Dutch audience perceptions of human and machine-translated pronouns for non-binary referent in subtitles

Joke Daems, Cynthia Van Hee, Alicia Van Muylem


Abstract
The increased representation of non-binary characters in audiovisual media is societally crucial, yet non-binary language (e.g., pronouns) offers new challenges for translators. In Dutch, the acceptability of pronoun strategies for non-binary reference is debated and evolving. Machine translation (MT) is increasingly being used in audiovisual translation, yet its potential for translation in gender-sensitive contexts is understudied. In this paper, we compare three pronoun translation strategies (two human-produced, one MT) for rendering the English non-binary pronoun they into Dutch in an audiovisual context, using a fragment from the Netflix show Sex Education. We explore general acceptability of these strategies and compare this to audience perceptions after viewing subtitled fragments employing a specific strategy. The results support findings from earlier work on non-binary pronouns in Dutch and indicate that the MT-generated translations were perceived as the least suitable.
Anthology ID:
2026.gitt-1.2
Volume:
Proceedings of the 4th Workshop on Gender-Inclusive Translation Technologies (GITT 2026)
Month:
June
Year:
2026
Address:
Tilburg, the Netherlands
Editors:
Manuel Lardelli, Beatrice Savoldi, Janiça Hackenbuchner, Luisa Bentivogli, Eleni Gkovedarou, Joke Daems
Venues:
GITT | WS
SIG:
Publisher:
European Association for Machine Translation
Note:
Pages:
3–15
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2026.gitt-1.2/
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Joke Daems, Cynthia Van Hee, and Alicia Van Muylem. 2026. Dutch audience perceptions of human and machine-translated pronouns for non-binary referent in subtitles. In Proceedings of the 4th Workshop on Gender-Inclusive Translation Technologies (GITT 2026), pages 3–15, Tilburg, the Netherlands. European Association for Machine Translation.
Cite (Informal):
Dutch audience perceptions of human and machine-translated pronouns for non-binary referent in subtitles (Daems et al., GITT 2026)
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PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/2026.gitt-1.2.pdf