The voice of the French magazine Books: Olivier Postel-Vinay

Look who’s talking: Voices and Sources in the News

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Planning December 12-13

The French voice of the magazine Books: a global or nationalist perspective on the foreign media-scene?

In the field of Translation Studies, the magazine Books offers an interesting example of how the international press-exchange between France and the English-speaking countries suddenly came to a standstill. Books’ editor in chief, Olivier Postel-Vinay, started in the early tens of this century a monthly French periodical with selected translations of The New Yorker, The London Review of Books, The Atlantic, Die Zeit etc. This interesting selection familiarized the French reader with the sources of an international media-scene. It also opened the French sometimes narrowminded vision to a more globalized perspective. Recently the printed version of the magazine, available in most libraries throughout France and Belgium, collapsed. A digital website with shorter articles and no room for investigation took over what was once one of the leading magazines of news-investigation.

Given the experience of the VUB-students and myself with this periodical during the seminars of French cultural History, I would like to question the editor’s voice towards Anglophone news-sources in general (from 2010 until recently). Did his editorials manifest an evolution on globalism or nationalism in the selected sources? How did he give attention to Anglophone articles that often, after a short appearance under the public eye, disappeared under the radar once the next issue took over?

An assembling of 25 issues from Books can enable the study of the editorials of the initiative taker, Postel-Vinay. How did he relate in these short columns to the English investigations? When did he find it necessary to give the floor to French speaking voices who made their point without falling into the trap of English as a new Esperanto? Maybe Olivier Postel-Vinay has chosen for the printed version of Books a selective elitist news diet too remote from the everyday concerns of specific groups of readers? Maybe his voice dealing with the need of investigation and slow motion during the increasing fastness of online media is no longer the voice of a majority?

For more information see: www.books.fr

Sabine Hillen works at VUB in Linguistic and Literary Studies. Her PhD on French Literature and her interest in social phenomena of Literary Theory have led to articles on French writers of the XXth century, books on Cultural History and Adaptation Theory.