3 ms·

> Should all pronouns in the translated text be either a "he", a "she" or a "they"? Wouldn't that still be considered "biased"? The proffered solution is to us

by slibhb 6y ago

> Should all pronouns in the translated text be either a "he", a "she" or a "they"? Wouldn't that still be considered "biased"? The proffered solution is to use singular "they" of course. Trouble is, people don't talk like that and so from a language-is-as-it-used perspective (descriptivist), always using singular "they" makes your translation worse. I would offer a solution like this: allow the person using the translation program to specify pronoun rules.

csmpltn 6y ago
> The proffered solution is to use singular "they" of course That's subjective. > allow the person using the translation program to specify pronoun rules "Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source–language text by means of an equivalent target-language text" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Translation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Translation) Allowing the end-user to customize the translation according to their own personal biases introduces an entirely different set of issues. We should no longer call it a "translation" at that point.
- slibhb 6y ago
  > That's subjective. I don't follow. There is an argument out there that we should stop using he/she and default to they (unless informed otherwise). Am I wrong about that? I didn't say I agree with it, just that it is a proposed solution. > Allowing the end-user to customize the translation according to their own personal biases introduces an entirely different set of issues... Yes, and allowing people to speak introduces this exact same issue...
  - csmpltn 6y ago
    > Yes, and allowing people to speak introduces this exact same issue... It's not the purpose of a translation service - to let people customize the translation such that it fits their own personal biases and sits more comfortably with their world views.
    - slibhb 6y ago
      > It's not the purpose of a translation service - to let people customize the translation such that it fits their own personal biases and sits more comfortably with their world views. A translation service requires user input, spoken or written, which is necessarily biased based on how the user speaks/writes/thinks. The service is also biased based on the data and methods that are used to engineer it. In my opinion, it is perfectly fine for people to be biased. Whenever I choose to write, I am expressing my personal (biased) view. But when it comes to machine translation, I think it's reasonable to object to bias and so, for contentious issues like personal pronouns, I think it makes sense to allow people to choose. In other words: there is simply no right way to decide between defaulting to "he", "she", or "they" for third person gender neutral. I use "he" (it's how I was taught and it sounds better to me). Some people would accuse me of phallocentrism or linguistic conservatism, but fine. In modern philosophy, "she" is used. In some circles, "they" is used. I see no issue allowing the user to specify their preferred rule, though it might be technically challenging (I have no idea).
    - BoiledCabbage 6y ago
      > It's not the purpose of a translation service And I can guarantee you've never used this line of reasoning against translation services performing spelling or grammar checking. Yet those are also "not the purpose of a translation service". It's always interesting to see the twists people will go to try to use post-hoc justify an opinion.
kiscica 6y ago
The problem with "they" is that it is in fact a very bad translation for "ő" in a sentence like "ő mosogat." We typically find gender-neutral "they" in English when there is an indefinite antecedent like "someone" or "anyone" - "if anyone objects, they should talk to me." In contrast, in Hungarian, including the third-person pronoun "ő" means the speaker has a very definite subject in mind and in fact wishes to emphasize that (a neutral "he/she is washing up" would be just "mosogat", without any explicit pronoun; "ő mosogat" almost means "HE [not someone else] is washing up." (Or "SHE" of course.) The only case where I can imagine translating "ő" as "they" in this kind of context is when I know that the person in question explicitly prefers the pronoun "they," e.g. because they identify as non-binary.
- slibhb 6y ago
  > The problem with "they" is that it is in fact a very bad translation for "ő" in a sentence like "ő mosogat." We typically find gender-neutral "they" in English when there is an indefinite antecedent like "someone" or "anyone" - "if anyone objects, they should talk to me." There is a school of thought that says we should change how we use the English language. This school thinks that the proper way to speak is to assume non-binary until informed otherwise and that appealing to "what sounds right" or "the rules of grammar" is unacceptable linguistic conservativism. I am not making that argument. I'm just raising it because it seems relevant here. I would point out that, even if you disagree with this argument, it seems reasonable to think that people should be able to choose how they use pronouns, whether their usage flies in the face of linguistic convention/rules of grammar or goes along with them.
  - kiscica 6y ago
    I absolutely agree that people should be able to choose how they use pronouns (or in fact any component of language). Communication is a mutual endeavour, and I will always make my best good-faith effort to understand what an interlocutor is trying to convey (assuming I want to talk to them in the first place :), even if they choose to use language differently from the way I would. In fact (within reason) I will even adapt my own usage in some cases - e.g. I will do my best to use the pronoun "they" (or "xe" or "foobar" or whatever) when referring to someone who wishes to be referred to in that way, even though (despite knowing several languages with gender-neutral pronouns) I find that takes non-insignificant mental effort when I speak English. That said, precisely because communication is a mutual endeavour, and language is a coöperative framework, there is no guarantee that -- just because you choose to use "they" in this way -- others will follow. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if, within a generation, "they" became an unmarked definite gender-neutral pronoun in English (today it is arguably unmarked in the case of an indefinite antecedent, but extremely marked otherwise). But I wouldn't be terribly surprised if it didn't, either. Language change is an emergent process and not something that can easily be forced in either conservative or radical directions.

by slibhb 6y ago

csmpltn 6y ago

> The proffered solution is to use singular "they" of course That's subjective. > allow the person using the translation program to specify pronoun rules "Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source–language text by means of an equivalent target-language text" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Translation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Translation) Allowing the end-user to customize the translation according to their own personal biases introduces an entirely different set of issues. We should no longer call it a "translation" at that point.

slibhb 6y ago
> That's subjective. I don't follow. There is an argument out there that we should stop using he/she and default to they (unless informed otherwise). Am I wrong about that? I didn't say I agree with it, just that it is a proposed solution. > Allowing the end-user to customize the translation according to their own personal biases introduces an entirely different set of issues... Yes, and allowing people to speak introduces this exact same issue...
- csmpltn 6y ago
  > Yes, and allowing people to speak introduces this exact same issue... It's not the purpose of a translation service - to let people customize the translation such that it fits their own personal biases and sits more comfortably with their world views.
  - slibhb 6y ago
    > It's not the purpose of a translation service - to let people customize the translation such that it fits their own personal biases and sits more comfortably with their world views. A translation service requires user input, spoken or written, which is necessarily biased based on how the user speaks/writes/thinks. The service is also biased based on the data and methods that are used to engineer it. In my opinion, it is perfectly fine for people to be biased. Whenever I choose to write, I am expressing my personal (biased) view. But when it comes to machine translation, I think it's reasonable to object to bias and so, for contentious issues like personal pronouns, I think it makes sense to allow people to choose. In other words: there is simply no right way to decide between defaulting to "he", "she", or "they" for third person gender neutral. I use "he" (it's how I was taught and it sounds better to me). Some people would accuse me of phallocentrism or linguistic conservatism, but fine. In modern philosophy, "she" is used. In some circles, "they" is used. I see no issue allowing the user to specify their preferred rule, though it might be technically challenging (I have no idea).
  - BoiledCabbage 6y ago
    > It's not the purpose of a translation service And I can guarantee you've never used this line of reasoning against translation services performing spelling or grammar checking. Yet those are also "not the purpose of a translation service". It's always interesting to see the twists people will go to try to use post-hoc justify an opinion.

kiscica 6y ago

The problem with "they" is that it is in fact a very bad translation for "ő" in a sentence like "ő mosogat." We typically find gender-neutral "they" in English when there is an indefinite antecedent like "someone" or "anyone" - "if anyone objects, they should talk to me." In contrast, in Hungarian, including the third-person pronoun "ő" means the speaker has a very definite subject in mind and in fact wishes to emphasize that (a neutral "he/she is washing up" would be just "mosogat", without any explicit pronoun; "ő mosogat" almost means "HE [not someone else] is washing up." (Or "SHE" of course.) The only case where I can imagine translating "ő" as "they" in this kind of context is when I know that the person in question explicitly prefers the pronoun "they," e.g. because they identify as non-binary.

slibhb 6y ago
> The problem with "they" is that it is in fact a very bad translation for "ő" in a sentence like "ő mosogat." We typically find gender-neutral "they" in English when there is an indefinite antecedent like "someone" or "anyone" - "if anyone objects, they should talk to me." There is a school of thought that says we should change how we use the English language. This school thinks that the proper way to speak is to assume non-binary until informed otherwise and that appealing to "what sounds right" or "the rules of grammar" is unacceptable linguistic conservativism. I am not making that argument. I'm just raising it because it seems relevant here. I would point out that, even if you disagree with this argument, it seems reasonable to think that people should be able to choose how they use pronouns, whether their usage flies in the face of linguistic convention/rules of grammar or goes along with them.
- kiscica 6y ago
  I absolutely agree that people should be able to choose how they use pronouns (or in fact any component of language). Communication is a mutual endeavour, and I will always make my best good-faith effort to understand what an interlocutor is trying to convey (assuming I want to talk to them in the first place :), even if they choose to use language differently from the way I would. In fact (within reason) I will even adapt my own usage in some cases - e.g. I will do my best to use the pronoun "they" (or "xe" or "foobar" or whatever) when referring to someone who wishes to be referred to in that way, even though (despite knowing several languages with gender-neutral pronouns) I find that takes non-insignificant mental effort when I speak English. That said, precisely because communication is a mutual endeavour, and language is a coöperative framework, there is no guarantee that -- just because you choose to use "they" in this way -- others will follow. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if, within a generation, "they" became an unmarked definite gender-neutral pronoun in English (today it is arguably unmarked in the case of an indefinite antecedent, but extremely marked otherwise). But I wouldn't be terribly surprised if it didn't, either. Language change is an emergent process and not something that can easily be forced in either conservative or radical directions.