[Koha-devel] Gender-neutral pronouns
Philippe Blouin
philippe.blouin at inlibro.com
Wed Apr 19 21:16:22 CEST 2017
My mistake, I hadn't read the original bugzilla. :-(
Well, can I -1 this or only +1 are politically acceptable? Since this
is politic, really. Could you amend the ticket to also rewrite all the
comments to some acceptable level of English, to start with? Syntax,
grammar, conjugation...
Call me obtuse, but 'they' can be quite offputting in the middle of a
sentence. I've read some short novels with that usage (used as an
androgynous pronoun). To someone whose first language is not English,
that can be quite disconcerting on first and second read.
The ticket also refers to someone having written "it" for a person in
some comment. Well, that's the type of things that occurs in a software
partly written by French (I'm not pointing), Indians and Finns... You
want to set a rule forcing them to use proper English, you'll fail their
patches because of it, in the name of inclusivity??? That's productive...
Frankly, a much better "rule" should have been to write all comments
using the _female_ form. Clear and concise. But I don't believe that
was the aim of the ticket...
Philippe Blouin,
Responsable du développement informatique
Tél. : (888) 604-2627
philippe.blouin at inLibro.com <mailto:philippe.blouin at inLibro.com>
inLibro | pour esprit libre | www.inLibro.com <http://www.inLibro.com>
On 04/19/2017 02:18 PM, Jonathan Druart wrote:
> The patches only affect code comments so no translation needed.
>
> On Wed, 19 Apr 2017 at 15:12 Philippe Blouin
> <philippe.blouin at inlibro.com <mailto:philippe.blouin at inlibro.com>> wrote:
>
> How many of "these" are there to change? Not that the work itself
> will be massive, but putting a 'they' in the middle of a sentence
> does not make it easy to translate intuitively, I would think. If
> it's a consideration (it is for non-English users, at least).
>
>
> Philippe Blouin,
> Responsable du développement informatique
>
> Tél. : (888) 604-2627
> philippe.blouin at inLibro.com <mailto:philippe.blouin at inLibro.com>
>
> inLibro | pour esprit libre | www.inLibro.com
> <http://www.inLibro.com>
> On 04/19/2017 01:16 PM, Jonathan Druart wrote:
>> The next step would be to provide a check to our QA tests to make
>> sure we will not introduce future occurrences.
>> I am pretty sure they will not be caught manually by QAers.
>>
>> On Wed, 19 Apr 2017 at 13:56 Eric Phetteplace
>> <ephetteplace at cca.edu <mailto:ephetteplace at cca.edu>> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Paul,
>>
>> English has a singular "they". It doesn't suggest androgyny,
>> either, from the definitions I've seen. For instance, Oxford
>> English Dictionary:
>>
>> 2. In anaphoric reference to a singular noun or pronoun of
>> undetermined gender: he or she.
>>
>> The first usage example OED provides is from 1375. I don't
>> think replacing "he" with "she" addresses the problem, it's
>> still assuming a default gender. It's not too much tricker to
>> search code for he/him & replace with they/them but that's
>> also just an implementation issue, not a policy one.
>>
>>
>> It sounds like people are otherwise supportive but I'm not
>> sure what the next step should be.
>>
>> Best,
>> Eric Phetteplace
>> Systems Librarian
>> California College of the Arts
>> libraries.cca.edu <http://libraries.cca.edu> | vault.cca.edu
>> <http://vault.cca.edu>
>> 510.594.3660
>> 2>/dev/null
>>
>> On Wed, Apr 19, 2017 at 8:42 AM, Paul A
>> <paul.a at navalmarinearchive.com
>> <mailto:paul.a at navalmarinearchive.com>> wrote:
>>
>> On 2017-04-18 08:25 PM, Eric Phetteplace wrote:
>>
>> Hi list,
>>
>> I opened bug
>>
>> [snip]
>>
>> Before*:*
>>
>> "Kid growing and become a juvenile, he should pay "
>>
>> After:
>>
>> "Kid growing and become a juvenile, they should pay "
>>
>> Political correctness has never been my strong point
>> (although I try to understand it), but I'm proficient in
>> grammatical rigour. [1]
>>
>> "Kid" is a singular noun, "a" is a singular article --
>> "they" is a plural pronoun. Perhaps replace "they" with
>> "[s]he"? or "Kids growing and becoming juveniles, they
>> should pay"?
>>
>> From a code maintenance p.o.v., it's easier to find and
>> replace 'he' with '[s]he' if really this becomes a
>> priority for Koha.
>>
>> Best -- Paul
>>
>> [1] I am aware of the so-called "singular third person
>> epicene 'they'", but academically object to it -- it
>> often suggests androgyny rather than gender neutrality.
>>
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