Hi, do we have other German speakers in here? I'm currently working on the German translation for the PieFed user interface. I'd like to have a discussion on gender neutrality in the German PieFed translation.
The current form
Right now it uses the male form. I think it's desirable to make it neutral. To quote rimu:
I prefer gender neutral. It's 2025 now, not 1950.
The challenges
It's difficult to translate UIs to gender neutral German because it creates long words that might not fit on buttons etc. and some of the forms aren't well suited for screen readers, hence worsen accessibility. But I think we can do it, we just have to find the best form that's shortest, neutral and clear.
Some words aren't translated in the context of Lemmy/PieFed. e.g. Community would be Gemeinschaft in German, but we keep it English to avoid confusion. So we have the option of not translating individual words.
The options
Let's use the word Users as an example. I'll try to list all possible options. If I'm missing any, feel free to add them in the comments.
- Benutzer (male form) ❌
- current form, not neutral
- Benutzerinnen (female form) ❌
- not neutral
- BenutzerInnen (neutral) ❌
- bad for screen readers, long
- Benutzer*innen (neutral) ⚠️
- okay for screen readers, long
- Benutzer:innen (neutral) ❌
- bad for screen readers, long
- Benutzer_innen (neutral) ⚠️
- not widely used, don't know about screen readers, long
- Benutzende / Nutzende (neutral) ✅
- recommendation of geschicktgendern.de
- Benutzys / Nutzys (neutral) ✅
- not widely used, more about this form
- User (not neutral when used in German) ❌
- according to dict.cc User is a correct german plural form of the english word Users
- but it isn't neutral when used in German
This is where I'm stuck. Nutzende is my preferred plural form. But I haven't found a fitting singular form for it. There is more, but I'm just using this as an example of the challenges.
What we should try to achieve
- Find the best gender neutral form and apply it to the German PieFed translation
- Represent this form in the glossary as a standard for the German PieFed translation to guide translators
Feel free to leave a comment here or join the translation chat to discuss things further.
Uh, difficult. I really dislike those circumscriptions into passive form or with adjectives. My own opinion is, we have direct nouns for a reason. So I'd prefer "Nutzer:innen" over "Nutzende" and all the other options. And furthermore, since when are Germans opposed to long words? 😆 But this is just one opinion from one random person (me).
Maybe think of upcoming difficulties like "user settings". Should that be "Benutzendeneinstellungen", "Einstellungen des Nutzenden", "Nutzer:inneneinstellungen"...? I think our language doesn't offer any good option except the generic masculine form... Which isn't gender-neutral...
I do like long words :) But in the context of UI's a word like Nutzer:innen needs much more space than Users. Put 4 buttons with long words side by side and you got a layout problem. That's why I'm trying to find translations that are similar in length.
I've edited my previous comment, there's usually more issues once we have things like "user management panel", or "user settings", which aren't great either.
Yeah, I get how short strings are to be preferred. I mean the shortest one is generic masculine. I'll stick with my previous opinion. But I guess "Nutzende" is okay if it's plural... Seems we currently try to avoid it anyway. It says "Profil", "Konto", "Leute"... I guess the few occurences of "Benutzer" could be "Leute" as well. Just the "Verwalter" in the main menu is one prominent unnecessary masculine. Should be a form of "Admin" in Denglisch.
I don't think I have a strong opinion on this. Just avoid Nutzys. I think that'd be a good option, but sounds weird to average people.