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The French Get Lost in the Clouds Over a New Term in the Internet Age

October 14, 2009
by Max Colchester
Reporter, The Wall Street Journal

Max Colchester

The word on the table that morning was “cloud computing.”

To translate the English term for computing resources that can be accessed on demand on the Internet, a group of French experts had spent 18 months coming up with “informatique en nuage,” which literally means “computing in cloud.”

France’s General Commission of Terminology and Neology–a 17-member group of professors, linguists, scientists and a former ambassador–was gathered in a building overlooking the Louvre to approve the term.

“What? This means nothing to me. I put a ‘cloud’ of milk in my tea!” exclaimed Jean Saint-Geours, a French writer and member of the Terminology Commission.

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