France: Cafè Babel, European news with a difference

Created seven years ago by Erasmus students living in Strasbourg, cafebabel.com is Europe?s first transnational and multilingual information platform. Transnational because it counts with the support of more than 450 volunteer journalists in over 20 European cities, from London, Madrid and Paris to Warsaw. Multilingual because the entire website can be read in seven European languages. February 1st 2008 marked cafebabel.com?s 7th year of life. To celebrate, cafebabel.com chose to party with all its cafebabelian readers by organising an event they all could attend (the meeting was at 18:00 at Avalon Island, on Second Life) and that could capture cafebabel.com?s real essence: movement, freedom, youth. The event? A photographic exhibition called Vol de langage ? the flight of language – to describe the freedom of what in cafebabelian is known as the Eurogeneration, the generation of young Europeans.

The Eurogeneration?
Low cost flights, summers spent inter-railing, study periods abroad with Erasmus, the Euro. These are the experiences that have marked the lives of the Eurogeneration, a generation of 20-somethings who for the first time were able to travel, study, live and work abroad without having to cross borders, ask for visas or change currencies. These same forces are the impetus behind cafebabel.com, an online space where the Eurogeneration can meet and express itself.

But what exactly is Café Babel? It may take the first time visitor a moment to get it ? there is a lot going on on the home page – but basically cafebabel.com is a European newspaper. With a difference ? actually, many differences? ?and that is exactly the point? explains Adriano Farano, 28, co-founder, executive director and editor of cafebabel.com, ?cafebabel.com is virtual, borderless space where cultural differences are embraced, where diversity is seen as a measure of value that enhances the community?. He goes on to explain that back in 2000 when the idea behind cafebabel.com was born, he and his fellow Erasmus companions found that there was no truly European information media, that people from all over Europe ended up reading their national newspapers to find out what was going on in Europe. And in the real spirit of the Eurogeneration, voilà, there was no waiting around for someone else to do it for them.

Today cafebabel.com has a turnover of 400 thousand euros (in 2007), has headquarters in Paris that employ 12 full time staff and a team of full time part time and voluntary staff spread across Europe. They have offices in 26 European cities and counting. A dream come true, says Adriano who now lives and works in Paris full time. But not a miracle. ?We never aimed to be a club or a blog, we had it clear from the start that what we wanted was to become a point of reference for participative European journalism?. The greatest challenge was to make the jump to maturity, to crystallize the initial enthusiasm into something professional. ?Participative journalism is a whole different ball game. It has nothing to do with blogging, but it is not like mainstream journalism either: our writers are volunteers and it is really hard to get the message across that this doesn?t make us second-rate?.

A multilingual platform
Café Babel, an appropriate name for a multilingual project ? ?Yes. Babel, as in the Tower of Babel, an apt description of what communication in Europe can be like. Cafè, because we wanted to make it clear that ours would be an informal space, not a space for pedantic, institutional European stuff! There is enough of that out there already. Our aim was not to replicate but rather to do something new, something fresh?. A welcome idea, it would seem, if the 400 thousand strong community of monthly visitors is anything to go by.

But why the choice to complicate it all by having seven different languages, don?t the Eurogeneration all speak English these days anyway? Well, yes, they may speak English but that doesn?t mean that they don?t prefer to read news in their own language, explains Farano, who speaks Italian, French Spanish and English fluently. ?Language is central to culture, there are hidden traits, expressions and quirks that are lost on you if you are not mother tongue. Translating everything into English, rich as the Anglo Saxon culture is, means that many non native English speakers miss out on the small details that enrich our reading experience, that make it more enjoyable and real to us?.

But times have changed online in the past seven years and social networking is taking the web world by storm. How will cafebabel.com rising to the challenge of Web 2.0? Farano doesn?t hesitate: by facing it head on. A year ago cafebabel.com launched the internet?s first ever multilingual blog, the Babel Blog as well as an online forum space (the Babel Forum) that today after less than a year of life already has 3,500 subscribers. Finally they are planning the launch of their redesigned website for Spring 2008. The new features? Tags to link articles within the community, new graphic design and user-centric features that automatically select your language preferences for you when you log in. All point to one thing: cafebabel.com and the Eurogeneration are here to stay.

• More info: www.cafebabel.com
• Meet more cafebabelians: Europe: But who is the Eurogeneration?