Gender-Fair Language in Translation: A Case Study

Angela Balducci Paolucci, Manuel Lardelli, Dagmar Gromann


Abstract
With an increasing visibility of non-binary individuals, a growing number of language-specific strategies to linguistically include all genders or neutralize any gender references can be observed. Due to this multiplicity of proposed strategies and gender-specific grammatical differences across languages, selecting the one option to translate gender-fair language is challenging for machines and humans alike. As a first step towards gender-fair translation, we conducted a survey with translators to compare four gender-fair translations from a notional gender language, English, to a grammatical gender language, German. Proposed translations were rated by means of best-worst scaling as well as regarding their readability and comprehensibility. Participants expressed a clear preference for strategies with gender-inclusive character, i.e., colon.
Anthology ID:
2023.gitt-1.2
Volume:
Proceedings of the First Workshop on Gender-Inclusive Translation Technologies
Month:
June
Year:
2023
Address:
Tampere, Finland
Editors:
Eva Vanmassenhove, Beatrice Savoldi, Luisa Bentivogli, Joke Daems, Janiça Hackenbuchner
Venue:
GITT
SIG:
Publisher:
European Association for Machine Translation
Note:
Pages:
13–23
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2023.gitt-1.2
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Angela Balducci Paolucci, Manuel Lardelli, and Dagmar Gromann. 2023. Gender-Fair Language in Translation: A Case Study. In Proceedings of the First Workshop on Gender-Inclusive Translation Technologies, pages 13–23, Tampere, Finland. European Association for Machine Translation.
Cite (Informal):
Gender-Fair Language in Translation: A Case Study (Paolucci et al., GITT 2023)
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PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/2023.gitt-1.2.pdf