SETI Translated into French

Elisabeth Piotelat (1)

1 LIMSI - Laboratoire d'Informatique pour la Mécanique et les Sciences de l'Ingénieur

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) has been popularized in France by Jean Heidman and François Biraud since 1980. To increase public interest in SETI, a French version of the SETI League website has been created in 1995. In 1999 the SETI@Home website was the second one in French. Amateurs need help in their native language to build antennas, use software or access open data. Web2.0 technologies and social networking have changed the way people find information about SETI. Ten years of statistics of a blog in French about SETI, Space and education have been analysed. Even if translation tools are widely used, some journalists or students won't read a scientific paper, a web page or even a tweet in English. Statistics show the need for translation and adaptation with the appropriate vocabulary. Outreach public events, popular books or scientific workshops about the search for biological or technological signatures have been organized in France during last decade. None of them use the SETI acronym even if the main question remains "Are we alone?". The French vocabulary used in the titles of those events shows that translating SETI into French presents a social aspect.

Mots clés: internationalization; SETI; web technologies

Domaines: Réseaux et télécommunications [cs.NI]

Elisabeth Piotelat. SETI Translated into French. International Astronautical Congress, Oct 2018, Bremen, Germany. pp.1 - 5. ⟨hal-01916697⟩