[Foundation-l] Editors survey and gender

Amir E. Aharoni amir.aharoni at mail.huji.ac.il
Tue Mar 22 11:17:27 UTC 2011


What i say here about Hebrew may be useful for many other languages, too.

I am translating the Editors survey into Hebrew. The survey is written
as a long series of questions in the second person ("you"). In Hebrew
the second person is very gender-dependent - the wording is
significantly different for women. When translating MediaWiki
messages, we more or less manage to avoid it and though it's not
perfect and we should use {{GENDER}} more, it's not a disaster. In the
survey, however, it would be very, very bad with all the personal
questions about family life etc.

It's not just a matter of being politically correct and welcoming -
the language simply doesn't natural.

Would it be possible to have the Hebrew translation in the feminine
gender, too? The default can be masculine, but putting a button at the
beginning that opens another form in the feminine would be really
great. In the Meta talk page Casey said that it's not possible with
LimeSurvey, but i nevertheless want to try asking it again: Can i
write two versions of the survey, for example "Hebrew-masculine" and
"Hebrew-feminine" and let the reader switch it? The results can be
combined later.

Thanks a lot for the understanding.

--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
"We're living in pieces,
 I want to live in peace." - T. Moore



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