Tower of Babel or ‘Englishisation’



Tower of Babel or ‘Englishisation’? A Brief Look at Language Use within the European Commission

Carolyn Ban, Professor

Graduate School of Public and International Affairs

The image of the tower of Babel is often evoked in reference to the European Union, especially, but not only by the anti-EU British press. And there is some truth to that image, as the number of official languages within the EU has swelled to 23, , and all official documents must be translated into all of these languages, creating the world’s largest translation service. The picture within the European Commission (EC), however, is somewhat different. English, French, and German are the three working languages of the Commission, but only French and English are “drafting” languages, and German is used only infrequently used. This article looks first at the impact of enlargement on the balance between English and French and then at the broader issue of language use in an international environment, in which most people are working outside of their native language.

French was the dominant language of the European Coal and Steel Community, the precursor to the European Union, and it remained dominant in the evolving organization at least until the 1973 enlargement, when the UK and Ireland were admitted. Oddly, it was not the British and Irish who pushed most aggressively for use of English, but rather the Scandinavians, who joined in 1995, as one person I interviewed explained:

When the Brits and the Irish came in, they couldn’t insist upon…the use of English, partly for historic reasons connected to the Community and partly for cultural reasons. They don’t like to be seen as imperialistic in language terms. Whereas the Scandinavians had no such complexes. They liked English, they preferred it enormously to French, and it was a little tilt in the overall balance that made English acceptable as a working language. And I think from that point on, English started to grow and has now obviously overtaken French.

In practice, what evolved was, first, considerable linguistic variation, with some Directorates General (DGs) predominantly Anglophone, others still heavily Francophone, and some where language use varied by subunit. Second, throughout the EC, there is a tendency to mix the languages, even in the same sentence, as well as to use a fair amount of EU jargon, resulting in what is sometimes referred to as “EU English and EU French,” a code that makes sense internally but can make communication virtually unintelligible to outsiders.

The 2004 and 2007 enlargements took the membership of the European Union from 15 to 27 countries. Ten of these new members were Central and East European (CEE) countries. The European Commission set specific goals for hiring from each of the new member states, with a total of over 3,600 new staff, well over 10 percent of the total Commission workforce. One of the central questions of my research within the EC was what effect these new arrivals would have on the culture and management style of the Commission. While it is too early to answer that broader question, it is clear already that one immediate impact is linguistic. The newly arriving staff get high marks for their linguistic skills. They speak, on average, more languages than their colleagues, with many speaking five or more languages. The problem is that few of them speak French. Thus, they are pushing the organization hard towards greater use of English while themselves being pushed to learn French, preferably as quickly as possible. Many of the new arrivals immediately began to study French. While the Commission provides free language courses, taking these courses is often a struggle, both because of the time required and because of location of the courses or conflict with frequent travel on the job.

The result, not surprisingly, is conflict over languages. The latest enlargements radically shifted the balance in many parts of the Commission, and that this created stresses on both new staff and those who were used to the previous language norms. Needless to say, there are fewer conflicts over language in the DGs that were already primarily Anglophone, such as DG Environment, but in the more Francophone DGs, such as Regional Policy, the conflicts are evident.

The first reaction of many new officials was surprise that, in fact, so much was in French. While those who had been in the Commission for years were aware of the trend toward increased use of English, for those just arriving the shock was the extent to which French was still needed. As one senior manager reported:

I was not very aware that the French language was of as much importance as it turned out to be… Of course, I tried to learn… but of I must say that…especially colleagues that started earlier, they tend to switch very often into French.

Many are still hesitant to speak French in meetings and are aware that they sometimes missed or misunderstood what was bring said. And they are apt to take offense at what they se as rudeness on the part of some Francophones.

Of the three DGs I studied, DG Regional Policy (generally referred to as ‘Regio’), which was more consistently Francophone prior to the 2004 enlargement, was also, not surprisingly, the locus of significant conflicts, particularly over what language would be spoken at meetings. A number of new staff, including some at very high levels, reported that French was still in common use in meetings, leaving them feeling left out.

In many ways, the reactions of those who entered the Commission prior to enlargement are the mirror image of those described above. While some accept the need to move to English, others express resentment and frustration at being forced to speak English, particularly in meetings. In DG Regio, the arrival of new senior managers had an abrupt impact on the directorates or units they headed. Several people pointed out the fact that the directorate that was most heavily Francophone (including the units working with France and other Latinate countries) was now headed by a director who did not speak French. So unit meetings might continue to be in French, but communications up the hierarchy needed to be in English. Further, the Commissioner is currently Polish, and so documents are increasingly being drafted in English. Those who were used to working in French report frustration at not being able to use French in meetings; at the extra effort required to communicate; and at the difficulty, at times, in expressing themselves as clearly as they would have liked.

The reality is that English is rapidly gaining ground within the Commission. Some critics, both within the EC and in the scholarly literature on language use, decry what they term “Englishisation,” and the French, of course, lobby hard for continued use of French, but it will be hard to turn back the tide.

The rapid language shift within the Commission has, indeed, created conflicts in some parts of the organization. But the real challenges of communication would remain even if there were a formal or informal shift to a single language. The vast majority of staff are living and working outside of their home culture and language, and that fact shapes everything they do. Linguists define a “lingua franca” as “a language used for communication between people whose first languages differ,” often a language of trade or commerce, used with a restricted vocabulary. English has, indeed, become a lingua franca not only within the European Commission but in business circles globally. Working in a non-native language has predictable results. Misunderstandings and mistranslations are, of course, inevitable. Sometimes there are simply not clear parallel words or phrases that make translation easy, but also non-native speakers may not have full command of the language they are speaking. A senior EC official recounted a near-disaster in a trade negotiation with the United States:

On one negotiation mission, there was an Italian. And he fancied himself as a good English speaker. And we were meeting a deputy U.S. Trade Representative, a very high level team. And so this guy started to lay out our case, in his very charming to listen to -- you know, they speak English with a nice foreign accent. Until he came to “parts one, two, and three,” which he opened up by saying, “Well, now, you pretend that this and this, you pretend that…” I saw the shocked looks, and I had to intervene and say, “He means, ‘this is your claim’.” Because I could see the American -- he was a Texan -- getting very red in the face.

Many of the people I interviewed recognized that the cost of working outside of their native language was the loss of richness, of nuance, and also of irony or sarcasm. Even if one has the words right, striking just the right tone in another language is difficult, and one can never be sure that the tone will be understood as it was meant. One British senior official told me of sending an e-mail that was quite confrontational, which was not taken that way by the recipient (which in this case was probably just as well). And many people reported that jokes just do not translate, and that they had to change their communications styles and reduce drastically the use of humor.

Further, the fact that most people are using English or French as a lingua franca means that, for many, it is the native speakers of those languages who are the most difficult to understand because they are using a richer and more idiomatic vocabulary rather than the more simplified version of the language used by others.

Commission staff use standard coping mechanisms to prevent or deal with misunderstandings, such as repeating back or rephrasing what the other person said, reiterating any agreements reached, drafting written summaries of meeting results and circulating them to the participants, or calling to request clarification of e-mails. Indeed, these techniques are often needed, as a Polish attorney explained:

I remember one situation where, when talking to my Dutch colleague with whom I work on a team, we were just arguing heavily about one issue. And at one point of time, I realized that we are, in fact, opting for the same solution but we are somehow expressing it in a different way in English. And I told him, “hold on, hold on. I think we want the same thing. What I mean is…” And I tried to explain it in a different way. And then he said, “Exactly. That’s it.”

While some complain that the use of two languages creates confusion and sometimes takes a great deal of time, others see the bilingual nature of the Commission as central to its culture and essential because it reflects, at least in part, the multinational and multilingual nature of the European Union.

Conclusions

It is clear that the movement towards increased use of English is inexorable and has been greatly speeded up by recent enlargements, especially those of 2004 and 2007, since almost all the newly arriving staff are more likely to know English than French. Expanded use of staff on temporary loan from their governments or other institutions has compounded that effect. In parts of the Commission such as DG Environment, which have long been primarily Anglophone, the change has, obviously, been less painful than in those parts of the Commission that are in the middle of a fairly dramatic language shift, such as DG Regio, where each side is still somewhat uneasy with the current balance. This is logical, since if the language use shifts, for example, from 70 percent French to 30 percent, those used to speaking French will be aware of a dramatic change that they feels disadvantages them, while those entering from the outside will still encounter more situations where French is needed than they expected or are prepared to handle.

But perhaps more important than the battles over the two languages is the need to recognize that almost all staff are working outside of their native languages and that both language and cultural differences can lead to misunderstandings. Those who survive and even thrive in this environment are those who approach their colleagues with patience and tolerance and who take real pleasure in the rich cultural and linguistic mélange that characterizes this unique organization.

Note: For an expanded treatment of this subject as well as other publications on this research, go to pitt.edu/~cban.

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