Gender sensitive language in Koha?
Hello, I'm wondering if, and how the community plans to implement gender sensitive language in Koha, the manual and the translations. Are there any plans for Koha in English and/or for some or all translations? I am aware that in some languages, e.g. German, gender sensitive language is much harder to apply than in English, however, it's probably an issue for all languages. Looking forward to your thoughts, Anke -- Anke Bruns M.A. (LIS) Arbeitsgruppe "Anwendungs- und Informationssysteme" E-Mail: anke.bruns@gwdg.de --------------------------------------- Gesellschaft für wissenschaftliche Datenverarbeitung mbH Göttingen (GWDG) Burckhardtweg 4, 37077 Göttingen, URL: https://gwdg.de Support: Tel.: +49 551 39-30000, URL: https://gwdg.de/support Sekretariat: Tel.: +49 551 39-30001, E-Mail: gwdg@gwdg.de Geschäftsführer: Prof. Dr. Ramin Yahyapour Aufsichtsratsvorsitzender: Prof. Dr. Norbert Lossau Sitz der Gesellschaft: Göttingen Registergericht: Göttingen, Handelsregister-Nr. B 598 --------------------------------------- Zertifiziert nach ISO 9001 ---------------------------------------
Hi :) On 22-09-21 09:46, Bruns, Anke wrote:
I'm wondering if, and how the community plans to implement gender sensitive language in Koha, the manual and the translations. Are there any plans for Koha in English and/or for some or all translations?
What do you mean by gender sensitive? https://nuwrite.northwestern.edu/communities/global-health/writing-a-global-... Is that the same as gender neutral? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutral_language Cheers, -- Victor Grousset/tuxayo
Hi, yes, I think they are both more or less (or completely) the same - gender sensitive was one of the possibilities my translation tool came up with for "gendergerechte Sprache", which means language that takes into account all sexes as opposed to masculine biased language. Of course, in English it is much easier, as there aren't so many nouns for persons that are gender biased (e.g. a teacher being either a male, female, or non binary person). In other languages, as Caroline Cyr La Rose pointed out for French earlier in this thread, it is much more complicated to communicate in a non gender biased language. In German, which is my main concern 😉, this is also the case, as e.g. a teacher (Lehrer) is male, and a female teacher has to be extra labelled by an -in syllable: Lehrerin. In order not to have to always mention both sexes (which would be very clumsy and would also exclude non binary people), there are some ways to express gender neutrality: Thus a patron in the library is either a Benutzer*in, or a Benutzende (meaning a library _using_ person). There are different other ways instead of using the asterisk, and there is currently quite a lot of discussion about this. I stumbled on translations like "Benutzer" in the German version of the Koha manual and was wondering whether I should change this to "Benutzer*in" or what else. But this may rather be an issue for the German Koha list. Thanks for your thoughts, anyway, and the helpful links, Caroline and Victor! Regards, Anke -- Anke Bruns M.A. (LIS) Arbeitsgruppe "Anwendungs- und Informationssysteme" E-Mail: anke.bruns@gwdg.de --------------------------------------- Gesellschaft für wissenschaftliche Datenverarbeitung mbH Göttingen (GWDG) Burckhardtweg 4, 37077 Göttingen, URL: https://gwdg.de Support: Tel.: +49 551 39-30000, URL: https://gwdg.de/support Sekretariat: Tel.: +49 551 39-30001, E-Mail: gwdg@gwdg.de Geschäftsführer: Prof. Dr. Ramin Yahyapour Aufsichtsratsvorsitzender: Prof. Dr. Norbert Lossau Sitz der Gesellschaft: Göttingen Registergericht: Göttingen, Handelsregister-Nr. B 598 --------------------------------------- Zertifiziert nach ISO 9001 ---------------------------------------
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: Victor Grousset/tuxayo <victor@tuxayo.net> Gesendet: Mittwoch, 21. September 2022 16:01 An: Bruns, Anke <Anke.Bruns@gwdg.de>; koha-translate@lists.koha- community.org Betreff: Re: [Koha-translate] Gender sensitive language in Koha?
Hi :)
On 22-09-21 09:46, Bruns, Anke wrote:
I'm wondering if, and how the community plans to implement gender sensitive language in Koha, the manual and the translations. Are there any plans for Koha in English and/or for some or all translations?
What do you mean by gender sensitive?
https://nuwrite.northwestern.edu/communities/global-health/writing-a- global-health-proposal/gender-sensitive-language.html
Is that the same as gender neutral?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutral_language
Cheers,
-- Victor Grousset/tuxayo
Hi Anke, the Koha community even has a coding guideline for this: https://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Coding_Guidelines#TERM2:_Gender-Neutral... As you said, it's not easy to do the same in German. It would be nice to come up with some guidelines and maybe a glossary page to help us being consistent. Sometimes an easy change could be using more neutral terminology, like 'Bibliothekspersonal' for library staff or 'Bibliothekskonto' for a user's library account. But maybe we should move to koha-de mailing list for specifics. :) Would also be interesting to learn about how other translation teams tackle this! Katrin On 21.09.22 17:13, Bruns, Anke wrote:
Hi,
yes, I think they are both more or less (or completely) the same - gender sensitive was one of the possibilities my translation tool came up with for "gendergerechte Sprache", which means language that takes into account all sexes as opposed to masculine biased language.
Of course, in English it is much easier, as there aren't so many nouns for persons that are gender biased (e.g. a teacher being either a male, female, or non binary person). In other languages, as Caroline Cyr La Rose pointed out for French earlier in this thread, it is much more complicated to communicate in a non gender biased language. In German, which is my main concern 😉, this is also the case, as e.g. a teacher (Lehrer) is male, and a female teacher has to be extra labelled by an -in syllable: Lehrerin. In order not to have to always mention both sexes (which would be very clumsy and would also exclude non binary people), there are some ways to express gender neutrality: Thus a patron in the library is either a Benutzer*in, or a Benutzende (meaning a library _using_ person). There are different other ways instead of using the asterisk, and there is currently quite a lot of discussion about this.
I stumbled on translations like "Benutzer" in the German version of the Koha manual and was wondering whether I should change this to "Benutzer*in" or what else. But this may rather be an issue for the German Koha list.
Thanks for your thoughts, anyway, and the helpful links, Caroline and Victor!
Regards, Anke
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participants (3)
-
Bruns, Anke -
Katrin Fischer -
Victor Grousset/tuxayo