#Researcher at the INALF (Institut national de la langue française - National
Institute of the French Language)
The purpose of the INaLF -- part of the France's National Centre for Scientific
Research (Centre national de la recherche scientifique, CNRS) -- is to design
research programmes on the French language, particularly its vocabulary. The
INaLF's constantly expanding and revised data, processed by special computer
systems, deal with all aspects of the French language: literary discourse
(14th-20th centuries), everyday language (written and spoken), scientific and
technical language (terminologies), and regional languages. This data, which is
an very important study resource, is made available to people interested in the
French language (teachers and researchers, business people, the service sector
and the general public) through publications and databases.
Christiane Jadelot is an expert in computerized lexicography. She is currently
in charge of putting the eighth version of the Dictionnaire de l'Académie
française (Dictionary of the French Academy) (1932-1935) online.
*Interview of June 8, 1998 (original interview in French)
= What is the history of the INaLF website?
At the request of Robert Martin, the head of INaLF, our first pages were posted
on the Internet in mid-1996. I helped set up these web pages with tools that
cannot be compared to the ones we have nowadays. I was working with tools on
Unix, which were not very easy to use. We had little practical experience then,
and the pages were very cluttered. But the INaLF thought it was very important
to make ourselves known through the Internet, which many firms were already
using to sell their products. As we are a "research and services" organization,
we have to find customers for our computer products, the best known being the
text database Frantext. I think Frantext was already on the Internet (since
early 1995), and there was also a draft version of volume 14 of the TLF (Trésor
de la langue française). So we had to publicize INaLF activities in this way. It
met a general need.
= How did using of the Internet change your professional life?
I began to really use it in 1994, with a browser called Mosaic. I found it a
very useful way of improving my knowledge of computers, linguistics,
literature... everything. I was finding the best and the worst, but as a
discerning user, I had to sort it all out and make choices. I particularly liked
the software for e-mail, file transfers and dial-up connections. At that time I
had problems with a programme called Paradox and character sets that I couldn't
use. I tried my luck and threw out a question in a specialist news group. I got
answers from all over the world. Everyone seemed to want to solve my problem! I
wasn't used to this kind of support. The French are more used to working alone,
without reaching out.
= What do you see the future?
I think we have to equip more and more laboratories with high-tech hardware and
software so we can use all these new media. We have got projects for schools and
research centers. The French education ministry has promised to give all schools
cable line access, which is a pressing national need. I saw a TV programme about
a small rural primary school's experience of the Internet. The pupils were
communicating by e-mail with schools all over the world. This is very enriching,
especially when supervised by specially-trained teachers. So that is how I see
the Internet. Now I am equipped at home, more for fun, and I hope to convince my
daughter to use all these tools to the fullest.
*Interview of August 10, 1999 (original interview in French)
= What do you think of the debate about copyright on the Web?
With its text database Frantext, the INaLF is greatly affected by problems of
copyright and publisher's rights. I think the rules should be more flexible. At
the moment, use of the database is restricted, which reduces its influence and
the spread of French in general.
= How do you see the growth of a multilingual Web?
Personally I have no problem about the use of English, which has to be regarded
as a shared communication tool. But websites should offer access both in English
and in the language of their country of origin.
= What is your best experience with the Internet?
It was the one I recalled in 1998, when I got responses from all over the world
to my very trivial question about type-faces.
= And your worst experience?
When I sent an email to someone by mistake. Sometimes this communication tool
has to be used carefully. It goes faster than the human brain and can then be
used by the recipient in a very ugly way.