Café Babel: Innovative Web site bridges language, builds European culture

By Cristina Fernández Pereda 

Ask anyone in the streets of Paris what they are first: French or European? It is more likely that they consider themselves French. But if the person you run into happens to be an Erasmus student, it is more likely he or she will tell you they are first European, then French.

The European Union is now expanding but the evolution of a European identity has just started. Cafebabel.com has become a forum where Europeans can share, reflect and analyze current affairs across borders, with different views, in different languages. The site encourages readers to think as Europeans, and use Café Babel as a means to build European identity and public opinion.

The online magazine Cafe Babel.
Photo provided by Cafebabel.com

Italian Adriano Farano spent one year in Strasbourg as an Erasmus student. Erasmus, the European university exchange program, took him to study political science in the city where the European Parliament congregates. The Erasmus experience is believed to be building the first eurogeneration: the first group of young people from the old continent who consider themselves European.

Friends from different European countries, their views on current affairs, conversations in different languages and a common interest in journalism inspired Farano to found Café Babel. He is now editor-in-chief and executive manager of this online magazine that has become the first pan-European media.

“A café is where people meet. Babel is what separated them,” said Farano. With his friends from the Erasmus experience, he decided to take the conversations from cafes across Europe to a forum online.

The Cafe Babel community across Europe,
with local offices from Lisbon, Portugal;
to Istanbul, Turkey; to Stockholm, Sweden.
Photo provided by Cafebabel.com

In contrast to the Bible version of Babel, where languages divide people, Café Babel is “a cafe where you can speak, read and write in the language you want, but you are understood. We are, at Café Babel, all together in a cozy cafe, speaking all our different languages, but we can understand each other, we communicate and we debate,” said Monika Oelz, project manager and communication chief at Café Babel.

The project, now seven years old, involves more than 1,000 citizen journalists and translators from different countries, 22 local offices in 14 European countries, and 400,000 people visiting the site every month.

“We play the card of originality by addressing a specific audience (the eurogeneration) with a specific content that is general (society, culture, politics), but analyzed with a European perspective. We try to gather stories from all around Europe and also find transnational tendencies in the fields of art, immigration, education, etc.,” Farano said.

Last week, Café Babel’s creator joined American University’s International Communication students during his visit to the school. He was invited to the United States by the International Visitor Exchange Program, which brings youth from all over the world to the U.S. During a three-week trip, he is meeting with leaders from Google, Facebook and Wikipedia.

Image from the interview with
Café Babel’s creator, Adriano Farano.
Photo provided by Adriano Farano.

“What I learned from International Communication Prof. Shalini Venturelli in her speech is that national mass media were needed by the U.S. in order to build a sense of community,” Farano said. “The problem is that we don’t have, as was the Anglo-Saxon for the U.S., a dominant culture. That is why a pan-European media needs to respect the different cultures and languages of the Old Continent.”

One of the magazine’s goals is to break down the barriers created by national media to create that sense of European identity. Café Babel is published in six different languages (English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Catalan), and makes it possible for journalists and bloggers in the community to have their posts translated, so the readers can chose the language. No other online community includes this feature.

Café Babel is another example of participatory media, as writers and journalists contribute to the site. Translators then edit the articles in different languages for each of the different editions of the online magazine. Editors encourage contributors to share different opinions to show current affairs from a transnational perspective. The only requirement is quality.

When you go to Café Babel, you find articles about the immigration to Europe; how Muslim women “cover their hair, but not their mouth“;” the Eurodyssey: scholarships to work in Europe for Erasmus students; and the European Reform Treaty to be signed next December in Lisbon. The readers’ favorite: Tower of Babel where Europeans laugh comparing idioms and expressions in different languages.

This story was published on the American Observer Nov. 6, 2007.