I occasionally contribute to Facebook’s Translation application Facebook - log in or sign up to improve translations into my native German (as some few translations are toenail-curlingly bad). Users can vote on translations of terms (from the original English) and contribute their own improved translations.
One feature of the interface is that translators can indicate that the translation depends on gender. That is useful as most languages are more gendered than English (e.g. if you asked me to translate ‘lawyer’ into German I’d have to ask ‘boy lawyer or girl lawyer?’)
The facebook interface allows uses to indicate if translations depend on
gender of variables e.g. {short-name} in the string
gender of subject
gender of viewing user (i.e. the Facebook user who reads the translated text)
The first two I can understand - nouns are often gendered and adjectives etc. also have to agree with gender in many languages. (‘a skilful lawyer’ translates into German as ‘ein geschickter Rechtsanwalt’ or ‘eine geschickte Rechtsanwältin’, depending on the subject’s gender.)
But what’s with the gender of the viewing user?
Examples of terms to be translated
Are there really languages where the translation depends on the gender of the viewing user?
I’m not sure I understand what particular aspect of Facebook you’re referring to, but there are languages where the gender (i.e., sex) of the person you’re speaking to determines manner of address, and thereby verb morphology and certain lexical items. Japanese and Korean, for example. But I think you’re talking about advertisements, right?
In Spanish, if you are directly addressing someone and speaking about them, you might use gendered terminology. For example, you might say, “¿Está listo?” to ask “Are you ready?” to a boy, but a girl would be asked with "¿Está lista? because the adjective “listo” must match the gender of the noun it is describing, which in this case is the person addressed. The default is masculine if you don’t know the answer iirc, but if you know that the person is a girl, you should use the feminine.
If the information is written in the first person, it would certainly matter for English. For example, consider the following question in a questionnaire:
Which of the following statements applies to you?
a) I am a blonde.
b) I am a brunette.
c) …
As written, the choices use female-specific terminology. For a male audience, it may be more appropriate to write “I am a blond” and “I am a brunet”. Of course, in English there are ways of rephrasing these sentences without having to use gender-specific terms, though there may be other cases in which it’s more difficult; in some languages it may be impossible without a lot of alternation or circumlocution.
I think in many cases, including German, it will become an issue only if the sentence adresses or refers to the reader: in Spanish, “are you a lawyer?” can be translated into “neutral language” (¿tiene usted una licenciatura en Derecho?) or it can be gendered (¿es usted abogado/a? ¿es usted Licenciado/a en Derecho?). Which choice is better will depend on cultural constraints including dialect; some Spanish-speaking readers will get a case of The Screams if the screen adresses them by the wrong gender, some will throw a fit if it uses o/a or @, some don’t give a fig. The cases in the OP aren’t even adressing anybody - one is a preposition! Are there any languages where prepositions are gendered?
(Apparently “by” can also be other kinds of words including an adjective, but I can’t recall having ever encountered one of those cases until right now in m-w)
If you saw a sign saying “Der BMW” and “Das BMW”, would that mean the cars were owned by a man and woman, respectivly? Or should cars be one or the other?
A Swiss guy told me cars should be “Der”. Is this correct? Thanks!
Yes. In the Celtic languages, the preposition can incorporate the pronoun (similar to “conmigo, contigo, consigo”) but these are only gendered in the third person singular (e.g. Welsh “gan” = “with / con”, but “ganddo (fe)” = “with him / con él” and “ganddi (hi)” = “with her / con ella”). In Breton, this makes its way into the verb “to have” so that “he has” and “she has” are differentiated in all tenses, unlike any other verb in the language. Verbs can also change their spelling and pronunciation depending on whether the direct object is masculine or feminine: Welsh Rwy wedi ei gicio e, “I kicked him” vs. Rwy wedi ei chicio hi, “I kicked her,” with the verb (in its dictionary form) being “cicio” and the direct object indicatied by the possessive pronoun, ei.
In Breton as in Spanish personal pronouns are not necessary in an ordinary sentence. A few adjectives have gender, as well: Welsh hyll (ugly, masc.) but hell (ugly, fem.) or crwn (m.) / cron (f.), “round.”
And people wonder why these languages are so difficult to learn…
Not quite true: Gender is mental, sex is physical; they can either match (in which case the person is cissexual) or not (they’re transsexual), and either or both can be ambiguous.
Finally, grammatical gender has little to do with human gender and less to do with human sexes.
Very interesting, thank you. As an aside, this example reflects one of the issues of translating and of learning the syntax of different languages: conXigo are considered pronouns in Spanish, but the equivalent forms in Welsh are considered prepositions. It’s either a bloody mess or a lot of fun…
No, “Der BMW” would be considered correct in all cases, and “Das BMW” just incorrect (barring a possible difference in Swiss usage that your informant referred to - the Swiss and Austrians assign differerent genders to inanimate objects in a very few cases, but that would also be idependent of the owner’s gender.)
I only state it that way because many people (including some people on this board) use the word gender to avoid saying “sex,” even when it is the more correct word. Obviously, for those who pay attention to the original meanings of the words, the distinction is very relevant here, and many with certain gender identities will adjust grammatical gender, too, such as gay men referring to other gay men as “she.”
However, with regard to this thread specifically, I doubt, for example, that a Korean girl will stop addressing her older brother as “oppa” (우방) when she assumes a male gender identity. (It would be interesting to find some data to find out for sure, though.)
