White paper on creativity - ebla center

Chapter 8It may be no exaggeration to say thatthe Italian language, despite itsremarkable traditions, is now one of themain problems for our country’scultural life. This problem can certainlynot be solved by the recurrentconsolatory news<strong>paper</strong> reports on therise of the number of people studyingItalian as a second language in theworld. Italian seems to be too importanta language to allow the national culture(as has happened in countries with farfrom secondary traditions, like Hollandand Sweden) to basically acceptbilingualism, especially in the academicworld; too marginal to favor its culturalexports in these sectors.When discussing linguistic factorsconditioning the export of culturalproducts, we are obviously primarilyreferring to the direct export of books,periodicals, radio and televisionprogrammes, and films. On this subjectit is worthwhile distinguishing betweenthree separate cases:• countries like the UnitedKingdom, France, Spain or Portugalwhich still have cultural links with theirformer colonies (even remote ones likeQuebec for France, and the LatinAmerican states for Iberian countries);in these cases we may talk of forms of“captive markets”• cross-border linguistic areas, likethe above-mentioned German-speakingworld in Central Europe or the Frenchspeakingworld, which includes Belgiumand part of the Valle d'Aosta; in thiscase products can be distributed inseveral countries by a single publisher,not necessarily located in the “home”country• lastly, the de facto acceptance ofsome languages as linguae francae in thecurrent historical phase (the greatadvantage gained by English in thesecond half of the 20th century andtoday partly also by Spanish and Arabicin other parts of the world).Countries excluded from these threesituations, like Italy, have extremelylimited markets for direct exports. And,moreover, they are conditioned in anindirect way: before a cultural operatordecides to acquire and translate aproduct from a different language itmust have someone who canunderstand it in some way or there mustbe producers willing to take on the costsand risks of having it translated andpromoted.Although the Italian cultural industryexports little, it does import andtranslate a great deal, even fromlanguages which in many Europeancountries are relatively commonlyunderstood. One of the little-knownand paradoxical consequence of thisphenomenon is the huge dimensions ofa secondary market for foreignproducts, mainly from the UnitedStates: not simply for translations butalso adaptations, including revisingtexts, dubbing, etc . It is very difficult toprovide precise figures on this subject,but if we add up the quantity ofpublishing work for translated books tothat of the work in the audiovisualsector for adapted and dubbed films orseries, we come up with a largish subsectorabsorbing considerable energies,and at times great skills. These activities,although only partly different ,in termsof basic features, from what can strictlybe described as “creative” sectors areWHITE PAPER ON CREATIVITY 197