Sometimes you can't trust the grammar
A few months ago, I was on Etsy, finishing up an order for a light fixture from a vendor in Ukraine. I knew he lived in a Russian-speaking part of Ukraine, so wanted to send a message of support.
Since I no longer have a computer that has a good setup for typing in Cyrillic, I used my usual shortcut. I went to Google Translate, typed up what I wanted to say in English, and prepared to copy and paste Cyrillic letters to tweak the text so it came out the way that I wanted.
And I stopped in surprise. “They haven’t fixed this yet?” I said out loud.
Here’s a dramatic recreation of that event using two of my phrases with translations that I found, frankly, shocking.
One thing I was writing was, “When I lived in Russia,” and another was “I am very happy to.” So here they are as English input:
And here’s what Google Translate gave me:
Let me give you the transliteration and the English translation beneath it.
Kogda ya zhil v Rossii
“When I lived (m.) in Russia”
ya ochen’ rad
“I am very happy (m.)”
For those of you who don’t speak or read Russian, you can see the clue to the problem in my translation – that little (m.) that says that Google Translate gave me the masculine form for lived and happy.
Google Translate didn’t tell me that Russian requires you to choose a gender for those forms. It didn’t tell me that there were any other options, like the feminine zhila and rada.
It just gave me the masculine option as if it was universal.
It erased my gender. And it made my language ungrammatical.
As it so happens, at the same time that I was buying my light fixture, I was also working on Chapter Six of my book – the chapter that covers my principle of inclusive language that I call Prevent erasure.
I didn’t have room for this translation example in my book, so I’m writing it up for you all here instead.
Inclusive language reflects reality (that's another one of my principles). When it comes to gender, one way inclusive language reflects reality is by not pretending that masculine and male terms represent everyone.
The terms man or mankind erase people who aren’t male. Terms like humanity or humankind include everyone.
Using the pronoun he to represent any generic person erases people who aren’t male. Pronouns like they include everyone. (“He or she” isn’t enough, because not everyone fits into the gender binary.)
Terms like craftsman and spokesman and cameraman erase people doing the work who aren’t male. Terms like artisan and spokesperson and camera operator include everyone.
So what’s going on with “grammatical authorities” like Google Translate? In cases like these, they’re violating multiple principles of inclusive language. They aren’t reflecting reality, they aren’t showing respect (to people who aren’t male), they are marginalizing people rather than drawing them in (when those people aren’t male), and they aren’t preventing erasure.
Google Translate isn’t the only one to do this. Here are a few examples from an (admittedly older) Berlitz phrasebook I used to take with me on trips to Europe. The first time I used it, I burst out laughing because their grammatical choices (and exclusions) made it so clear that their supposed reader was:
A man
Who had romantic encounters with women.
I’ll focus on a few French examples.
For “I’m very pleased to meet you,” the book gives you only the masculine form of ravi for ‘pleased’ instead of noting there is also the feminine ravie. They’re pronounced the same, so that’s not such a big a deal (at least for people who are speaking orally and not writing).
And then in the dating section, for “Do you live alone?” the book only gives the feminine form of alone, seule – presuming that the male reader will only be asking this of women.
Now the phrase book's erasure has become twofold: 1) people who aren't male, 2) men who don't date women.
What’s more, for the “A few common words” section, 100% of the adjectives are given in the masculine form. For a few of these adjectives, the pronunciation is the same. But for many others, like the words new, the feminine form is spelled and pronounced very differently than the masculine - for new it is nouvelle (which if you don’t speak French, you might know from the phrase nouvelle cuisine) rather than nouveau (as in nouveau riche).
When people creating things like guides and textbooks and translation tools don’t follow the principles of inclusive language, it can be seriously problematic. I hear a lot of feedback that inclusive language is just touchy feely, or is about people being oversensitive, or isn’t that important.
But as you can see from these Google Translate and Berlitz phrasebook examples, not being inclusive can mean that you end up flat out wrong. Ungrammatical. And presenting a world in which only one kind of person matters – in this case, (straight) male people.
We can do better.
Problematic language lowers profitability. Our Worthwhile solutions can address your company's inclusive language training needs.
Copyright 2023 © Worthwhile Research & Consulting.