No Spammers in France, Only Sprinklers

France is a strong and obvious force when it comes to Anglophobia, also on the web. The French National Library and President Chirac have been a driving force behind a European version of Google's digitization project, not the least out of fear of European/France literature being overshadowed by its American counterpart. Legislation has been proposed to mandate "that error messages emitted by internet sites that are not exclusively targeted on a foreign (non-French) audience are written in French": message d'erreur.

For years a list is circulating with French equivalents of Anglo-American internet terms. An official commission has been steadily translating them into French to counter the domination of the English language. In its latest wisdom this "commission générale de terminologie et de néologie" has, for example, published the following French versions of what we, and most French internet users, know as:

• spammer = arroseur (sprinkler)
  
• Wi-Fi = l'ASFI (accès sans fil à internet)
  
• hot spot = zone ASFI (zone d'accès sans fil à internet)

Do as the French do, even when you're on the internet.

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Source Sillicon.fr [French]
A list with internet terms and French equivalents