When it comes to professional translations, gender-neutral or gender-inclusive language involves avoiding any specific reference of gender when referring to people. Gender neutral language in translations is important when a translation is intended for a broad audience that could include male, female, and/or non-binary individuals.
As businesses adopt a more inclusive attitude when it comes to their employees and business cultures, they have also realized the importance of expanding these values in connecting with their target audiences. Naturally, this also affects how businesses and organizations present their marketing and outreach content and, by extension, their marketing translations as well.
The Importance of Gender Neutrality, Inclusion & Diversity
Why have more businesses adopted this posture? There are a number of reasons. For example, research from Gallup has shown that an inclusive workplace enhances employee engagement. In short, this involves making employees feel like they “belong.” Currently, however, only 34% of employees surveyed feel engaged in the workplace. Inclusion also fosters a sense of belonging among the workforce and improves the employee experience.
Beyond creating a more positive and inclusive workplace, promoting inclusion and diversity, businesses and organizations can also improve their customer relationships. In fact, studies have shown that 64% of consumers consider making an immediate purchase after seeing diverse advertisements. Using gender neutral language is one part of that.
Consider this: nearly 9% of the U.S. population was identified as Limited English Proficient (LEP) as of 2013 (and grew by 80% between 1990 and 2013). Therefore, it makes sense to market to this large and rapidly growing population of well over 25 million people. One way to do this is to promote inclusion and diversity by using gender-neutral language in translations. This is one effective way to reach and connect with this diverse population, particularly the younger generations.
What Is Gender Neutral Language?
First of all, a “genderless” language is one in which there are no grammatical distinctions between genders. In other words, there are no categories which require agreement between gendered (male/female) nouns, adjectives, verbs, pronouns, or articles. For example, English is largely a genderless language. However, in English, there are some distinctions between gender in certain nouns, such as “steward” versus “stewardess” or “actor” versus “actress.”
Therefore, making language genderless in English is a relatively straightforward process by avoiding such gender-specific terms. Additionally, when using gendered pronouns or referring to a group of people, the genderless pronoun “they” can be substituted in these cases.
While it is fairly easy to adopt gender neutral language in English translations, other languages are more challenging. Spanish, for example, is a heavily “gendered” language. All Spanish nouns have a lexical gender, either “male” or “female.” As an inflected language, Spanish words (nouns, adjectives, determiners, and pronouns) also require mutual agreement in terms of gender.
The sentence “el carro es rojo” (“The car is red”) is a simple example of this phenomenon. Since “carro” (car) is considered a masculine noun, the accompanying adjective (“red” or “rojo”) must agree with the “gender” of the noun “car.” However, if “red” is used to modify a feminine noun, it would be written as “roja.” As a result, using gender neutral language in Spanish translations is a much bigger challenge than in English.
In recent years, there has been a movement to “de-gender” the Spanish language to a degree. For example, the term “Latino” itself can be either masculine (“Latino”) or feminine (“Latina”) depending on the noun it modifies. Some linguistic activists have proposed replacing the “o” (which often signifies “male” gender) and the “a” (which often signifies “female” gender) with the neutral “x” (i.e., “Latinx”). Another common example is changing “amigo/amiga” (meaning “friend”) to “amigx.”
Of course, the gendered nature of Spanish is so complex that it would be nearly impossible to practically apply this principle to all Spanish words. Nevertheless, although it is not possible to avoid gendered language altogether in Spanish (and Spanish translations) – as well as other Romance languages that similarly use such grammatical gender – there are still ways to work around some of these issues to create “less-gendered” Spanish translations.
At Translation Source, we provide translations in Spanish and more than 100 other languages and dialects. We are also able to consider a business or organization’s specific translation needs and goals, whether for documents to be used internally to create a more diverse and inclusive office environment and culture, or for marketing translations. This includes providing gender neutral translations or translations in which the use of gender is less pronounced, creating a more inclusive translation deliverable.
If you would like to learn more about Translation Source’s expert translation services, please email us at info@translation-source.com or call us toll-free at (800) 413-7838 to speak with one of our translation project managers.
