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Translating the Cyberpunk Future

blog.neocabgame.com

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Re: Translating the Cyberpunk Future

#31

Post by vertex-four »

trianglem wrote: post #26
haecceity wrote: post #11

This reminds me of a funny story about Chinese writing. Chinese is not a gendered language. A little while ago they decided to split the third person pronoun into masculine and feminine forms because that's what Western cultures do and they thought it'd be progressive. And now we're fighting back against our thousands of years gendered language inheritance.

Why exactly are we fighting gendered language? Don’t we want to know if the subject is male or female?

Do you also want to encode race, country of origin, height, eye colour, birthdate, into every sentence? Why is gender special enough that it’s worth the problems it causes for many?

Re: Translating the Cyberpunk Future

#32

Post by toyg »

riquito wrote: post #29
blotter_paper wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it would be unfair to ask you to defend the author's writing simply because you speak their language, but I would be grateful if you (or anybody else who speaks Italian) could explain this part of the article for me: > We also analyzed the solutions currently adopted by some activists, like the use of asterisks, “x,” and “u.” > Siamo tutt* bellissim* . > Siamo tuttx bellissimx. > Siamo tuttu bellissimu. > I’d…

In this example, the ending u sound like you have some mental issue. Anyway, that's an oversimplification of the problem. There hare many words that don't have just the final letter changed, like actor/actress (attore, attrice)

> the ending u sound like you have some mental issue.

Or you're from deep Sardinia. "Pattagarru, Ripireddu, Caruddu, Franco..."

> actor/actress

I believe the "pc" anglosphere has moved to actor being used for women too.

Re: Translating the Cyberpunk Future

#33

Post by toyg »

eru wrote: post #23
tanbog wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also Italian here. The other issue with using "Lei" is everyone would sound like some overly formal grand parent or maybe a government official... it would be like people suddenly breaking into the royal "we" in english.

Though funny enough, English has settled on the formal 'you' even when addressing peers.

On this, there is a historical note: the equivalent form exists in Italian ("voi"), but fascist ideologues considered it an "anglophism" and severely forbid it (because of course anything from "perfidious Albion" had to be uprooted)...

Re: Translating the Cyberpunk Future

#34

Post by theli0nheart »

vertex-four wrote: post #31
trianglem wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why exactly are we fighting gendered language? Don’t we want to know if the subject is male or female?

Do you also want to encode race, country of origin, height, eye colour, birthdate, into every sentence? Why is gender special enough that it’s worth the problems it causes for many?

Gendered pronouns cut the search space in half which makes them an efficient way to avoid ambiguity. Other traits aren't so clearly split. Gender is distributed roughly 50/50 across the entire population, regardless of nationality, skin color, eye color, etc.

Re: Translating the Cyberpunk Future

#35

Post by jddj »

vertex-four wrote: post #31
trianglem wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why exactly are we fighting gendered language? Don’t we want to know if the subject is male or female?

Do you also want to encode race, country of origin, height, eye colour, birthdate, into every sentence? Why is gender special enough that it’s worth the problems it causes for many?

As someone who occasionally reads but usually does their very best to avoid this topic due to its tendency to be a total minefield, I just wanted to let you know that this particular argument doesn't work for me at all.

You'd be better acknowledging the fairly obvious benefits that come from encoding so much more information into a single word, and then going on to argue why despite that it would be a good idea to move towards neutral suffixes.

When speaking Spanish, for example, I definitely feel the lack of information conveyed by su when compared to his/her.

Re: Translating the Cyberpunk Future

#36

Post by vertex-four »

jddj wrote: post #35
vertex-four wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you also want to encode race, country of origin, height, eye colour, birthdate, into every sentence? Why is gender special enough that it’s worth the problems it causes for many?

As someone who occasionally reads but usually does their very best to avoid this topic due to its tendency to be a total minefield, I just wanted to let you know that this particular argument doesn't work for me at all. You'd be better acknowledging the fairly obvious benefits that come from encoding so much more information into a single word, and then going on to argue why despite that it would be a good idea to mo…

It's not obvious to me that knowing everyone's gender at all times is important. In fact, as you say, there's a variety of languages where that isn't the case.

When I'm talking about someone I bumped into on the bus, why is it relevant what gender they are above pretty much anything else you could choose to encode there? I'd much prefer to encode, for example, my relationship with them - whether I'm close to them or not, whether I see them as equal, inferior or superior.

Gender is mostly a thing that becomes relevant when talking about relationships and sex or healthcare, and even then not always.

Re: Translating the Cyberpunk Future

#37

Post by gnull »

vertex-four wrote: post #31
trianglem wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why exactly are we fighting gendered language? Don’t we want to know if the subject is male or female?

Do you also want to encode race, country of origin, height, eye colour, birthdate, into every sentence? Why is gender special enough that it’s worth the problems it causes for many?

You could phrase the question this way if @trianglem was suggesting to make some language more gendered. It totally makes sense to ask, why gender is special, in such situation. But what they did is different, they asked why do people want to make a language less gendered. Which is a completely valid question to people who advocate this.

Some languages already do make distinction between genders, and this is a feature that makes gender special enough, unlike height or eye color. Making changes to a language requires effort and causes inconvenience, so it's up to advocates of making a language gender-neutral to provide a motivation which would be worth the effort. If there was a language which had different pronouns for people of different height or eye color and we wanted to change that, we would have to motivate this too.

--

I personally think that it's convenient to have both neutral 3rd person pronouns, which can be applied to anyone, and pronouns that make distinction based on something (not necessarily gender) as well. Neutral pronouns are useful in cases, when you don't know enough to choose the right non-neutral pronoun. Non-neutral ones are good because they give you a convenient way to make distinction between things you talk about, as @theli0nheart already noted here.

For example, in English you can introduce two people of different gender and then refer to them as "he" and "she" without having to repeat their (possibly long) names. In Turkish, where they have only one singular 3rd person pronoun "o", this won't work and you'll have to either name the people every time or use some other shortcuts. In Russian, for example, you can go even further than English — in this language even nouns, which do not denote people, have gender, so you can conveniently refer even to objects in your speech.

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