curiosity about translation

[b33pb33p]

Hi,
just out of curiosity about the english translation.
In the manual the word "player" or "character" is always associated to an adjective in the feminine gender, like in the sentence:

The Character’s attractive features give her a +1 bonus when she uses the Performance and Relation Domains

or

The Player fills the necessary number of boxes in her Health Condition chart

Is there a reason for that choice? As far as I know it's common to use the masculine or the plural form.

E.

[tamsyn]

There are no rules, any gender is acceptable. I guess they usually use male as (sadly) gamers are usually male.

[b33pb33p]

There are no rules, any gender is acceptable. I guess they usually use male as (sadly) gamers are usually male.

I agree, that's the reason of my curiosity

[Dragoslav]

I have wondered the same. Gender-equality? I hear they're big on that over in Europe.

[Clovis]

Oh, God, don't remind me of that; it was a real pain in the ass to find a solution for a gender-neutral speech!

You see, in French, we use the masculine form (thus the equivalent of "he/him/himself/etc.") for a gender-neutral speech, which is not the case in English. This made it necessary to find an equivalent for that.

Actually b33pb33p, if you take a closer look, you'll see that in Book 1, I have chosen to alternate between the feminine gender and the masculine one: "she is Brilliant", "he becomes a Colossus", "her personality", "he becomes Relentless", etc. It was the most adequate solution I could devise to keep things as gender-neutral as possible.


Did that satisfy your curiosity?

[b33pb33p]

yes it did.
thanks a lot!

[Clovis]

Anytime. If you've got other questions about the translation, don't hesitate to ask, I'll do my best to provide answers.

Your faithful translator,

Clovis

[Dragoslav]

Oh, God, don't remind me of that; it was a real pain in the ass to find a solution for a gender-neutral speech!

You see, in French, we use the masculine form (thus the equivalent of "he/him/himself/etc.") for a gender-neutral speech, which is not the case in English. This made it necessary to find an equivalent for that.

Actually, English (traditionally) is the same; the male pronoun is used in neutral speech. Of course, much ink has been spilled over whether this should be the case or not, and there are several alternative methods of achieving gender-neutrality, but using the male pronoun as the gender-neutral pronoun is still considered stylistically acceptable, if not the preferred method anymore.

Your method of switching pronoun genders certainly saves time and space over constantly writing "he or she" all the time.

EDIT: Which makes me wonder whether the French language has the same problem. Do people object over using the male pronoun as the gender-neutral pronoun? Do people ever use alternatives such as "he or she"/"il ou elle" or the "singular 'they'"?

[Clovis]

Actually, English (traditionally) is the same; the male pronoun is used in neutral speech. Of course, much ink has been spilled over whether this should be the case or not, and there are several alternative methods of achieving gender-neutrality, but using the male pronoun as the gender-neutral pronoun is still considered stylistically acceptable, if not the preferred method anymore.

Indeed, I've discussed that point with the proofreaders, and in the end, we decided to try to be politically correct, even if it meant additional tediousness. Ah the things we do to cater to our readers!

EDIT: Which makes me wonder whether the French language has the same problem. Do people object over using the male pronoun as the gender-neutral pronoun? Do people ever use alternatives such as "he or she"/"il ou elle" or the "singular 'they'"?

As far as I know, there has been some debate as to whether such a change should be brought, but it has never been a serious issue: although it may make a few hardcore feminists frown, it has always remained a widely accepted consensus.

[Dragoslav]

Interesting! I wonder why the difference between the Anglophone and Francophone world. If I may speculate wildly, I wonder whether it has to do with how English actually has a pronoun for things that have no biological sex ("it"), so over time the concepts of "grammatical gender" and "biological sex" became linked more strongly in English than in other languages -- i.e., since things without a biological sex began to be called "it" instead of "he" or "she," then "he" or "she" began to be associated with the respective biological sexes, which led to any use of "he" being associated with a person of the male sex even when used in a gender-nonspecific context.