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• The web presentation of the Council of Europe is traditionally bilingual in English and French. As a rule, web
pages dealing with Roma matters also offer documents in Romani; see
among others the web presentations of the project Education of Roma
Children and the department for Roma and Travellers. 90
• The Budapest/Hungary-based European Roma Rights Centre ‒ ERRC
is an internationally-oriented NGO which
was initiated by Gadže ‘non-Roma’ with the aim of including activists
of Roma background into the struggle for human rights for Roma
in all parts of Europe and beyond. Recent activities in the Russian
Federation have resulted in documents in Russian on the ERRC’s
website. Translations into Romani have been presented almost from
the very beginning of the ERRC’s web activities. A selection of such
documents is available at .
The use of Romani on international websites is obviously linked to the ethnic
background of the majority of persons involved or dominating the respective
organisation. On the websites of international NGOs run and dominated by Roma,
the use of Romani seems to be a rare exception. On the websites of organisations
initiated and led by Gadže, Romani is almost as a rule present on web pages in the
form of translations. At first sight this correlation – the more Roma dominate the
less Romani is used – seems contradictory. On the background of functionality
and the need for symbolism this contradiction dissolves.
Gadže include Romani into the web presentations of organisations they
dominate or participate in for various but highly interlinked reasons: Romani
is often used to express support for the self-organisation and emancipation
process of the Roma that, to a large extent, aims for socio-cultural equality
which is most obviously symbolised by language. Furthermore, the use of
Romani insinuates sympathy for the political movement and commitment to
assist the Roma in changing their sociocultural and sociopolitical situation.
However, the use of Romani might also be interpreted as an act of legitimisation
for the involvement of Gadže into the on-going emancipation process of the
Roma. Consequently the online use of Romani by Gadže might be interpreted
as the linguistic aspect of political correctness. As for Roma, the symbolic
aspect of Romani use on international websites seems to be of minor or even no
importance. The functional aspect dominates and, consequently, the internet
presentation of international NGOs dominated by Roma and the information
provided via the web is almost exclusively in English.
90
See and < http://www.coe.int/t/dg3/RomaTravellers>;
for the latter texts in Romani see http://www.coe.int/t/dg3/romatravellers/archive/documentation/
otherlanguages/default_en.asp; accessed 2012-02-25.
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