[UbuntuWomen] Gender specific pronouns in applications

[Jennie Petoumenou]

On Tue, Mar 13, 2012 at 6:01 PM, Elizabeth Krumbach <lyz at ubuntu.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Mar 12, 2012 at 11:34 AM, Jennie Petoumenou
> <epetoumenou at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I see your point. I guess that means that the chosen solution should be
> > optional and also offer an appropriate non-gender specific version.
> > Let me clarify one thing though.  I propose that the personal pronoun I
> > choose for myself should be stored locally on my computer and be
> available
> > only to me, in exactly the same way as my account's login, password and
> icon
> > are. I am not suggesting that this information should be public or stored
> > online. And while I definitely prefer not giving up my gender to all
> kinds
> > of corporations where I have an account, I would like to see my
> computer, on
> > which I spend several hours a day, to use the appropriate pronouns when
> > referring to me. And I'm specifically thinking of the ubuntu me/messaging
> > menus here, and how they translate in languages like French, German,
> > Spanish, etc., where adjectives like busy and away are inflected based on
> > gender.
>
> Alan Bell ended up bringing this conversation into #ubuntu-women today
> and gave me permission to share:
>
> < AlanBell> with this thread on the mailing list about gendered
> pronouns in Ubuntu applications, has anyone ever seen one?
> < AlanBell> I know there are quite a lot in OpenERP (it talks about
> salesmen and uses male pronouns referring to customers throughout)
> < pleia2> AlanBell: in my experience most applications I interact with
> don't use pronouns since they talk to you directly "put your name
> here" "you should fix this"
> < pleia2> it's almost always in documentation where I find annoying
> pronouns (less in formal documentation these days, but it's all over
> wiki-type)
> < AlanBell> I saw the emails and thought it would be good to file a
> collection of bugs and tag them with something, but I couldn't see
> anywhere to start
> < pleia2> inclusion of he/she at all (rather than just he) is a
> recent, hard-won battle, a proposal to change it and replace it with a
> configuration file that requires you to select a gender (or pull from
> a master gender file somewhere) seems... impossible
> < pleia2> and what would you default to?
> < pleia2> defaulting to he/she doesn't get rid of translation
> problems, defaulting to either gender makes things worse
> < maco> i got the impression those emails weren't talking even just about
> he/she
> < maco> because how do you do that in a language where the rest of the
> sentence changes?
> < AlanBell> well things could be rephrased to avoid the issue (but I
> can't find any)
> < maco> busy (male) in spanish is ocupado
> < maco> busy (female) is ocupada
> < nigelb> Interesting.
> < maco> so do you use $user está ocupad(o/a)
> < nigelb> So how is it translated?
> < maco> if the user is a woman it'd be $user está ocupada
>
> (discussion continued to mention other details from Mackenzie's email).
>
> --
> Elizabeth Krumbach // Lyz // pleia2
> http://www.princessleia.com
>
> --
> Ubuntu-Women mailing list
> Ubuntu-Women at lists.ubuntu.com
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-women
>


Mackenzie is correct in saying that

> < maco> i got the impression those emails weren't talking even just about
> he/she

I obviously should have talked about  "Gender specific language in
applications".

And to answer this question:

> < AlanBell> with this thread on the mailing list about gendered

pronouns in Ubuntu applications, has anyone ever seen one?

The instances I have seen this in English are very few. It can be a lot
trickier in other languages.

Here are some real examples from the translation of the IM client Empathy:

French (http://l10n.gnome.org/POT/empathy.master/empathy.master.fr.po):

> #: ../libempathy/empathy-utils.c:233
> msgid "Available"
> msgstr "Disponible"
> #: ../libempathy/empathy-utils.c:235
> msgid "Busy"
> msgstr "Occupé"
> #: ../libempathy/empathy-utils.c:238
> msgid "Away"
> msgstr "Absent"

The female versions would be: disponible, occupée, absente.
Gender-neutral version: disponible, occupé(e), absent(e)

Spanish:

> #: ../libempathy/empathy-utils.c:233
> msgid "Available"
> msgstr "Disponible"
>
> #: ../libempathy/empathy-utils.c:235
> msgid "Busy"
> msgstr "Ocupado"
>
> #: ../libempathy/empathy-utils.c:238
> msgid "Away"
> msgstr "Ausente"
>
> I'm not fluent in Spanish, but I'm 90% sure that disponible and ausente
are gender-neutral, while ocupado is definitely male.

Greek:

> #: ../libempathy/empathy-utils.c:233
> msgid "Available"
> msgstr "Διαθέσιμος/η"
>
> #: ../libempathy/empathy-utils.c:235
> msgid "Busy"
> msgstr "Απασχολημένος/η"
>
> #: ../libempathy/empathy-utils.c:238
> msgid "Away"
> msgstr "Απουσιάζει"
>
> #: ../libempathy/empathy-utils.c:240
> msgid "Invisible"
> msgstr "Αόρατος"
>
>  The last one, "Αόρατος", is male only. Ιt should have been "Αόρατος/η".

The German translation is not problematic in this particular situation,
while Italian and Portuguese look similar to the Spanish translation. I
think there is a high chance that Russian and most Slavic languages are
also affected.

Of course, the fact that all these translations use some explicitly male
suffixes is a translation problem, that should be reported to the
respective translation teams. But the question is, should we try
gender-specific instead of impersonal language?

Jennie
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