| Mercator
Newsletter - No.11, February 2005 |
| From now on, the Mercator Common Newsletter will be a monthly newsletter. This way you will be kept informed with more recent and updated information. |
| 4th
Mercator International Symposium Translation of Culture, Culture of Translation:
Languages in Film, Television and Literature |
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IV
Mercator International Symposium MERCATOR-MEDIA |
| Dates Announced for the 4th Mercator International Symposium The 4th Mercator International Symposium will be held on 26, 27 and 28 October 2005 in Aberystwyth, Wales and will have the theme of "Translation of Culture, Culture of Translation: Languages in Film, Television and Literature". Language transfer, which includes, for the purposes of this symposium, subtitling and dubbing of both film and television as well as literary translation, is a multi-faceted phenomenon from the point of view of minority languages. It can be used to disseminate cultures which find themselves outside the audiovisual and literary ‘mainstream’ and to maximise audience or reader numbers for minority cultural products. Moreover, translation into minority languages not only increases the volume of available material in a marginalised language, but may have a wider cultural impact and contribute to the development of the language as a dynamic creative medium. On the other hand, the effect of ‘importing’ cultural references on a large scale may not always be viewed positively. This symposium will seek contributions to this discussion from those active as practitioners and policy-makers in the audiovisual and literary fields (producers, directors, broadcasters, subtitlers and dubbers, scriptwriters, publishers, authors, translators) as well as those concerned with these issues in an academic context. While the emphasis will be on autochthonous minority languages (that is to say the languages of groups long-established on their current territory and using a language other than the primary official language of their state or a language in some sense socially and/or politically marginalised) connections may be made with issues of concern to smaller state languages, migrant languages and cultural production originating from beyond the metropolitan mainstream. We shall welcome contributions which make those connections. Key areas of discussion will include (but need not be limited to):
Abstracts of approximately 500 words or suggestions for panel discussions should be sent (as Word files or as plain text within the e-mail) to george.jones@aber.ac.uk by 1 June 2005. Notification of acceptance will be sent by 1 July 2005. Written abstracts/proposals submitted for consideration will be accepted in Welsh, English, German or French. Abstracts in other languages can be considered subject to prior agreement with the organising committee. Full details of registration and programme will shortly appear on the
Mercator-Media website http://www.aber.ac.uk/mercator. |
| News February 2005 (links to the Mercator websites) |
| Media News - Mercator-Media |
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| Legislation news - Mercator-Linguistic Rights and Legislation |
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| Mirandese Cultural Association in Financial Difficulty The association of traditional Mirandese music “Sons da Terra” (Sounds of the Earth), established in September 2000 at Sendim village in the municipality of Miranda do Douro, could be closed definitively within 3 - 4 months, because, to date, funding has not been received from the Ministry of Culture (MC) for the realization of projects during the year 2004, according to the director of the association, Mr. Mario Correia. “Sons da Terra” is dedicated to the training of young players of the “Gaita-de-foles”, the traditional bagpipe of this region, along with other instruments used in the local traditional music, the collecting and publishing of traditional music and folk tales, and the organisation of the annual “Sendim Inter-Celtic Festival”, first held in the summer of 2000 with the participation of music groups from Spain, Scotland, Ireland etc.. The association has trained not only local young people but also international students. “In 2004, we applied for funding for the music groups to the Ministry of Culture, and our application was approved. These funds were designated for the project to publish 8 CDs which have already appeared”, said Mr. Mario Correia. “According to the contract with the Institute of Arts (of the Ministry of Culture), the funding should have arrived by 30th November, 2004. However, it did not and we discovered that the Minister had ordered the suspension of the payment she herself had agreed to”. Mr. Correia explains that “the association is a non-profit-making one and expected to receive from the Ministry of Culture the sum of 10,000 Euros. Since these funds did not arrive, we are not able to continue our activities.” The Gaita-de-foles training course planned for February 2005, will also be suspended. This association was established by the Sons da Terra Publisher, owned by Mario Correia. Since its inception, it has published 18 CDs on the music of the Miranda region alone and some books written in the Mirandese language, including material collected from oral tradition. Moreover, 40 young persons have been trained in the Gaita-de-foles. Local public bodies support the projects which this organization has developed, buying an agreed number of copies of the CD’s, but, according to Mr. Correia, this support alone is not sufficient to maintain their activities. The work of this association is among the most important for the promotion
of the Mirandese language, which has been recognized as a language by
the Portuguese parliament since 1998. If it were in the end to fold,
it could cause incalculable damage for the future of the language. Sorbian Newspaper becomes available on line The Sorbian daily newspaper Serbske Nowiny became available to read on line in February 2005. Selected stories from the print version are offered daily and complemented by items from the weekend supplements and the monthly German-language edition. The newspapers website is at www.serbske-nowiny.de. The newspaper first appeared in 1842 under the title Tydźenska nowina abo serbske Powěsće za hornich Łužičanow as a weekly. In 1854 its name was changed to the present one and in 1921 it began publication as a daily. Some 60,000 Sorbs live in the region of eastern Germany known as Lusatia
in the federal Länder of Sachsen and Brandenburg. Their language
is a western Slavic one. Sicilian Language Course on Line The site www.linguasiciliana.org, which belongs to the Forum LinguaSiciliana pâ valurizzaziuni i prumuziuni dû sicilianu, a network of enthusiasts which has been active in the field of bilingualism in Sicily for about two years, has made available, free of charge, a Sicilian course in seven languages, namely Sicilian, English, Spanish, French, German, Italian and Serbo-Croat. This is the first time that Sicilian language scholars have engaged in a venture of this sort which involves raising the staus and knowledge of the Sicilian language even beyond the language’s own territory. A tool of this kind will also be useful for those who have emigrated or their children, giving them a way of rediscovering or learning the language of their parents. The project has been carried out without any public funding. The course can be found at www.linguasiciliana.org/grammatica.htm, in html format as well as Acrobat and Word. The site of the Forum LinguaSiciliana contains a wide variety of resources relating to Sicilian linguistics and lexicon and in the coming months they intend to begin the publication of the Sicilian course in Portugese, Romanian, Czech, Arabic and Chinese. For further information contact info@linguasiciliana.org. TV3 to keep its Frequencies in the Balearic Islands After much debate and speculation it has been agreed by representatives
of the autonomous government of Catalonia and that of the Balearic Islands
that the latter will not allocate the frequency used by the Catalan
channel TV3 to the new Balearic channel IB3. The agreement signed by
the two governments guarantees the reception of Televisió de Catalunya
in the Balearics and of IB3 in the autonomous region of Catalonia. IB3
will now use the frequency hitherto used by Canal 33 (the second Catalan
public channel) which has a much smaller audience. Therefore, viewers
who wish to continue watching this channel will have to retune their
sets. In addition, both governments intend to ask the Spanish government
to establish a special ‘multiple channel’ to facilitate reciprocal reception
between the two communities. It is also proposed that the government
of Valencia be approached with a view to inviting them to be part of
the same initiative. Friulan Magazine and Radio Station celebrate Anniversaries On Friday 24th February, La Patrie dal Friûl, the oldest monthly publication written entirely in Friulan, celebrated its 59th anniversary. It was established by a dentist from Udin (Udine) Felix Marchi and the priest and intellectual Giuseppe Marchetti to ‘deal in a practical way with serious and pressing issues of politics, economics and history, using the tools of reason and discussion’. The path taken on 24th February 1946 has been kept to and the legacy of Marchi and Marchetti (and also of Maria Del Fabro, Aurelio Cantoni and Vittorio Gaspareto) is today entrusted to the editor Father Anotni Beline, the prolific translatior of Biblie par furlan. The radio station Radio Onde Furlane also recently celebrated its 25th
anniversary. To celebrate this anniversary, the station began broadcasting
a selection of old Sardinian edition of Le Monde Diplomatique launched Le Monde Diplomatique, an influential political magazine, can now also be read in Sardinian. The new edition is a private initiative of a group of Sardinian supporters of the French magazine and has been welcomed by the publishers of Le Monde Diplomatique (LMD). For the moment the Sardinian edition can be found only on the net at http://sc.mondediplo.com. A few months ago members of two associations of the biggest minority group in the Italian state, ATILS, the Association of Translators and interpreters of the Sardinian language and Inter Limbas (‘limbas’ is Sardu for ‘languages’), came up with the idea of producing a Sardinian edition of the popular magazine based in Paris. It is already published in twenty languages including Catalan. Diego Corraine, editor of the Sardinian edition of LMD, talked to Eurolang about the aim of the initiative: “We wanted to demonstrate that our language can be used in a modern and official way and that we can live and understand the world we live in through the medium of our mother tongue. This is a great achievement for all the Sardinians who care for the progress of their language”. The French publishers of Le Monde Diplomatique welcomed the Sardinian edition as a way, “to affirm cultural and linguistic diversity against a globalization that menaces cultures, peoples and languages”, according to Mr Corraine. The Sardinian web site has the same interface as the original Le Monde Diplomatique website, the only difference being the language that it is written in. The French monthly magazine publishes articles by well known authors such as José Saramago, Eduardo Galeano and Luis Sepulveda. 1.4 million copies are printed worldwide and 350,000 copies are sold in France. To support the Sardinian edition of Le Monde Diplomatique, which at
the moment is being run voluntarily, an association called the “Friends
of LMD” has been started on the island. Its members aim to transform
the online magazine to a printed one as soon as possible in order to
reach more Sardinian speakers. (Source: Eurolang) Italian Public TV, RAI, Criticised for Ignoring Language Law RAI, the Italian state broadcasting company, does not respect the
law for the protection of minority languages. The thirteen language
communities recognised by the state, with the exceptions of the German,
Slovene and French minorities, do not get any programmes in their languages.
These Facts were aired last weekend in a conference held in Lungro,
capital of the Arbëreshë (Albanian-speaking) community in Calabria.
Basque Journal References placed on the Internet The ‘Kulturaldi’ database, which contains references of fifteen journals on subjects relating to the Basque Country has been placed on the Internet and it is planned that in the future articles will be placed on the internet in full. The Koldo Mitxelena Cultural Centre in Donostia (San Sebastian) in conjunction with the Antso Jakituna Foundation in Gasteiz (Vitoria) are behind the Kulturaldi initiative. A database comprising bibliographical references of 15 journals that deal with the Basque Country’s history, ethnography, culture, language and other subjects has been prepared for the Internet. The aim of this virtual library is to help researchers access material more easily. In the future it will be possible not only for bibliographic files
to be looked at, but also for articles to be digitalised, put on the
Internet and examined in their entirety without one having to move from
one’s computer at home. The subscription is free of charge and will
basically cover the most important journals that have been dealing with
Basque subjects over the last century. It is possible to access the
Kulturaldi database through the web pages of the Koldo Mitxelena
Cultural Centre and the Antso Jakituna Foundation. Closing down of Egunkaria ‘a European problem’ 22 Members of the European Parliament, including the heads of three parliamentary groups have called for the reopening of the Basque-language daily newspaper Egunkaria. In a press briefing about seven MEPs denounced the closing down two years ago of “the only newspaper in the Basque language”, called for the paper to be relaunched and reiterated that the basic rights that lie at the very heart of Europe have to be respected. A total of 22 MEPs signed a statement calling for the relaunch of the paper. They include Gerard Onesta, the deputy speaker of the European Parliament, and the presidents of three political groups in the Parliament, Jens-Peter Bonde, a Dane and a co-president of the Independence and Democracy Group; Monica Frassoni, an Italian and a co-president of the Group of the Greens; and Graham Watson, the president of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe. Josu Ortuondo, the EAJ-PNV MEP, underlined the seriousness of closing down a newspaper. “We are here to demand that basic rights be applied in the Basque Country, too”. Important media representatives were unfortunately not present. “If
the Turks were to close down a Kurdish paper, this press room would
be full,” said Gerard Onesta, the deputy speaker of the European Parliament
with regret. And Monica Frassoni, the co-president of the Green Group,
reiterated this: “The problem of freedom of expression is well known
in many countries in Europe, even though not much is heard about it.
However, the risks are there, as we can see from the closing down of
Egunkaria. Terrorism is the excuse given to justify many things.
We have to keep an eye on this. The closing down of Egunkaria
is not exclusively a Basque problem, it is also a European problem.
It’s under our responsibility.”
On 13th February the Breton-language television programme Red an
Amzer was shown throughout the historical region of Brittany (which
these days is administratively divided, with the historical capital
of Naoned or Nantes falling within the department of ‘Loire-Atlantique’).
The programme was shown by the channel France 3 Bretagne, which covers
most of historical Brittany and France 3 Estuaire which serves Nantes
and St. Nazaire. For almost two years no Breton television has been
shown on F3 in Loire Atlantique. It is not clear, however, whether the
technical problem which obliged those wishing to see Breton programmes
in Loire Atlantique to pay to have their aerials adjusted to receive
a signal from F3 in Morbihan has been definitelvely solved, since the
breton broadcast appears to have been a ‘one-off’. On the 20th February
a film by Thierry Compain was not shown in Loire-Atlantique. The association
"Brezhoneg 'barzh an tele !" (Breton on Television!) in Nantes
advises people to write to the channel to demand that Breton programmes
be shown every week on France 3 Estuaire.
A special group has been set up to prepare an action plan that will
pave the way for the separation of the Irish language television channel
TG4 from the Irish public broadcasting body RTÉ. Issues of emlpoyment,
tax and contracts are, apparently, the ones mostly requiring to be resolved.
The plan will also have to give attention to the links between the two
organisations that will need to be dissolved in order to establish TG4
as an independent entity. It is thought that there will bo no major
legal obstacles in the way of the separation as it had been envisioned
from its inception that TG4 would be independent. The Communications
Minister, Noel Dempsey, expects the plan to be prepared and placed before
fellow ministers by ‘the middle of the year’. Frisian: language of the heart At a public meeting of the Dutch Member State Committee of the European Bureau of Lesser Used Languages (EBLUL) at the 8th of February, a booklet on Frisian language and culture in the Netherlands, called “De taal fan it hert” (The language of the heart) was presented. The booklet is a co-production of the province of Fryslân and the Dutch MSC of EBLUL. Dr. Mulder, deputy of education and culture in the Frisian provincial board, presented the first copy of the booklet to Mrs. Dieuwke de Graaf-Nauta, ex-deputy of the province of Fryslân and ex-minister of Interior Affairs. Mrs. De Graaf-Nauta pointed out that it is very important for a minority language such as Frisian, to develop good documentation, to be able to promote the language properly. In this way, new inhabitants of the province of Fryslân, but also touritst and foreigners can get a clear view of Fryslân, the Frisian situation and the Frisian language and culture in particular. The booklet is available in Frisian, English, Dutch (“De taal van het
hart”) and German (“Sprache des Herzens”). For ordering a copy of the
booklet, please send an email to Mrs. Anne Keizer, akeizer@@fa.knaw.nl. |
| Publications |
| Soon in the next Bulletin - Mercator-Linguistic Rights and Legislation |
| The Mercator-Linguistic Rights and Legislation team is currently preparing Bulletin 61, to be published at the end of March. Here is a preview of its contents, which are being translated into several languages: |
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| Next Working Paper - Mercator-Linguistic Rights and Legislation |
| We are also preparing
the publication of our next Working Paper,
entitled "The origin and evolution of language secessionism
in Valencia. An analysis from the transition period until today",
by Vicent Climent-Ferrando. |
| More information on minority languages in education in Slovenia online - Mercator-Education |
| The enlargement of the EU with ten new member states in May 2004, brought a lot of new minority language communities into the Union; there are approximately ninety communities which cover about thirty different languages. Most of them are so-called ‘trans-frontier languages’ which are either minority or majority language, depending on the state where they are spoken (for example Hungarian in Slovakia and Slovenia and Polish in Czech Republic). There are also unique languages in one state, such as Kashubian in Poland, and unique languages spread over more states, such as Ruthenian in Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland as well as non-territorial languages, like Roma and Yiddish spoken in several old and new member states. Mercator-Education is focussing more and more on education in minority
languages in the new EU member states these days. Mercator-Education
already published a regional dossier on Kashubian in education in Poland
and plans to publish more dossiers on minority languages in new member
states. Articles on the role of such minority languages in pre-primary,
primary, secondary and higher education in Hungary, Poland, Estonia,
Latvia and Lithuania were already, and still are online available on
the website of Mercator-Education. Now a paper on minority languages
in education in Slovenia is online available as well. Papers on the
situation of minority languages in education in Slovakia and the Czech
republic will follow soon. Just click on “General information on the
languages in the current and new member states of the EU” at our site:
http://www.mercator-education.org. |
| IJSL publishes articles concerning trilingual education - Mercator-Education |
| The journal International
Journal of the Sociology of Language (IJSL) has now published eight
articles concerning trilingual education in Europe. The cases are Finland,
Basque, Fryslân, Catalan, Ireland, Ladin en Switzerland. This is the
result of a former Mercator-Education project on trilingualism. |
| Miscellany |
| New options in the Current Affairs section - Mercator-Linguistic Rights and Legislation |
| Mercator-Linguistic Rights and Legislation's website has been throughly transformed. We would like to highlight the changes introduced in the "News" and "Events" sections. The latest news keep being shown in the home page, now in a smaller format, while an event taking place in the current month is also included. The "News" section now highlights the news from the last two months, while the general news search engines, by key word and by date, remain available. The whole list of news since January 1997 can be also consulted. The "Events" section is the one including the most new features. Its main site shows the present month’s events, but what is most relevant is the new search engine by date, allowing users the possibility to search past and future events. The "Mercator
Symposia"section (to be found within the “Mercator” section)
has also been updated. All the information regarding the next symposium,
organised by Mercator-Media, has been added. |
| Updated information on languages - Mercator-Linguistic Rights and Legislation |
| New features have been included in the "General Information" section inside "Languages and legislation". Mercator-Legislation has now updated all the maps showing minority languages in Europe. You will find the new images under "General Information" for each language, when searching the information both by language and by state. This updating has been carried out on the basis of a poster-map entitled "Approach to the Europe of Languages", published by CIEMEN (2003), and the book National Minorities in Europe, by Cristoph Pan and Beate Sibylle Pfeil (2003). The data corresponding to the number of speakers, as well as the source
of such data, have also been updated. |
| Fryske Akademy's books available in PDF Format - Mercator-Education |
|
Mercator-Education is converting into PDF format the files containing
the text of books written by Fryske Akademy employees that also have
been published by the Fryske Akademy. These books ara at least 5 years
old and soon will be available in Mercator-Education site. The task
is carried by a new trainee at ME, Lolke Schotanus, student of Information
Technology in Leeuwarden. |
| Authors needed for new dossiers - Mercator-Education |
| Lately, Mercator-Education published new regional dossiers on Kashubian in education in Poland and Irish in education in Northern Ireland. These dossiers can be downloaded from our site www.mercator-education.org, but you can also order a printed version. For ordering a printed version, please send an email to Mrs. Adrie Kaspers, akaspers@fa.knaw.nl. We are planning to publish some new dossiers and to update some older dossiers. We still search authors for updates of the dossiers on Swedish in education in Finland (1997) and Basque in education in France (1998). We managed to find authors for new dossiers on, amongst others, Hungarian in education Slovakia, Slovakian in education in Hungary and Ukrainian/Ruthenian in education in Poland. We are focussing more and more on minority languages in the new EU member states. Therefore we are interested in all proposals concerning dossiers on regional or minority languages in education in one of the new EU states. To be more concrete: we would like to publish dossiers on for example Polish in education in the Czech Republic and Italian in education in Slovenia. Next to that, we are on the search for an author who could write a dossier on Luxembourgish in education in Luxembourg. We already planned to publish a dossier on that topic a long time ago. Therefore we would like to ask those persons who are interested to
update a dossier or to write a new one on a minority language in education
in a new or an older member state, to contact Mr. Tsjerk Bottema, tbottema@fa.knaw.nl.
Mercator-Education pays an author's fee of € 600,- for a new dossier
and € 300,- for an updated one. |
| New titles Mercator-Education library |
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| Hungarian Parliamentary delegation visits Mercator-Education / Fryske Akademy |
| On February 3 Mercator-Education
organised a seminar for a delegation of the Hungarian Parliament. The
main interests of the delegation were minority issues such as language,
religion and politics. During the morning session, they joined the presentations
about the Mercator network, endangered languages and the situation of
the Frisian language in the province of Friesland. The seminar was hosted
by the city of Ljouwert/Leeuwarden. In the afternoon they visited Mercator-Education
and the Fryske Akademy premises to see in more detail some demonstrations
of the current projects developed by Mercator-Education. |
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