The president of the International Portuguese Language Institute (IILP), a Cabo Verde-based offshoot of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP), has called for more funding for the institution so that, 35 years after its creation, it can truly fulfil its role of disseminating Portuguese while duly recognising its variants.
“Thirty-five years ago we created this unique institution in the panorama of language management [of] multilateral language management,” said the IILP president, João Neves, describing the institution as a tool, albeit still underutilised, to manage the different dimensions of Portuguese that form part of the make-up of different countries.
The IILP is, he stressed, something that doesn’t exist for English, French or Spanish.
“If we really want the institution to fulfil this role, we need to think about strengthening its resources,” he added.
Ordinary financial contributions from CPLP member states total around €310,000 a year, and it has only been thanks to partnerships for specific projects with some of these states that the amount has risen to €800,000 by this year, he stressed.
“It’s a substantial difference, we have a very large margin of funding directly earmarked for projects, allowing for much more comprehensive and valid action, without ruling out the need to review ordinary contributions,” he said.
Created by the CPLP on 1 November 1989, the IILP is based in Praia, the capital of Cabo Verde, but operates on an autonomous basis.
According to Neves, the IILP is stepping up its projects, on the streets and with academia, because there are challenges “that cannot be solved in isolation.”
The development of artificial intelligence serves as an example, “given the magnitude of the challenge of building collections, databases and tools to counterbalance the hegemony of English” in natural language processing.
“We will hardly be able to do this with an isolated strategy,” he said, arguing that the Portuguese language can only gain from a pluricentric management: recognising the variants of the language, without jeopardising its unity.
The internet and new technologies are other challenges that call for a pluricentric vision, as well as the use of Portuguese as a scientific language or in multilateral organisations such as the United Nations, the IILP president stressed.
According to Neves, one example of what the IILP can do relates to new words created in Portugal or Brazil that are then included in the lexicon of those countries, in the published form of dictionaries, and the process for them to be recognised in other countries and vice versa.
This is, he said, an ongoing reflection, “in search of mechanisms, forms of articulation, of consensualisation”, which are no longer just bicentric, in lexical matters as in so many others, even in teaching.
Neves argued that the IILP could also take advantage of open invitations to international book fairs – in addition to the usual formal representations of Portugal and Brazil – and present new works and authors from other countries, giving greater prominence to the language.
“If we say that pluricentrism is this recognition of the voice of a particular community that has moulded the Portuguese language, which builds it and projects its identity onto it, then we have to find mechanisms that allow this singularity to be expressed,” he said.
The IILP has more than 30 projects underway and this could go up to more than 50 next year with some of them flowing into other local actions.
As a specialised training centre, the IILP offers free training for teachers and other professional groups working with the Portuguese language, including a portal, used in more than 70 countries, that provides teaching resources, with more than one million visitors.
Other types of training involve terminology, pluricentric literature or multilingual internet – areas in which there are also ongoing projects with universities and open discussions – for example, on how to strengthen the online production of valuable content in Portuguese.
Another aspect of the ongoing plan involves getting closer to civil society.
“The IILP was far from the street, at best it dealt a little with the academic community [but] there is no language without a street” and the organisation set out to “seek out these organisations, which work with the language on the ground, in often difficult conditions,” Neves stressed.
A fund has been set up to support small projects that currently supports 14 initiatives in eight countries – according to the IILP president, “the greatest satisfaction is that sixty-five per cent take place outside the capital cities” – providing access to literacy or technologies, and thus creating impact with relatively little funding.
There is also support for the organisation of congresses and grants with which young researchers have been able to present science in Portuguese – an area that, according to Neves, requires attention – on international stages to which they do not usually have access.
“The IILP is slowly reaching out more, especially to civil society and not just the academic community,” he said. “We’re talking about an almost inexhaustible universe of people, not just those who already know the language, but those who want to have access to it.”
There is, he stressed, plenty of room for growth.
“Today we still don’t have a Portuguese language programme that can reach economically fragile contexts, where people don’t have the money to pay for courses, which are very expensive,” he lamented.
Across the CPLP, there are countries “where the presence of the language is massive from the point of view of the population” while in others “there is a progressive margin for growth” – especially given demographic growth projections.
The member states of the CPLP are Angola, Brazil, Cabo Verde, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique Portugal, Sao Tome and Principe, and Timor-Leste, but there are 29 other countries that are associate observers. Macau, a former Portuguese colony that is now part of China, was in 2006 invited to apply for membership but has never taken the step.
Lusa
