[UbuntuWomen] Gender specific pronouns in applications

[Paula Graham]

On 13/03/12 20:37, Jennie Petoumenou wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 13, 2012 at 6:01 PM, Elizabeth Krumbach <lyz at ubuntu.com
> <mailto:lyz at ubuntu.com>> wrote:
>
>     On Mon, Mar 12, 2012 at 11:34 AM, Jennie Petoumenou
>     <epetoumenou at gmail.com <mailto: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 <mailto: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 "??????????/?"
>
>     #: ../libempathy/empathy-utils.c:235
>     msgid "Busy"
>     msgstr "?????????????/?"
>
>     #: ../libempathy/empathy-utils.c:238
>     msgid "Away"
>     msgstr "??????????"
>
>     #: ../libempathy/empathy-utils.c:240
>     msgid "Invisible"
>     msgstr "???????"
>
>  The last one, "???????", is male only. ?t should have been "???????/?".
>
> 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
>
>
>
One of the things I love about Linux is the personal style of system
messages. There have been various systems for avoiding gendered pronouns
which are sometimes used in academia, googling gender neutral pronouns
will bring up a bunch of guides. I think it does get very impersonal to
avoid pronouns altogether?

Paula
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