France seeks to encourage the use of words and expressions in the French language, to the detriment of other languages, to designate a series of concepts related to video games that are usually mentioned in English.
To do this, it has imposed the use of official translations of these terms in French, with the aim of eradicating from its vocabulary words in other languages that can be expressed in its language.
The Commission for the Enrichment of the French Language, an interministerial body that operates under the authority of the French Prime Minister and is coordinated by the General Delegation for the French Language and the Languages of France, has been in charge of promoting this change.
This organization, formed by a group of experts distributed in 14 ministries, seeks to promote the creation of new terms and expressions that can be used to designate concepts that are usually indicated with words in other languages.
To do this, it works together with institutional partners, language specialists and those responsible for language policy in francophone countries.
Once the Académie Française, the institution that regulates and perfects the language, validates the terms suggested by the Commission for the Enrichment of the French Language, they are published in the Official Gazette of the French Republic.
That is their way of making these words official, making them mandatory terms in government departments and beginning to serve as a reference for translators and technical writers.
In this way, it is already mandatory to use words like ‘jeu vidéo en nuage’ instead of ‘cloud gaming’, ‘joueur o joeuse’ instead of ‘streamer’ and ‘passe saisonnier’ instead of ‘season pass’.
These and many other denominations can be consulted in said official document, which includes a series of anglicisms with their corresponding meanings and translations in French.
Other los términos que se incluyen en esta relación its ‘pay to win’ (‘pay to win’), ‘skill game’ (‘skill game’), ‘skeleton’ (‘rigging’) and ‘follow hands’ (hand tracking).
In recent years, Spain has adopted a position similar to that of France, with the integration of Spanishized Anglo-Saxon terminology in the Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE).
Its content is complemented by the Pan-Hispanic Dictionary of Doubts and the work of the Urgent Spanish Foundation (Fundéu), an institution based in the RAE whose main objective is to promote the proper use of Spanish in the media.
To do this, it offers a series of instructions to follow to make correct use of the language in written texts and proposes synonyms in Spanish for these words in English.
For example, it offers the expressions ‘player of video games’, ‘video player’ or ‘jugón’ as valid alternatives in Spanish to the anglicism ‘gamer’, as well as ’emission’ or ‘transmission live’ as more appropriate terms than ‘streaming’.
Other words such as ‘podcast’ (podcast in its Spanish version) or ‘broadcast’ (emission, transmission, broadcast) are also included in this line.
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