A couple of weeks ago, I was asked - in my capacity of meta admin - to
change the phrasing of a site notice on meta, meant to call for
participation to the month of Francophonie.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Centralnotice-template-WikiFranca_MC17&diff=prev&oldid=16482259
The sentence of the call in the site notice was in language neutral
terminology.
"les Wikimédien.nes" instead of the more traditionnal but non neutral
"les Wikimédiens".
That phrasing raised an uproar on the French pump. So I replaced the
term by "nous" (we). Seems to settle things.
Clearly the French speaking community is not ready to adopt the gender
neutral specific language accross the francophones projects.
Alternatives (such as the "we") are possible but not always.
Florence
Le 06/04/2017 14:58, Fæ a écrit :
Thanks for the examples from French and I'm sure that our experienced
translators will have in mind specific best practice guides to turn
to. I like your illustration of "un/une adminstra-teur-trice" to show
the challenges. The use of "singular they" remains uncomfortable for
many English readers, but it has become a recommended standard for
journalists writing in English.[1]
Once the principle of gender neutrality is agreed, I just don't know
what our next steps will turn out to be for non-English versions.
However I am much encouraged by the positive views on Commons, and I'm
hopeful we can, and should, find a way to set a better example for our
fellow projects in our aim to feel welcoming for all contributors. :-)
Links
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they
Thanks
Fae
Wikimedia LGBT+
On 6 April 2017 at 12:30, Antoine Musso <[email protected]> wrote:
Le 05/04/2017 à 12:52, Fæ a écrit :
I'm taking that further by
proposing that we stick to a neutral gender for all our policies and
help pages. In practice this means that policies avoid using "he or
she" and stick to "they" or avoid using a pronoun at all.
As a non native English speaker the use of a plural form definitely
confuses me or at best. The example takes a sentence from Commons:FAQ
which roughly looks like:
A photographer has to be given credit when his or her picture is used.
With the proposal to instead:
A photographer has to be given credit when their picture is used.
Why isn't "picture" plural as well? If using masculine as a neutral
pronoum is the issue, just stop using the pronoum entirely. Eg one can
instead write:
A photographer has to be given credit when the picture is used.
That is going to be quite a challenge when ported to other languages.
For 'A photographer', the english indefinite article is gender less.
In french that would be either 'un' (masculine) or 'une' (feminine).
What some are advocating is using:
Un/une photographe
If the noun varies as well, that becomes messy. Here for 'administrateur':
Un/une adminstra-teur-trice
That is not solvable in french and all other latin based languages most
probably have the same issue (blame Rome!).
--
Antoine "hashar" Musso
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