h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

In many ways, I think us anglophones have just become lazy. "If it's important, I'm sure they'll translate it sooner or later". In my experience it's a phenomenon peculiar to the Brits, Americans, Irish and Aussies. We expect the rest of the world to meet us on *our* terms, even when we're on holiday.

Multilingualism's a conversation piece for us. For most of the world, it's taken for granted.

Dunno. I can understand the Canadians or Europeans being sniffy about American monoculturalism. But the *British*? Aren't we, famously, the most monoglot, inward looking nation on earth? (well...second most, maybe).

Bomba:
>>Multilingualism's a conversation piece for us. For most of the world, it's taken for granted



There was a R4 prog on a couple of years ago, comparing and contrasting education in Finland. There, children don't start school until 7, but by the end of year one, near as dammit all children can read and write (they have the world's highest literacy rate).

They're educated in Finnish and Swedish, the two national languages. They start English very early. At age 11-ish, they take up at least one other language - ususally German, Russian or French.

And so on.

But thge programme makers wanted to check that they weren't just seeing the rosy picture. So they interviewed a 14 year old girl in an inner-city school, first generation Kurdish immigrant, in the remedial class.

Naturally, they conducted the interview in English.

I've just discovered this thread and read it all the way through. I have a couple of things to add.

American TV is NOT aimed at the "lowest common denominator". It's aimed at people with disposable income. This is an old story, but "The Beverly Hillbillies" was cancelled because it attracted a downmarket audience.

I don't think it's a matter of size so much as dominance. When the UK was top nation, its newspapers wrote about Britain and its empire. Kazakhstan is a huge country, but without the Borat film (which of course told us nothing at all about Kazakhstan) would you have heard of it? It's not admirable, but it's human.

Having said that, I lived in New York for a while and was shocked at the lack of international news in TV bulletins. I also have a wonderful story (second hand, from a bloke I used to work with). He fell in love with an American woman from a small midwestern town, and was taken to meet her parents. At one stage during the trip he went to a party where a woman asked him, "I don't recognise your accent. Where do you come from?" He replied, "England." and she said, "Really? That's remarkable. You speak English so well."

'Kazakhstan is a huge country, but without the Borat film (which of course told us nothing at all about Kazakhstan) would you have heard of it?'


Yes, I would have heard of it. We actually get quite a bit of news here about central Asia.

What's 'Borat'?


Seriously, most of what I know of this Borat thing has come from news stories I've seen and read about the upset that it caused to the people of Kazakhstan.

I say, what is all the ballyhoo? Just you leave Johnny foreigner alone with his fangled Bollywood - see - they cant even spell "Hollywood" right can they, bless 'em. Now us Brits, Queen (Gawd bless 'er)and country were doing a fine job, speaking loudly and slowly, signing them up 1 by 1 to our jolly little Commonwealth Club, and then some upstart kicked orf and got all shirty, then the whole bally lot of em started running about and going a bit mad. I blamed the heat, but Binky Howard-Smythe reckoned it was down to the pox we gave them.
Well,either way, ingrates the lot of 'em I say. Now if we could have had the odd month or 2 to finish orf the plan, everyone would be speaking the Queens (Gawd bless 'er) Ingerlish, drinking TyPhoo with little pinky raised, playing cricket, singing Knees Up Mother Brown and bally well doing what they were told by their betters. They were just lucky we didnt give them a damn good thwacking like the old Frenchies, what? Anyone for a quick chorus of Rule Brittania??

As I understand it Borat upset the Khazakh authorities. The people of Khazakhstan, having a sense of perspective and humour, were as amused by it as everyone else. (Meaning a similar spectrum of like/dislike...)

Here's an article in the Telegraph that seems relevant to this discussion:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/7732130/Chopped-by-the-Butchers-of-Broadway.html

British plays and books being filtered out by powerful New York critics.

Some interesting points in there. I'm not entirely sure I agree with its argument. In particular:



~*~But that may be the result of [Britain's] pluralist, multiple and fundamentally disrespectful culture.~*~

I don't think Britain's culture is any more pluralist or multiple than America's, and only slightly more disrespectful.



~*~We feel perfectly at ease in ignoring what critics say, or disagreeing completely with them.~*~

Unfortunately I can't be considered representative of the rest of my countrymen, but personally I don't like critics at all, and only rarely will I pay attention to what they have to say. Nor do I know anyone who seems more inclined to listen to them than I do, but I suspect publishers are, and obviously if a publisher's not convinced something will sell then they're not going to publish it.