Gender Neutralization for an Inclusive Machine Translation: from Theoretical Foundations to Open Challenges

Andrea Piergentili, Dennis Fucci, Beatrice Savoldi, Luisa Bentivogli, Matteo Negri


Abstract
Gender inclusivity in language technologies has become a prominent research topic. In this study, we explore gender-neutral translation (GNT) as a form of gender inclusivity and a goal to be achieved by machine translation (MT) models, which have been found to perpetuate gender bias and discrimination. Specifically, we focus on translation from English into Italian, a language pair representative of salient gender-related linguistic transfer problems. To define GNT, we review a selection of relevant institutional guidelines for gender-inclusive language, discuss its scenarios of use, and examine the technical challenges of performing GNT in MT, concluding with a discussion of potential solutions to encourage advancements toward greater inclusivity in MT.
Anthology ID:
2023.gitt-1.7
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:
71–83
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2023.gitt-1.7
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Andrea Piergentili, Dennis Fucci, Beatrice Savoldi, Luisa Bentivogli, and Matteo Negri. 2023. Gender Neutralization for an Inclusive Machine Translation: from Theoretical Foundations to Open Challenges. In Proceedings of the First Workshop on Gender-Inclusive Translation Technologies, pages 71–83, Tampere, Finland. European Association for Machine Translation.
Cite (Informal):
Gender Neutralization for an Inclusive Machine Translation: from Theoretical Foundations to Open Challenges (Piergentili et al., GITT 2023)
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PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/2023.gitt-1.7.pdf