Classic proverbs in English do not use "person". They use "man". "man" is the word that was used for "person" well into the 20th century, before political corre

Classic proverbs in English do not use "person". They use "man". "man" is the word that was used for "person" well into the 20th century, before political correctness took over speech and writing. For instance, the opening narrative for the original Star Trek TV sci-fi series starring William Shattner and Leonard Nimoy uses the words "to boldly go where no man has gone before". If I were to make a literal translation, it would require the word "find" used in a reflexive/passive tense something like "given a person, an article can be found". I made the translation fit a proverbial pattern, similar "where there is smoke, there is fire". Also note that "chelovyek", though not denoting a male, is still a masculine word! A chlovyek's pronouns are "he/him". The cognate of that word in other Slavic languages, likewise masculine. There are also precedents, like the title of Alexandr Men's book Syn Chelovecheskiy being translated to English as Son of Man.