AVE - VERDA MONDO #1

Green, international, language-related: english edition, 2000-06-12

>> Dear Green Friends, Congratulations ! We invite you to the inauguration of the Green Bulletin "Verda Mondo".
Contents
* Introduction
* Self-Presentation of AVE
* EU-languages: Paris Forum and Resolution
* Esperanto Book presentation: Tahar Ben Jelloun "Pachjo, kio estas Rasismo".

Verda Mondo is directing you: Activists of Green Movement and Green Parties.
Alltogether (if you live in Europe) our common aim is a european federation. Although it has to conserve the different ethnic cultures in Europe.
Language is one of the main characteristics of every culture. Even every subculture has a language of it's own. Esperanto offers to become the inter-ethnic language-bridge on which we may meet one another. A good simbol is the famous Charles'-Bridge in Prague, where people meet.

We about Us:
The Association of Green Esperantists (AVE) behaves as avantgarde;
members and sympathisants of Green Parties which meet global by e-mail, letter-writing or personally.
We met on european scale in Oostende 1st of May.
We meet using Esperanto on global scale in Moscow (2000-07-17, occ: SAT), Zagreb (2001-07-21 occ: UEA), Fortaleza (BR) (2002-07 UEA).
We meet with the Greens using any language on EFGP-meetings and we would like to meet you in Canberra (2001-04-15, Global Green Conference)

AVE has been established on occasion of the foundation of the European Federation of Green Parties (EFGP), 1984 in Liége (BE).
We are discussing green issues: ecology, moderation of conflicts, social justice and security, animal and human rights. The pivotal point of our philosophy is life itself.
Our political basis is the Political Guidelines of the EFGP (1994, Masala near Helsinki). We translated it into the inter-national language Esperanto and widen it up to a global scale.
We publish articles on Green Issues in Esperanto: Green Tax, Peacekeeping (from the Green Group in EP).
We discuss the Aral Sea Crisis and support the local NGO Perzent; and CAFE-Nukus.
AVE-News (AVENO) reports about Green Parties successes and problems; and we publish reports from our members.
In short: We are the interface between Esperanto and Green Movement.

European Languages
We are conscious: just one ethnic EU language will be unacceptable and the diversity of 20 national languages (and many non-national) in the region of the enlarging EU may lead to dissention   la Babylon. Already the translation of the Aquis Communitaire (the common basis of laws and treaties) into the languages of the new-coming countries is streching the translation service. The EU-parlament hall and the working rooms will burst because of the many booths for interpreters.
For n languages we need n booths and (n*(n-1)/2) interpreters; practically, maybe less. Now EU has 11 official languages; we are awaiting 20 in the next future. Therefore, for the plenary session we need 190 interpreters;
maybe half of them will be sufficient, because of double skills.
The positive effects will be new jobs for interpreters and specialists (lawyers, ..) and further integration and democratization.
The negative effects will be high costs (even now 700 millions Euro a year for 11 languages) and "waxing" waste-of-paper; which could be avoided by means of "Print-on-demand".
We hope, that reciprocally the mutual understanding will increase too.
All about this we discussed at one of the work-shop forums of the:

Second Congress of the European Green Parties Paris, Cité de la Science, 26/28 February 1999
Forum: Language Problems after the EU Enlargement
The Situation At the foundation of the European Union (1958) it was decided that all the national languages of the member states should enjoj equal status. At that time there were 4, now they are 11. Because of the mathematical (non linear) relationship between the number of languages and the workload for all the translations, we now use 1/3 of the operating budget of the European Commission simply for the translation work. Also, in spite of the equal status, some of the languages are "more equal than others", EU documents often circulate first in just english and french. Tender documents to outside firms often appear only in english and french - disadvantaging companies from other countries due to them bearing the translation costs (loss of time, etc.).
The future It is foreseen to enlarge to a 16-language membership as the next step.
How will the problems develop ?
Proposals for solution Given that not all national languages will be used as working languages, we will need to choose between them. We propose also to consider Esperanto, a neutral choice. The neutral language Esperanto should be offered in european schools as optional.
Remark: The working group consisted of 7 members from DE, FR, GB plus 1 of HU at the end of the session.
The EP-election program of Les Verts (FR) shows a chapter relating language problems in Europe. One of the paragraphs asks to study the potential of Esperanto inside the EU language services.

We say thanks sincerely to the subscribers, most of them of the smaller countries, of the two Paris Resolutions on the EU-european language problems: Esperanto I & II.
The AVE-resolution has been selected, accepted by e-mail voting and finally accepted by the EFGP-council meeting in Bratislava, 1999-10-01/03 .

Paris Resolution:
The role of Esperanto in the enlarging EU
A: The international language esperanto should be offered as option in european schools, as it is neutral and easy to learn. Esperanto gives easy access to understanding how languages work and is ideal to bridge the gap between the cultures.
B: The international language esperanto shall become one of the official languages in the EP/EU-system when the principle of "language equal- rights" has to be stopped. After the EU-enlargement this principle cannot be hold for simple technical reasons. The neutral language esperanto will be representative of those languages which will be not elected as official working languages in the EP/EU-system.

New book in Esperanto.
Tahar Ben Jelloun "Pachjo, kio estas Rasismo" UEA, Rotterdam (1999), 6.5 Ewro, ISBN 92-9017-063-8 "La racisme, expliqué á ma fille", translated into 28 languages, including Esperanto.
"A child is curious. It put many questions and it is waiting for precize and convincing answers. By this book I try to answer the questions of my ten year old daughter. It is made for those children which up till now have no presumptions and wish to understand. Relating the adults, which will read it, I hope that it will help them to answer the questions of their own children, which are more embarrassing than we believe." (T.B. Jelloun)
Please excuse me, using only english as ethnic language. If you are interested in Esperanto please demand for INFO !
more Details
If you wish a translation of Verda Mondo into your language, please ask for - we will cope for that. Please give your language choice and maybe an alternative.