Transliteracy. Behind this little-known term lies a wide variety of writing practices. I will describe a high-quality French example: Les Voisins du 12 bis.

Aujourd’hui, le Storytelling, ou l’art de raconter des histoire, est omniprésent.  Jadis réservé aux poètes, aux romanciers ou encore aux scénaristes, il envahit à présent chaque sphère de la culture et de la communication.  Avec les réseaux sociaux, il explose et se transforme en une des fondations du digital marketing.

Mais cette multiplicité des médias sur lesquels la narration exerce son emprise induit un phénomène encore trop peu pris en considération.  Et très peu enseigné dans les écoles.  Je veux parler de la Transliteracy.

What lies behind this barbaric expression?

Transliteracy: a definition

The British writer Sue Thomas en donne une définition claire et complète :

"the ability to read, write and interact through a variety of platforms, tools and means of communication, from iconography to oral communication, including handwriting, publishing, television, radio and cinema, and even social media."

Contrary to what you might think, transmedia is not about writing the same story across different media. Rather, it is about from the same universe present across various media. But in which different elements complement and enrich each other.

One of the finest examples I have seen in French so far is the radio series Les voisins du 12 bis, from Radio France Internationale. This French language learning podcast is also available in English, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese, Russian and Arabic. I had the opportunity to see how an episode of the series was put together while I was in the studios recording dialogues for Bonjour France (since renamed Karibou).

A transliteration based on a writing workshop

The series is a 13-episode podcast. It was produced by professional teams. However, the story is based on accounts written in a writing workshop with the real residents of a real Parisian building. The episode about the woman who gives birth on the staircase, for example, was told to me by someone who was there...

This makes for a particularly credible and realistic story. The realism is enhanced by the quality of the soundtrack, produced using the latest immersive sound techniques. Listen to it with headphones or earphones, and you'll be amazed by how immersed you feel in the soundscape.

In addition, each episode comes with a transcript that you can synchronise with the soundtrack. This means you can read the story while listening to it, which is a great help for learners.

But Les Voisins du 12 bis is not just a podcast. It is a whole world dedicated to learning French through the stories of these neighbours.

Exercises based on the story and dialogues

Each episode is accompanied by a series of exercises, created with H5Pa series of educational applications well known to readers of this blog.

In this first episode, Billie, one of the characters arrives at Charles de Gaulle Airport. The questions concern his arrival, the strike affecting the airport that day (I told you the series was realistic...), etc.

You might say: that's typical: in our class, we also do this type of exercise: listening comprehension. That's true. I gave you an example of this with our dialogue created with Dupdub.

But I have told you about transmedia and transliteracy.

Transliteracy and transmedia: the comic book journey

In addition to the podcast, the website also features a comic strip.

The comic book follows her journey, just like the podcast did. You'll find Billie getting off the plane, wondering why there are no trains (remember, the strike...).

However, you will notice that some sentences are missing here. Some dialogues are not present.

It is the transliteration that explains this difference. I told you from the start: every means of communication has its own writing style. And comics, thanks to the use of images, need fewer words to express the same reality. It's not written, but you understand that Billie is lost, distressed, that she is calling for help on the phone. Whereas the podcast had to tell you and make you hear it. It is your auditory memory – your memories of train journeys – that replaces the soundscape of the station. It is the images that tell you about her isolation at the airport, isolation emphasised by the different colour of her silhouette in the crowd, accentuated even more by her physical distance from other people (image three).

Three types of media embedded in a wider universe

We already have three types of content that use different media:

• a podcast, scripted during a writing workshop and using cutting-edge sound techniques, with a synchronised transcript;
• .an "exercises" section that makes extensive use of multimedia: multiple-choice questions, audio recordings, illustrations, etc.
• comic strip that expresses the story of different characters in graphic form

All this is not accessible everywhere, but on the websitee Le français facile avec RFI. That is to say, a virtual place where learners can find a wealth of related learning resources. The only connection to our history as neighbours is learning French.

This anchors the world of the neighbours in a broader reality. A reality in which the learner decides whether or not to participate, to broaden their horizons or, on the contrary, to focus their learning activities solely on the world of the Neighbours of 12 bis.

Transliteracy: the future of learning?

I am convinced that this type of multi- and transmedia universe is the future of learning.

We live in a world oversaturated with media: we each carry more than a hundred of them in our pockets with our smartphones. But how many of them do we master? What media are we or our children capable of creating?

Pourtant, des expériences de ce type se multiplient, des romans se transforment en films, des films deviennent des séries spin off, des sagas comme Star Wars se déclinent tant en films en salle qu’en séries télé, en livres et en fanzines, ces magazines rédigés par les fans et dont la qualité, parfois, n’a rien à envier à l’oeuvre originale.

With the democratisation of electronic media, everyone should be taught transliteracy, or writing across different media, just as we are taught to write. Writing continues to dominate the classroom, even as it declines everywhere else. Spot the mistake.

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