Question Chinese Novels and the translation of Female versus Woman

Discussion in 'Translator's Corner' started by lailai, Nov 25, 2019.

  1. lailai

    lailai Well-Known Member

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    I noticed in quite literally all the Chinese novels I have read, from BL to BG (I don’t read GL so can’t comment), from harem to 1vs1, from fantasy to sappy, from deep to shallow, the translators always translates 女人,女士,女生 as “female” and “female” instead of “woman” and “women”. Is there an inherent bias in the Chinese novel translators in that they don’t view women as women but derogatorily as “females”? But when it comes to 男生,男人,男士 the translators appropriately use “man/men” and “male(s)”, choosing correctly. Chinese novel translators are both men and women, so it isn’t just one side being sexist but both.
     
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  2. IceLight303

    IceLight303 Well-Known Member

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    Huh, never noticed it. Now I'm going to keep a look out.
     
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  3. Kutaifa

    Kutaifa Pokémon trainer

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    Can you give examples? I don't recall ever reading women being referred to as females continuously in a novel
     
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  4. patient

    patient Well-Known Member

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    Another thing I noticed is when there's a character referred to by profession and it's a woman, instead of just mentioning the gender once, they'll keep repeating "female". Like it'll be "female reporter", "female innkeeper" or "female police officer" every single time they're mentioned, even though there's just one of them in the scene at that moment.
     
  5. Bachingchung

    Bachingchung Well-Known Member

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    Female and Woman is just the same, how can any other be derogatory?

    They also do the same with male reporter etc. It may be written literally by the author so they just directly Translate it that way.
     
  6. Nyamsus

    Nyamsus Life is full of shit and we live in it

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    Maybe because they use Machine translator??
     
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  7. ToastedRossi

    ToastedRossi Well-Known Member

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    They're not the same thing. When used as a noun, "female" is something you'd use to refer to livestock; not for a human being. Same goes for "male" for that matter. The only time such terms are appropriate are in very clinical situations such as police reports or scientific papers. In any other situation, "female" should only be used as an adjective.

    That would be correct. In Chinese it's fairly natural to attach adjectives in front of job titles, but it's a little awkward for the same to happen in English. Translators need to be more judicial in how to construct naturally flowing sentences because it's easy to make them sound clunky.

    Nope. Unless your machine translation is complete trash, those terms would not translate as "female".
     
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  8. Bachingchung

    Bachingchung Well-Known Member

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    We use "It" in English for any other living thing aside from humans. At least back then, IDK know if it's still politically correct not to gender an animal.
     
  9. lailai

    lailai Well-Known Member

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    I don’t think this is an issue, because “female” is used as an adjective. The issue is when translators say something like, “The females talked among themselves, enjoying the men’s gazes.”

    Any person who uses “females” as a noun and thus limiting them to their sex but distinguishes men as “men” instead of equally using only “males” is sexist and indicative of incels and mysogynisc mindset.

    Chrysanthemum Garden uses it quite a bit in their BL translations, when “women” would work equally well. After all, the Chinese original isn’t referring to women derogatorily, but using “female” the noun is derogatory in English. The King’s Avatar translations is careful about only using “female” the adjective, in the form “female player,” and even uses “woman/women”. Rebirth of the Thief, Reincarnation of the Strongest Sword God, and similar while intended for the male audience slip back and forth between the noun and adjective, rarely saying “woman”.

    Translators on Fuyuneko and ShainaG also use the derogatory “female (n)” in stories targeting women. But the Chinese original is matter of fact in identifying “women” and not the misogynistic view of “females”. There is an additional element of disdain in the English translations that occurs in places which didn’t exist in original.
     
  10. auraizen

    auraizen aeu •.*°☆「procrastinating 」『always sleepy』

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    I actually hadn't noticed this until you pointed it out so that's super interesting. As a woman I don't find any issues with it but I guess that can vary?
    To be fair though, writing woman reporter/reporter woman sound much worse grammatically than writing female reporter. Female reporter is a commonly used description too.
    For female police officer it should be policewoman so that's a good catch.
    For female innkeeper if the translator used 20 seconds to google they'd realize saying hostess sounds better.
    Most of the time with these things it's due to the translators grasp of english. If you translated it back to chinese, female police officer and policewoman will be the exact same thing. It's the english translator who uses the literally meaning of the words vs the 'proper' way to say it.
     
  11. Silavin

    Silavin Well-Known Member

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    Don't really get why we are trying to push for political correctness here when most translators shouldn't need to care about it. Most do not even live inside this political correctness cultural bubble.

    I find it quite strange you are trying to insinuate that the translators are being sexist here as well.

    The text itself could be more of a formal tone, leading to females being used more often than males. Else, a role/job description since we should have the assumption of it having one gender so that we don't have do an unnecessary definition such as "male police officer".

    As for the term female vs woman. You should understand that in these stories, readers, regardless of genders, like youth. Woman has the added layer that this person is older. Meanwhile, girl strikes off as under 14. The middle ground is female since we don't have any other commonly used terms to have that middle layer.

    I believe the one that is adding the view of the terms having the terms be misogynistic and so on is you. No one except individuals who understand political correctness have the ill intent of using 'derogatory' terms because it is 'derogatory'.
     
    Last edited: Nov 26, 2019
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  12. kahokyu

    kahokyu Well-Known Member

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    I don't typically read translations, and mostly read'BL anyway so there's not many girls present but, for basic English, I have never thought "female" is derogatory.

    People use "female" in every day speech all the time and it absolutely does not refer to only livestock.if someone asked if you are male or female, would you think they are insulting you??? Why can these words only be used for clinical or police reports.

    Most applications forms you fill out that ask for gender use female/male, not woman/man. Is your family doctor insulting you? Is your bank secretly hinting they think you are livestock?

    The basic word of female/woman does not limit itself to gender any more or less than they other. For example, in the line you gave, if the translators wrote:

    “The women talked among themselves, enjoying the men’s gazes.”

    Does that somehow mean that a man(or whatever gender identity of your choice) could included in the group of women speaking? I think most people would not think so, unless it was specifcally pointed out in some way. Aside from better English, the meaning of that sentence hasn't changed at all.
     
  13. patient

    patient Well-Known Member

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    The whole point here which you failed to grasp is that male (noun) doesn't get used for men anywhere nearly as often as female (noun) gets used for women.
     
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  14. patient

    patient Well-Known Member

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    This is a discusion on translations, not some sjw conspiracy, calm down dude.
     
  15. Helaine

    Helaine Well-Known Member

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    Why..................... in Chinese novels, out of everything, "females" is what bother you the most when it comes to sexism?

    Mind = blown.

    But I do want to see the examples though, because I read BL novels a lot and I just don't see it happen that often, or intentionally used for nefarious reasons for that matter.
     
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  16. Bakaturq

    Bakaturq Tell me, what do you see?

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    I can read chinese raws just fine, and women in chinese literally is wo men(我们) we
     
  17. kahokyu

    kahokyu Well-Known Member

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    I get that point. However I'm addressing the other point made that "female" is a derogatory word.
     
    Last edited: Nov 26, 2019
  18. Sorakaraanko

    Sorakaraanko Member

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    Im sorry that this is OOT, but why cant i post thread in translator's corner?
     
  19. ToastedRossi

    ToastedRossi Well-Known Member

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    I don't know why you're trying to push this topic as being about political correctness when it's really about mistranslations. Specifically, "女" can mean woman as a noun or female as an adjective, so any time it's translated to "female" as a noun, it's a case of the translator screwing it up.
     
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  20. Shibb

    Shibb Well-Known Member

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    In the case of noun choices (e.g. female innkeeper vs hostess), it's mainly because most translators would fall in the groove of translating the words and not think about the alternatives for every word. Every sentence, exclamation, phrasing- yes. Every single noun used? Rarely. There are also a few cases where some nouns have other connotations than just female XXX. As in the example grabbed, saying hostess has a rather negative connotation when you're used to JP stories. Host clubs exist. In fact, hostess karaoke bars are huge issues in China/Hong Kong/Taiwan. You'll be implying more of a prostitute than an innkeeper.

    On the constant repetition of gender, it's due to laziness on the author's part and partly cultural. When all your stories are written in that format, are you going to break the norm in language? Blaming that on the translator is bad finger-pointing. Yes, they could rephrase that but being constantly aware of repetition issues takes a creative writer. Not just a translator. Not everyone is able to be in that mindset all the time when translating.

    Female being sexist vs using woman? Honestly, they're both sexist. They both sound like the person just remembered women/females exist after they thought up the word for men/males. But that's the whole point. These words are sexist because they're all about sex. They are there to differentiate A from B. Any extra sexism is due to perceived culture from society.

    TLDR; before calling someone/something out, try thinking about it from other cultural values other than your current mindset. Things are done that way for a (somewhat) practical reason 99.9% of the time. Not everyone is a politician who has to pretend they're the nice guy and hide their dirty little secrets.