Talk:Translation resources

From WRIWiki

It has been WRI practice for at least 20 years to use non-gender specific language in all situations where the subjects' gender has not been established. Around the world, women and men are war resisters, prisoners for peace, and conscientious objectors, and our language should reflect that reality when we discuss these issues.

There are different ways to make nouns and adjectives gender-neutral in German, Spanish, and French. The WRI default style has been to use a forward slash to separate the alternative word ending (or brackets to indicate an internal letter change). Some translators use round or square brackets, internal capitalisation, or other indicators. In Spanish, the @ symbol is often used to represent both the letter a and the letter o.

--Ken Simons, webmaster

Any agreement on whether May 15 is International Conscientious Objectors' Day or International Conscientious Objection Day? The former usage seems to be the more common one in internal communications and even on the webpage. The latter version is more stable for translation purposes, having no gender.

--Ken

Shouldn't it be Gefangenen/Innen? (Andreas: no, this is one of the strange things of German grammar. It is der/die Gefangene - no difference. And also die Gefangenen (masc) and die Gefangenen (fem)...) -Howard

My memory is that it was International Conscientious Objection Day - concentrating more on the act of objection than personal solidarity with objectors (whereas Prisoners for Peace concentrates more on the people). However, Housmans Peace Diary says "International Conscientious Objectors' Day". Neither my memory nor Bill Hetherington's pedantry can be considered wholly reliable!

-- Howard