Breaking the language barrier

Date: 12/03/1998

AT LAST, a book that tells it like it is, in all of Europe's working languages.

In a useful move to foster increased understanding, the European Commission has produced a handy 60-page politically correct booklet which will enable you to converse competently on EU equality policy, a minefield for the jargon-shy onlooker who doesn't know his (or her) Mithelfende Familienangehorige from her (or his) Vertikaalinen Eriytyminen.

Not only does this Commission publication offer translations and explanations of lots of complicated concepts like 'derived rights' and 'horizontal segregation', it also invents whole new areas of gobbledegook to ensure that you are never without an equality reference word to keep in the swing of things.

After all, why say equality when Brussels can supply all sorts of mumbo-jumbo enabling you to pad out your cocktail party conversations with ease?

Why not, for example, say mentoring? Mentoring (tutoraggio in Italian), is “a sheltered relationship that allows learning and experimentation to take place and personal potential and new skills to flourish through a process in which one person, the mentor, supports the career and development of another, the mentee, outside the normal superior/subordinate relationship”.

You will also really want to know what gender mainstreaming is because the Commission's adoption of a progress report on this widely misunderstood issue was the trigger for the new equality dictionary called, quite simply: One Hundred Words for Equality - a glossary of terms on equality between women and men.

In fact, there are 109 terms, all of them translated and all containing a helpful explanatory note for those who cannot even understand what they mean in English.

So why say equality when you can say Einbeziehung der dimension der chancengleichheit in samtliche bereiche der politik? - which is German for Integracion de la perspectiva de genero en el conjunto de las politicas; which is Spanish for gender mainstreaming; which, it turns out, means equality.

Or to put it a longer way, “the systematic integration of the respective situations, priorities and needs of women and men in all policies and with a view to promoting equality between women and men and mobilising all general policies and measures specifically for the purpose of achieving equality by actively and openly taking into account, at the planning stage, their effects on the respective situations of women and men in implementation, monitoring and evaluation”.

All of these things are contained within this gem of a publication and, as the Commissioner for Social Policy and Gender Awareness Pádraig Flynn points out in the book's foreword, this kind of clarification will get information about European policies “out of the circle of initiated people and accessible and understandable to all citizens”.

Exactly. And in case you thought that mouthful about gender mainstreaming more or less covered the equality landscape, think again: gender mainstreaming is just the tip of the iceberg.

In this book are more than 20 other gender-derivative words which are apparently vital to any Euro-debate on equality and which are in urgent need of explanation and translation. They are: gender analysis, gender audit, gender-based violence, gender blind, gender contract, gender dimension, gender-disaggregated data, gender distribution, gender equality, gender equity, gender gap, gender-impact assessment, gender neutral, gender pay differential, gender pay gap, gender perspective, gender planning, gender proofing, gender relations, gender relevance, gender roles and gender sensitive.

Gender blind (in German: Gleichstellungsindifferent) sounds as if it might refer to a person who cannot tell the difference between a man and a woman. But it is described here as “failing to address the gender dimension (as opposed to gender sensitive or gender neutral)”.

A cross-reference to gender dimension reveals that it is “the aspect of any issue which relates to gender”.

Women suffering from gender discrimination either because of the gender pay gap or the failure of companies to engage in gender proofing (Swedish translation: Kontroll Av Att Jamstalldhetsaspekten Beaktas) are often said to be confronting the glass ceiling, usefully described in the booklet as “the invisible barrier arising from a complex set of structures in male-dominated organisations which prevents women from obtaining senior positions”.

Gender proofing, by the way, is not jargon for an umbrella, but is “a check carried out on any policy proposal to ensure that any potential gender-discriminatory effects arising from that [policy] have been avoided and that gender equality is promoted”.

Glass ceiling is one of the more easily translatable expressions in the book, but the Italians don't even try, leaving it as 'glass ceiling', rather than bothering with Soffitto de cristallo.

Wife-battering is another matter altogether. The Italians, with suitable arm-waving accompaniment, speak of Violenze coniugali nei confronti della moglie.

EU officials from both sides of the gender divide have acknowledged that it was an oversight, in a book proclaiming equality, not to include a translation of husband-battering, but Commissioner Flynn, whose gender-specific role is male for those gender sensitive enough to notice, commented: “The glossary seeks to clarify gender-related concepts and is targeted at policy-makers, women's organisations and other sectoral associations.”

Unfortunately, the booklet offers no translation or explanation of the word 'sectoral'.

But it does include the highly gender-sensitive issue of 'sex' (Swedish: kon; Dutch: sekse; Finnish: sukupuoli; German: Geschlecht). Sex, the Eurocrats inform us, is “the biological characteristics which distinguish human beings as female or male” - nothing gender neutral there.

The book is soon to be followed by a cassette of top 20 equality-promoting favourite tunes including 'Return to Gender', 'Diamonds are a Person's Best Friend' and 'When a Gender-Parity Aggregated Man Loves a Gender-Parity Aggregated Woman', (also available on CD and vinyl).

Forthcoming publications include One Hundred Words for the Environment (sample: 'noise quality disfunction mechanism - a system by which a noise enhancement unit, or ghetto-blaster, pollutes the airspace or listening field of a person, or ghetto-blastee, in such measure as to prevent the natural evolution of an area of quietude, known as the noise-free atmospheric zone, and preventing for any sustainable period the presumption of a developed noise-excluded tonality or silence').

Other titles soon to be available in the series include One Hundred Words for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises and One Hundred Uses for a Large Regional Fund Subsidy.