Hi,
spriver:
> 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.
Which variant do you refer to?
> So we should agree on a unified translation there.
The wikipedia article (see URL below) gives some pros and cons for some
of the options, but there's no final recommendation. The best I learned
from the various cited sources is to be creative, like:
Man solle also nicht mit dem Satz „Die Teilnehmer des Seminars sind
berechtigt, die Software zu benutzen” beginnen und ihn in „Die
Teilnehmerinnen und Teilnehmer des Seminars sind berechtigt, die
Software zu benutzen” umformulieren, sondern gleich „Die Teilnahme am
Seminar berechtigt zur Benutzung der Software” schreiben.
I think this is something that we can try to follow from now on, yet it
is no simple approach.
> Has the German translator team met at the CCCamp and discussed this topic?
Some met, but there was too much to see/discover and we had no fixed
place to meet (as opposed to congress), so no progress for the discussion...
I (maybe that goes for others too) also don't feel sufficiently
confident to judge one variant for the other.
But I find the discussion about problems and alternatives in the
wikipedia article very informative (already referenced it some emails ago):
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generisches_Maskulinum
(The length of the page almost makes one "feel" the 40 years of debate)
~flapflap
