Gendered languages (Hebrew, Spanish, etc.)

[epsalon]

When translating to gendered languages such as Hebrew, we use different words based on the gender of the players, even in first or second person. E.g. in Hebrew "you must" is "אתה צריך" or "את צריכה" based on gender. There is no neutral form.

Many translation frameworks allow for variants on a translated string based on gender and number. These can also be used to overcome text such as "chip(s)" when then number could be 1. That is, It would be very useful to have something like:

{if $player_gender=="M"}אתה צריך{else}את צריכה{end} לשלם {if $chipcount > 1}{$chipcount} אסימונים{else}אסימון אחד{end}

This should also allow checking the gender of players, etc. If we do use such a framework, there is still an issue with players with unspecified or non-binary gender. In English we can use "they". In other languages, I would suggest possibly randomizing the gender used and encouraging the player to set their gender and/or using forms such as את/ה צריכ/ה.

[Dorian Gray2]

In german I prefer the generic masculin, but others are using both Forms.

[BoardGamePunkDo]

It would be good to have some "best practices" for this topic. Since users can add & customize the translations of BGA it is easy to provide a gender neutral translation for several languages. I just did some test for German last week: I changed to translation of "good player" to "Gute:r Spieler:in" instead of "Guter Spieler" (masculine) next to some other translations. I searched for some advice regarding gender neutral language at BGA but did not find any resource. Since the translation has already been reverted it would make sense to discuss the idea if gendered language / gender neutral language at BGA. Based on this some simple rules can be created

... just my 5 cents

[BoardGamePunkDo]

+ it would be cool to see how the translations of BGA for other languages handle that topic. I can only check this for EN & DE. While in English texts a gender neutral usage can be found at least at some places (search for "he/she") the German translations use for mostly 100% the masculine.

[Nidhoeggr42]

I don't want to see so called "gender neutral" spelling in this environment here where i and hopefully most other people too want some peaceful fun free from religious or political or now spelling ideologies.
I don't think we need translations created by volunteers in their spare time to be "corrected" by a small group from proper German into something that resembles Orwellian Newspeak. "Benutzer:innenkonto" instead of "Benutzerkonto" is just an example that you tried to introduce.
By the way this way of "gender-gerechtes" spelling is only one of several competing options. Others would be "Benutzer*innenkonto", "BenutzerInnenkonto", "Benutzer_innenkonto". And this is no complete list.

If personally using this kind of spelling is an important thing for you, and not something you want to force onto others, maybe ask the platform technicians to create a new language option for you. Then you can create all the spellings the way how they suit you and everyone can chose between German and your spelling freely.

If you want to spend some time on translating: add missing translations, fix real translation errors, maybe even ask the developers via bug reports to offer translations for strings in games that were missed when making them available for translation. I am sure this would be helpful for the German speaking player community here.

There are places where i would appreciate the female form being used more.
If the setting in a player profile where they can configure their preferred gender would be used to chose between female and male options for strings like "Gute Spielerin" vs. "Guter Spieler". That applies for achievements, maybe some other places too.
Where more sensitivity could be used is in strings like "Spieler A spielt eine Karte. Sein Zug endet jetzt." In these places it would be fine in my humble opinion to offer both options, for example "Sein/Ihr Zug endet jetzt."
You wrote this is being used in English more than in German here. I would be surprised if in German translations of such English strings the female option is removed in notable numbers. But if you find such occurrences, please feel free to fix them.

I hope i don't have to regret voicing my opinion here.

[Kruemel90]

There are so many things to say about this topic but as I am afraid this topic is a bit too big for this thread here I will only mention my main points:

1. Nidhoeggr42 - so it's up to you to decide what's necessary and what's not and if changing translations to gender neutral language is a waste of time?

2. Nidhoeggr42 - "by a small group from proper German" -> this is not a topic for only a small group. Today we have lots of official regulations in Germany (e.g. for universities and agencies in North Rhine-Westphalia). News on TV are starting to use this language. It's totally clear that not everyone can immediately understand what the sense of gender neutral speech is or why it is so important for some people. But just because it's not important for you it doesn't mean that it's important for only a small group.

3. BoardGamePunkDo - many thanks to you and your friends for putting all this effort into adjusting the translations!

[Dorian Gray2]

Just some more remarks from my side as a frequent translator: I wasn't aware of the form "Gute:r Spieler:in" (with double colon) until that was changed on BGA, and my first intention was "It just looks wrong to me", but I wasn't sure about it, so I just let it as it was. What does the double colon actually express, and what is the difference to the "gender star" (*)?

I still do not know which is the correct format to be used.
Like Nidhoeggr42 said, there seems to be more than one variant, and people change it from one to the other over the time.

Sure this is used in universities and agencies and so on, but at least they do have rules about how to to it, and staff is getting trained about that. We don't have that here. You can hardly compare that. Also we shouldn't expect translators to be professional translators or to have an academic background.

So can someone explain the german rules about that?

[Kruemel90]

Fully agree that we cannot expect from everyone to be aware about all the possibilities and differences.
Will try to give a quick overview (but please feel free to correct me as I'm not an expert here):

First of all: in german there is no official rule and not the one perfect way for gender neutral speech.

One option are things like "Spieler/Spielerin", "Spieler/in". Problem: this includes only males and females but ignores e.g. non-binary people.

Next option is the gender star oder gender gap: Spieler*in, Spieler_in. These two express the same - star or gap for everyone who is seeing oneself between or outside male and female. Afaik most institutions practising gender neutral speech are using one of these two (e.g. my university is using the star).

The latest option is the colon: Spieler:in. It has the same meaning as gender star and gender gap - all people (queer, non-binary, transgender,..) can feel included. But there are some advantages: it's easier to type on keyboards and computer programms reading a text e.g. for a blind person have less difficulties compared to the star. And I think it's a bit easier to read in a text.

Personally, I prefer the gender star. But we should of course not start to change a translation using gender neutral language to another gender neutral option. The most important goal should be to represent all people and I think it will not be a real problem at all if we have all three versions (gap, star and colon) as long as we have differences only between games and not within one game.

[chabedou]

I don't want to see so called "gender neutral" spelling in this environment here where i and hopefully most other people too want some peaceful fun free from religious or political or now spelling ideologies.
I don't think we need translations created by volunteers in their spare time to be "corrected" by a small group from proper German into something that resembles Orwellian Newspeak. "Benutzer:innenkonto" instead of "Benutzerkonto" is just an example that you tried to introduce.
By the way this way of "gender-gerechtes" spelling is only one of several competing options. Others would be "Benutzer*innenkonto", "BenutzerInnenkonto", "Benutzer_innenkonto". And this is no complete list.

If personally using this kind of spelling is an important thing for you, and not something you want to force onto others, maybe ask the platform technicians to create a new language option for you. Then you can create all the spellings the way how they suit you and everyone can chose between German and your spelling freely.

If you want to spend some time on translating: add missing translations, fix real translation errors, maybe even ask the developers via bug reports to offer translations for strings in games that were missed when making them available for translation. I am sure this would be helpful for the German speaking player community here.

There are places where i would appreciate the female form being used more.
If the setting in a player profile where they can configure their preferred gender would be used to chose between female and male options for strings like "Gute Spielerin" vs. "Guter Spieler". That applies for achievements, maybe some other places too.
Where more sensitivity could be used is in strings like "Spieler A spielt eine Karte. Sein Zug endet jetzt." In these places it would be fine in my humble opinion to offer both options, for example "Sein/Ihr Zug endet jetzt."
You wrote this is being used in English more than in German here. I would be surprised if in German translations of such English strings the female option is removed in notable numbers. But if you find such occurrences, please feel free to fix them.

I hope i don't have to regret voicing my opinion here.

I agree with you, we have the same kind of issue in French too, I think most people just want to enjoy playing board games online and want a non-ideological translation. It is sad to see political matters pollute this nonetheless great website

[KongKing123]

To quote myself from another thread: https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewto ... 11&t=19432

I can't speak for German as I only have basic knowledge, but in the sometimes quite similar Dutch, many words which were traditionally considered male and had a female equivalent, are now often used in a genderless way. Player is one example: "speler" (= Spieler) instead of "speelster" (= Spielerin).

Is there no similar trend in German? To me, this seems like an easy solution.

It doesn't look like any of those "neutral" forms are generally accepted and it is clear why, as they look cumbersome and silly. The French Language Academy strongly opposes them for this very reason: https://translate.google.com/translate? ... -inclusive.

Luckily, there is no traction for "spe*e*l*st*er" or whatever the Dutch equivalent would be. If the word is still strongly gendered, both forms would just be used together, e.g. "prinsen en prinsessen" ("princes and princesses"). There are no male and female adjectives though, so that helps.

+ it would be cool to see how the translations of BGA for other languages handle that topic. I can only check this for EN & DE. While in English texts a gender neutral usage can be found at least at some places (search for "he/she") the German translations use for mostly 100% the masculine.

When translating to Dutch, I will avoid the use of gendered pronouns if it does not negatively impact readability (for example the equivalent of "PlayerX chooses which card to take" instead of "PlayerX chooses which card he takes").

The system also automatically replaces the male possessive pronoun "zijn" ("his") with "haar" ("her") in the log texts for female players, though this can be an issue, since "zijn" is also the verb "to be". This could only really be solved by adding global variables for pronouns.

For other texts containing "his/her" or "their", there is no official singular neutral form. However, this can sometimes be sidestepped by switching to the plural, which is neutral and easier to read: "alle spelers moeten naar hun kaarten kijken" ("all players must look at their cards") instead of "elke speler moet naar zijn/haar kaarten kijken" ("every player must look at his/her cards"). Otherwise we mostly use "zijn/haar".

I believe this is a reasonable approach.