Monday, September 26, 2005

Try as they do, the French just can't help themselves...

JTA:
A French dictionary was recalled after a computer virus caused the publication to revert to an edition with anti-Semitic definitions.
Earlier this week, MRAP, a French anti-racism association, charged that the 2005 edition of Le Petit Littre had reverted to an 1874 edition that contained racist and anti-Semitic definitions for entries such as “yellow,” “Negro” and “Jew.” The definition of “ghetto” reads, “neighborhood of a city inhabited by a mainly Jewish population.”
MRAP expressed its “indignation” at the publication, “which considers itself a resource for cultural reference, while it is stuffed with the worst racial stereotypes one could possibly imagine” and called for consumers, teachers and libraries to boycott the dictionary. A computer bug caused the 19th-century edition to be sent to the printer by mistake.
The dictionary’s publisher said the 2006 edition will be published with a foreword explaining the evolution of these terms since the 19th century.
It's a little strange no one noticed they were printing the edition from 1874 -- there must have been thousands of differences, not just the racist ones. I wonder what definition was under 'idiot'?

UPDATE: Here are the offending defitions (in French). The definition for 'Jew' includes: "Someone who sells things exorbitantly expensively, and in general whoever seeks to earn money with roughness."

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, I really like this one. I have a website that talks mostly about b2c email marketing You should check it out sometime.

Anonymous said...

Hey i got here searching for online affiliate program
Your sites not too bad!

You got good rankings for them keywords online affiliate program

Check out my site
online affiliate program

Anonymous said...

Hi Miriam, very interesting post.

I'm not too familiar with blogs, but I found your post " this post " a good read. I was actually looking for information on Ultimate Ebooks and found your post. Any recommendations for the best infromation about Ultimate Ebooks?

Nice one.

Anonymous said...

Hello Miriam,

I am based in the UK and I stumbled across your post " this post ".
I'm quite keen on finding any useful information on Powerseller Package. I found some good stuff on Powerseller Package but I wondered whether you may have any advice on the best resources out there.

Thanks in advance.