Re: [Tails-l10n] [de] non- discriminatory language

Hi,
(I'm on holiday right now, so just a short answer ;) ):

Max@XGME:
> Hi,
>
> just the background for german (not how it's done in tails but how most
> institutions do it).
> A few years ago everybody changed from using only the male form when
> referring to people of both genders (1 "Mitarbeiter") to using both words -
> which makes the sentence much longer - or using a mixed word (2
> "Mitarbeiter und Mitarbeiterinnen" or 3 "Mitarbeiter/innen") which was used
> by mostly everybody until they "discovered" gender-neutral forms which
> don't take up that much space and also include all that crazy made up stuff
> of people who identify as whatever they can think of, theoretical it would
> also include animals (4 "Mitarbeitende"). So the current situation is that
> most Companies and some public institutions use the long form (3 for
> titles, 2 in long texts) while some public institutions (and maybe
> companies, I don't know) have changed to using the last mentioned form (4).
> I don't really know which of those would be better, so I'll just throw this
> in here to inform those translators, that maybe don't live in germany
> (anymore) and let you decide what to use.
> Also I don't have any official sources for this, it's just my experience,
> it might differ from other parts of germany.
>
ACK. In my opinion this is the smartest way to maintain a gender neutral
language in German. Nevertheless there are some words (e.g. specific
jobs names or positions) that use a male word for them. (e.g.
Rechtsanwälte [laywers] or Benutzer [users]). So we should agree on a
unified translation there. Has the German translator team met at the
CCCamp and discussed this topic?

> intrigeri <intrigeri@???> schrieb am Di., 25. Aug. 2015 um 18:55 Uhr:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> just a little bit of historical background to start with: years ago,
>> for the French translation we (?) decided to stick to the official
>> sexist grammar, mostly because doing anything else would have
>> immediately put us into some weirdos/anarchists/queers category in the
>> eyes of many people, and back then it felt like the Tails project
>> would have more impact wrt. its core mission without this. We were
>> weirdos enough without it. I dunno if it has worked, and I'm not 100%
>> I'm happy to have pushed in favour of this back then, but anyway:
>> that's what happened.
>>
>> Now, we're years later, the Tails brand is a reference in its field,
>> we're respected, praised and all. I personally think (and told so to
>> some French translators ~1y ago IIRC) that it's time to switch to
>> gender-neutral language. There are many advantages in doing so,
>> I would feel more comfortable about it, and at this point it can't
>> harm the project in any serious way any more, and if it harms the
>> project, well, so be it, at least we'll have done the right thing™.
>>
>> Regarding the specifics: I don't know about German, but at least in
>> French it's entirely possible to phrase text without any
>> gender-specific words, and without the male+female innovative language
>> that feels ugly to many people [of course they're wrong, but I'm told
>> that it's a subjective topic :] -- from experience, I can tell that
>> it's sometimes a challenge, and might lead here and there to some
>> weird phrasing, but it does work.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> --
>> intrigeri

Thanks for the background here. I also thought a lot about the thing of
"weirdness" of a radical gender neutral language. Tails is a technical
project and should remain so. But Tails has reached a position of a huge
impact and has a large userbase and thus some sort of "responsibility".
(and I do not think that someone would be scared off by gender neutral
language if we decide upon a smart language ;) ) Maybe we should try it
out and perhaps we would get some reaction from some users? (or not).

Just some thoughts about it...

Cheers!

spriver

P.S.: I will do some review/translation work these days! (: