gender in translation

[Alina Israeli]

English has no gender, only sex, so the attempt is to obscure the  
gender, hence "chairperson" or even "chair" (which sounded very  
strange 30 years ago).
Russian is more like French "Madame la ministre" model (or German  
Kanzlerin): коллега and судья were strictly masculine some 50 years  
ago, now they are common gender, hence дорогая коллега, умная судья.

I am personally always perplexed by the Lithuanian way to divulge  
woman's marital status in last names. English created Ms. in order  
not to have Miss vs. Mrs, French address all women "madame" (Italians  
and Spanish check the left hand in the absence of a man next to her),  
but how would Lithuanians ever cope with the problem?


On Jul 29, 2010, at 11:19 AM, anne marie devlin wrote:

> I was wondering if there have been any attempts to 'de-gender' such  
> emotive words.  As we know, English has been trying to replace  
> words such as chairman with chairperson - however research has  
> shown that where chairperson is used by the press that it usually  
> refers to a female!.  In French the word professeur can now be  
> grammatically masculine or feminine.  Madame la professeur is now  
> in use.  So would it be possible to use Умница or убийца with a  
> masculine adjective, or what about a masculine ending past tense verb?
>
>

Alina Israeli
Associate Professor of Russian
LFS, American University
4400 Massachusetts Ave.
Washington DC 20016
(202) 885-2387 	fax (202) 885-1076
aisrael at american.edu





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