of 20, to become the dean of our academy, which allows a young Lebanese to write in our language and to become, like Mr. Amin MAALOUF, the perpetual secretary of our academy, which allows a young Russian, like Andreï MAKINE, to discover the French language in the middle of Siberia and to devote his life to it. And which allows a young Haitian writer to become one of the favorite authors of Canadians and to be adopted by the Académie française to become immortal there like Dany LAFERRIÈRE. Which allows Karim KATTAN, born in Jerusalem, to write his first novel in French, whose plot is both Palestinian and Proustian. Which allows Liliana LAZARE, Romanian, born in Moldova, to unravel the mysteries and poetic torments of a country by using the French language, which is not the language of her characters, but to which nothing human is foreign. A sign, if one were still needed, that French is this bridge between centuries, peoples and individuals.
Yes, the Francophonie is what allows us, in doing so, to build a shared and reinvented universal. A decentralized, plural, respectful universal, based on the recognition of cultures and peoples. The same one that Souleymane BACHIR DIAGNE admirably describes in his latest book. This is also why, I am convinced, the Francophonie is a space of diplomatic influence that allows us to embrace the challenges of the century. It is together, as Francophones, that we must try to understand technological transformations. It is together, as Francophones, that we must encourage innovation and multiply our capacities for creation and exchange, but also build a digital order that protects citizens. It is together, as Francophones, that we must better fight against disinformation, the spread of hatred online, fight against hate speech, racist speech, anti-Semitic speech. And this is why, and Bruno PATINO, in a moment, will demonstrate it with the debate that animates it and by explaining its content. This is also why today, with the Villers-Cotterêts appeal, we are launching an extremely clear call to the major players in the digital world to build a safer and more diverse space, to have a requirement for moderation in the French language and to fight against all this hate speech. And the International Organization of La Francophonie, Dear Louise, in this regard, will have a very special role as guarantor. It is also in French-speaking terms that we must think about innovations in artificial intelligence, pursue major innovations, make the French-speaking world a space for open-source innovation and promote our major players. And this is also why next year, we will have the Action Summit on Artificial Intelligence in France in February, where the French-speaking world will be a central player to allow us to have a dialogue on innovation and regulation, and where, I know, the G7 that Prime Minister TRUDEAU will have organized will also bring together the convictions that we share together.
I deeply believe that the Francophonie, yes, is a place where we can together carry out a diplomacy that defends sovereignty, territorial integrity throughout the planet, that carries the same discourse alongside Ukraine, attacked today, threatened in its borders and in its territorial integrity by the Russian war of aggression, but that defends a vision where there is no room for double standards, where all lives are equal for all conflicts throughout the world. And we all believe in the freedom of peoples to determine their own destiny, we are convinced that there can be no peace in the Middle East without a two-state solution. We all stand alongside our Armenian brothers for the respect of their sovereignty, their territorial integrity. We all stand alongside the friendly Lebanese people, today shaken in their sovereignty and their peace. We all stand alongside the sovereignty of all the peoples and all the States of the Pacific, which must be a peaceful region where no power can challenge this peace through territorial provocations or any repetition of tests whatsoever. We carry within us these humanist values that call us alongside all our brothers, in the French-speaking world and elsewhere, in need of assistance and we urge that the humanitarian space and the civilian population be protected everywhere and at all times.
You have understood that the agenda that the Francophonie is carrying is an agenda of peace, of sustainable development, as we have shown again by voting together, on September 22, for the adoption of the pact of the future. And I congratulate in particular the DRC whose intervention was decisive in allowing us to move forward. The Francophonie is this united city of 330 million souls that we can be proud to inhabit. A city that has the French language as its foundation and the world as its horizon, and which, with Aimé CÉSAIRE, desires a universal that is rich in all individuals. This is why I am very proud and very happy to welcome you alongside all the elected representatives of the territory, in this city of Villers-Cotterêts, city of the royal ordinance of François I, city which also saw the birth of Alexandre DUMAS, city which is yours, by this international city, for this beautiful 19th summit of the Francophonie, thanking you all for your presence and for your commitment. Long live the French language, to the common work that the International Organization of the Francophonie carries high. Long live everyone and us. I thank you.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This article is a translation. Apologies should the grammar and/or sentence structure not be perfect.
MIL Translation OSI