I spent until 02:00 hrs looking at the amount of material that really needs translating if the study of CE3K/AE reports was to have any meaning in the long run. Some material from French publications made it to Flying Saucer Review but, as I have learnt over the decades, some vital information tended to be left out so we only had an incomplete picture of events.
I have in my collection of references German publications, Spanish, Belgian, Danish, Finnish and others (the nostalgia in looking through a copy of UFO Nyt or AFU Newsletter!).
In 1995 I wrote a long article titled: "Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Abductions in France" that was intended for Flying Saucer Review. The article was a listing of known cases and was intended to form the basis of an English language catalogue and ran for 22 pages -all fully referenced. It seems that FSR was put off the idea by a certain ufologist (it would mean, after all, less room for their articles that crammed those pages). I tried to MUFON Journal but unless I was willing to concentrate only on UFO abductions (the big thing at the time), which would have made the whole purpose of the article void..."no".
And so "Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Abductions in France" has been kept within my CE3K/AE French section of "Hooper's HumCat" ( ☺). Looking at it now the article seems quite inadequate not to mention out-dated; I have since discovered so many hoaxes or misidentifications amongst the seeming genuine. Of course, that would be expected in a catalogue that was a "work in progress" -in fact, identifying and re-classifying reports would be its prime function.
Those who have even heard of the November, 1979, UFO abduction of Franck Fontaine at Cergy Pontoise still believe that it was genuine. The Gendarmerie literally had the case dropped on them and though they suspected "something has happened" they had no idea what. In fact, as they proved, this was a hoax and based around the Travis Walton report (in those days still not widely known outside of the United States). I no longer correct the 'experts' who continue to cite the case on their websites.
Much more fascinating was the 1976 alleged UFO abduction of French woman Helene Guiliana. As far as I am aware this is, again, not widely known outside of France (I touched on it in UFO Contact? ). The whole case seemed intriguing and, in the end, with English-French dictionary and later an online translator (where was it when I needed it all those years ago!) I translated the Guiliana case from the A.E.S.V. Bulletin and the case was also reported on in Ouranos (l'Etrange Recontre d'Helene Guiliana).
Just looking at some of the French language publications -Group 5255, Hypotheses Extraterrestres (GEOS), Info CERPA, Lumieres dans la Nuit, Ovni Presence- you can see reports that are intriguing and far better investigated than UK reports were. However, all of this material is lost to us unless we can get CE3K/RR3 and Alien Entity cases translated into English -English seemingly the most common language spoken/read in ufology means that whether you are Spanish, Italian, German, Finnish or whatever nationality you can access a report and if the original language report is included then that helps those from Spanish or French speaking countries.
However, I have to admit that I believe this sort of thing will never happen. Firstly, you have to find someone will to translate reports from their country and, Secondly, check the literature / with organisations to see whether anything new needs to be added. People today want to go online, read or copy and paste rather than do the real work. This last week I spent several hours translating a Spanish report that has been so badly reported online by 'experts' it is almost unbelievable.
Then I found a French report that appears to have had no follow up that goes from 5 lines in LDLN to a chunky paragraph online -because so much has been added to it that is false. These two cases are now quoted over and over online and even in a couple of You Tube videos -spreading the inaccuracies.
The idea was, and still is to an extent, to form a basis for research so that a serious researcher in, say, Spain, could get in contact and ask: "I am thinking of including the ----- case in my work. Can you tell me whether there are any known doubts over the case or does it seem genuine?" I could then check and forward a scanned copy of a file along with any response. The problem is that those interested appear to be more akin to collectors of any UFO item in print rather than working ufologists carrying out research.
I have tried repeatedly over the last five (!5!) years to get cooperation or find serious researchers on the whole CE3K/AE aspect. Nothing. Most have retired, died or just simply do not care. And so I will trudge on and report on cases in printed format when I can but at times it almost seems as if you either have to jump onto the whole Grey Abduction Agenda or be quiet and yet, here we are sitting on masses of material than could be hands on exobiology.
Now, my head hurts, my eyes are blurry and from tomorrow there is work I have to finish but I hope the past week's postings have given you some food for thought.
Message me via the Face Book Anomalous Observational Phenomena page or
blacktowercg@hotmail.com
or
aopbureau@yahoo.co.uk
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