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On 13/03/12 20:37, Jennie Petoumenou wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAELv8M=LdJgebYhzOY3iLfKjqd70N9qEzsUEpc29D7-T7pQXKw@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite"><br>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Mar 13, 2012 at 6:01 PM,
Elizabeth Krumbach <span dir="ltr"><<a
moz-do-not-send="true" href="mailto:lyz@ubuntu.com">lyz@ubuntu.com</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div class="im">On Mon, Mar 12, 2012 at 11:34 AM, Jennie
Petoumenou<br>
<<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:epetoumenou@gmail.com">epetoumenou@gmail.com</a>>
wrote:<br>
> I see your point. I guess that means that the chosen
solution should be<br>
> optional and also offer an appropriate non-gender
specific version.<br>
> Let me clarify one thing though. I propose that the
personal pronoun I<br>
> choose for myself should be stored locally on my
computer and be available<br>
> only to me, in exactly the same way as my account's
login, password and icon<br>
> are. I am not suggesting that this information should
be public or stored<br>
> online. And while I definitely prefer not giving up my
gender to all kinds<br>
> of corporations where I have an account, I would like
to see my computer, on<br>
> which I spend several hours a day, to use the
appropriate pronouns when<br>
> referring to me. And I'm specifically thinking of the
ubuntu me/messaging<br>
> menus here, and how they translate in languages like
French, German,<br>
> Spanish, etc., where adjectives like busy and away are
inflected based on<br>
> gender.<br>
<br>
</div>
Alan Bell ended up bringing this conversation into
#ubuntu-women today<br>
and gave me permission to share:<br>
<br>
< AlanBell> with this thread on the mailing list about
gendered<br>
pronouns in Ubuntu applications, has anyone ever seen one?<br>
< AlanBell> I know there are quite a lot in OpenERP (it
talks about<br>
salesmen and uses male pronouns referring to customers
throughout)<br>
< pleia2> AlanBell: in my experience most applications I
interact with<br>
don't use pronouns since they talk to you directly "put your
name<br>
here" "you should fix this"<br>
< pleia2> it's almost always in documentation where I
find annoying<br>
pronouns (less in formal documentation these days, but it's
all over<br>
wiki-type)<br>
< AlanBell> I saw the emails and thought it would be
good to file a<br>
collection of bugs and tag them with something, but I couldn't
see<br>
anywhere to start<br>
< pleia2> inclusion of he/she at all (rather than just
he) is a<br>
recent, hard-won battle, a proposal to change it and replace
it with a<br>
configuration file that requires you to select a gender (or
pull from<br>
a master gender file somewhere) seems... impossible<br>
< pleia2> and what would you default to?<br>
< pleia2> defaulting to he/she doesn't get rid of
translation<br>
problems, defaulting to either gender makes things worse<br>
< maco> i got the impression those emails weren't
talking even just about he/she<br>
< maco> because how do you do that in a language where
the rest of the<br>
sentence changes?<br>
< AlanBell> well things could be rephrased to avoid the
issue (but I<br>
can't find any)<br>
< maco> busy (male) in spanish is ocupado<br>
< maco> busy (female) is ocupada<br>
< nigelb> Interesting.<br>
< maco> so do you use $user está ocupad(o/a)<br>
< nigelb> So how is it translated?<br>
< maco> if the user is a woman it'd be $user está
ocupada<br>
<br>
(discussion continued to mention other details from
Mackenzie's email).<br>
<span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><br>
--<br>
Elizabeth Krumbach // Lyz // pleia2<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.princessleia.com" target="_blank">http://www.princessleia.com</a><br>
</font></span>
<div class="HOEnZb">
<div class="h5"><br>
--<br>
Ubuntu-Women mailing list<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:Ubuntu-Women@lists.ubuntu.com">Ubuntu-Women@lists.ubuntu.com</a><br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-women"
target="_blank">https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-women</a><br>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
</div>
<br>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Mackenzie is correct in saying that</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote"
style="margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><
maco> i got the impression those emails weren't talking even
just about he/she</blockquote>
<div>I obviously should have talked about "Gender specific
language in applications".<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>And to answer this question:</div>
<div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote"
style="margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><
AlanBell> with this thread on the mailing list about
gendered</blockquote>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote"
style="margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">pronouns
in Ubuntu applications, has anyone ever seen one?</blockquote>
<div>The instances I have seen this in English are very few. It
can be a lot trickier in other languages.</div>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Here are some real examples from the translation of the IM
client Empathy:</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>French (<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://l10n.gnome.org/POT/empathy.master/empathy.master.fr.po">http://l10n.gnome.org/POT/empathy.master/empathy.master.fr.po</a>):</div>
<div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote"
style="margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">#:
../libempathy/empathy-utils.c:233<br>
msgid "Available"<br>
msgstr "Disponible"<br>
#: ../libempathy/empathy-utils.c:235<br>
msgid "Busy"<br>
msgstr "Occupé"<br>
#: ../libempathy/empathy-utils.c:238<br>
msgid "Away"<br>
msgstr "Absent"</blockquote>
</div>
<div>The female versions would be: disponible, occupée, absente.<br>
</div>
<div>Gender-neutral version: disponible, occupé(e), absent(e)</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Spanish:</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote"
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<pre>#: ../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"</pre>
</blockquote>
<div>I'm not fluent in Spanish, but I'm 90% sure that disponible
and ausente are gender-neutral, while ocupado is definitely
male.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Greek:</div>
<div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote"
style="margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
<pre>#: ../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"</pre>
</blockquote>
<div> The last one, "Αόρατος", is male only. Ιt should have been
"Αόρατος/η".</div>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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? </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Jennie</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<br>
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<br>
</blockquote>
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?<br>
<br>
Paula<br>
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