The Hindu : International : France to weed out jargon

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Feb 19, 2005

International

International

France to weed out jargon

Paris: France's mighty bureaucracy has acknowledged the havoc wreaked by the near-total impenetrability of the language it uses by publishing a dictionary of the 3,000 most commonly used administrative terms which the average French person does not understand. In the first serious attempt to make Gallic red tape more user-friendly since King Francois I dropped Latin as the country's official language in 1539, Le Petit Decodeur — or The Words of the Administration in Plain Language — promises ``an end to unfortunate misunderstandings between you and officialdom.'' The 250-page book, published with the Government's orientation committee for the simplification of administrative language, is part of a drive to improve the image of state institutions by weeding out as much obscure, austere and outmoded language as possible, said Eric Woerth, a junior Minister for State Reform. , it seems, systematically resort to arcane vocabulary: gracieusement (graciously) instead of for free; matricule rather than number; quadriennal rather than every four years. Liquider votre retraite (literally, ``to liquidate your pension'', a frequently used phrase that panics pensioners, does not mean payments will be halted, but that the amount is being calculated before being paid, the book says. —

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