Which gender to use in German translations

[Gawandur]

I deceided to translate "player" with the female expression "Spielerin" for a change.
I checked a few days later my translation and saw that every translation got changed tothe male "Spieler" without a comment.
Is there a kind of rule which gender to use? I could have understood it being changed to "Spieler*In" or something.
Or is it a "changing war" between supporters of different opionions?

Gawandur (male)

[qwertasdfg]

In my opinion, it would be best to use genderless wording.
So rephrasing sentences might work best.

I'm not an expert in gender studies, so I don't know and don't have an opinion on whether to use
Spieler*in, Spieler:in, Spieler::in, SpielerIn, Spieler(in) or something else
in situations where it can't be rephrased. Although I got to say that I've never seen Spieler*In as stated in your proposal.

I do think having some games with the male form throughout, some with the female form would make sense. Especially, as you can see some games using female pronouns in their rules (ein solches Ding f.e.).

Alas, I have no idea how to implement that without triggering edit wars. Maybe use the comment field for every change?

[Dorian Gray2]

I mostly use the generic masculin "Spieler" (and "he", "his") when I edit stuff, because of a lack of other rules. Only having the female version is wong, there is no "generic feminin" in german. Using smth like "He/she has decided to spend his/her money..." sounds not concise enough, and sometimes there are length constraints.

[Gawandur]

Only because ther is no "generic feminin" - which is worth a seperate discussion - it's not automatically corect using "Spieler". The game text need not be generic i think. And BGA and the translators could support this.

[Dorian Gray2]

Well, Spielerin is definitely incorrect.

[KongKing123]

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.

[sushisoul]

There is one reason:

You can translate „player“ to „Spieler“ or „Spielerin“. It‘s both okay, but you can‘t say only „Spielerin“, because so you don‘t speak to the male persons here.
The thing, you can do, is, translate it to „Spieler“, because of that means the male and the female players.

Often, in the german is used the „*“ to write: Spieler*in >> So, the speaker say „Spieler“ and „Spielerin“

So, to say it short:

•Spieler*in
•Spieler

and there are no more kinds of the translation of „player“

Hope I could help

[N_Faker]

Is there no similar trend in German?

Basically the same, and it probably applies to most/all Germanic languages.

[Nessi]

Hallo zusammen,

da es hier um deutsche Übersetzungen geht, bin ich mal so frei, hier in deutsch zu schreiben (geht mir einfach leichter von der Hand )

Vorab: Ich finde diesen ganzen sprachlichen Genderkram eh unnötig. Ich bin seit über 50 Jahren eine Frau und es hat mich nie gestört, wenn bei Ansprache einer Gruppe die weibliche Form nicht explizit genannt wird. Im Deutschen impliziert das meiner Meinung nach in den meisten Fällen beide Geschlechter.

Ich finde daher, dass man im Fall "player" durchaus Spieler übersetzen kann, ich als Frau fühle mich da durchaus mit angesprochen. Das Wort mit irgendwelchen Genderzeichen zu verunstalten finde ich dagegen schlimmer, es stört meines Erachtens den Lesefluss.

Anders verhält es sich mit "sein/ihr": Wenn da steht "Nessi legt Karten auf sein Tableau" klingt das schon irritierend. Ich versuche deshalb immer beim Übersetzen diese Klippe durch leichte Abweichungen zu umschiffen, indem ich hier z.B. übersetzen würde "Nessi legt Karten auf das eigene Tableau".
Nur in Fällen, wo mir nichts besseres einfällt, verwende ich dann auch mal sein/ihr, wobei ich auch nichts dagegen habe, wenn einer eine bessere Idee zur Umformulierung hat und das dann korrigiert.
Man sollte doch immer auch im Hinterkopf behalten, dass wir hier keine 500-Seiten-Romane übersetzen, sondern möglichst kurz gehaltene, prägnante Spielanweisungen (von Dungeon Petz vielleicht mal abgesehen ).

VG
Nessi
(weiblich und von dem ganzen Gendersch..... genervt)

[DrKarotte]

I think there had been a change some time ago (2 years or more), that a word like "sein" should automatically replaced by "ihr" when displaying a translated notification, if the gender of the player is female. This does not seem to work properly, but I also do not have any details.

Of course it will not work if the player does not set a gender in her profile. And it will most likely not work if there are translations like ("sein/ihr").