Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Dominion General Discussion => Topic started by: Japo on February 03, 2016, 09:48:04 pm
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It's not possible to register at the German Dominion forum anymore. So I bringing up the German translation of kingdomcards in this forum again.
When I read Donald's post about how he told the artists to draw more women I was impressed (because it's unusual). The more I was disappointed when I saw the eagerly awaited German rule book. They had ignored all the women in the pictures and just used male forms for all cards except Swamp Hag (I was not surprised though because that's how they did it with previous expansions. But with the many women including the female travellers it's even more obvious).
Now it's like this: All German Dominion cards have male job titles except from: Witch, Sea Hag, Young Witch, Fortune Teller, Duchess, Princess, Swamp Hag and the female knights (right?).
So judging from card names in German we have a Dominion full of men, a nice looking princess (or duchesses) and quite a few women with evil/magical powers (+ 5 female knight cards). Let's assume that Witch, Sea Hag, Young Witch, Duchess, Princess, Swamp Hag and the female knights have female names in English as well. That's why they are female in the German translation. But what about Fortune Teller? As far as I can see it's the only card that has a gender neutral name in English but was translated with „Wahrsagerin“ instead of „Wahrsager“. Why did they do that? What does that tell us about gender stereotypes?
In the English forum market squire was calling using female names "artificial gendering“. I call it „correct translation“. This was my answer: "Baker" in English means "Bäcker" or "Bäckerin" in German. You don't know if the baker is male or female. So if you translate it you have to have a look at the context which in this case is the art. If the art shows a woman* you have to translate "baker" as "Bäckerin".
By the way: isn't language „artificial“ anyway?
In the German forum marktlehrling (market squire) started a poll (Thanks for bringing it up in the German forum). He asked: „Hättet ihr lieber weibliche Kartennamen?“ [Would you prefer female card names]
Option 1: Ja - wo eine Bäckerin gemalt ist, soll auch Bäckerin draufstehen.
Option2: Nein - ich sage doch auch nicht "Brötchen bei der Bäckerin holen"
This is not a neutral way of asking the question. It's not a contradiction to say "Brötchen beim Bäcker holen" if you want to tell someone that you are getting some rolls at a bakery and still translate „baker“ with „Bäckerin“ when it comes to Dominion cards.
So far there is one vote for option 1 and four votes for option 2. I can't vote as I'm not registered. Some of the forum users wrote that they don't really care or find that there are more important things to think about. But obviously they voted against using the female form. To me it looks like the German forum is dominated by male users and so is the group that helps the publisher with the translation (correct me if I'm wrong). I still don't get why not just use the female names if it's not important.
I wanted to write more and answer to more statements but right now I'm too tired.
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You don't know if the baker is male or female. So if you translate it you have to have a look at the context which in this case is the art.
You're not buying 10 copies of the same person, the art is just an example of a Baker that you could possibly be buying. I don't speak German, but as far as I know, translating it as Bäckerin would imply that there are no male Bakers in Dominion while translating it as Bäcker does not necessarily imply that there are no female ones, so it makes sense to pick the latter option.
Dunno why they translated Fortune Teller as Wahrsagerin though.
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You don't know if the baker is male or female. So if you translate it you have to have a look at the context which in this case is the art.
You're not buying 10 copies of the same person, the art is just an example of a Baker that you could possibly be buying. I don't speak German, but as far as I know, translating it as Bäckerin would imply that there are no male Bakers in Dominion while translating it as Bäcker does not necessarily imply that there are no female ones, so it makes sense to pick the latter option.
Dunno why they translated Fortune Teller as Wahrsagerin though.
All Fortune Tellers are ladygirls, obviously
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You're not buying 10 copies of the same person, the art is just an example of a Baker that you could possibly be buying.
Have you ever imagined a female baker when you heard the word "Bäcker" (or the Italien word for a male baker)? I haven't. The male word is not "neutral". The female word is as good (or bad) as an example for all possible bakers as the male word.
And the art in Dominion is pretty small. When I play I never really look at the pictures. It's more that I remember colours and shapes. Baker is a good example. It took me quite some time until I even realized there was a woman in the picture (actually it was when a male friend I was playing with announced he was buying a BäckerIN).
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I actually think it's more about the description of the general profession and not really about the specific person in the picture. That's why I think "Bäcker" is not only fine, it's in fact better than "Bäckerin". Because "Bäckerin" would limit the card to the female gender, the masculine form "Bäcker" does not (like it or not, the generalized form is almost always male).
Maybe it would have been better to call it "Bäckerei" (bakery) in order to address the profession rather than the person, but that's probably too much of an alteration.
One exception of this whole generalized gender business is Fortune Teller > "Wahrsagerin". In this case I think it was on account of the stereotype fortune teller just being female (crone in occult tent with crystal ball and stuff).
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You're not buying 10 copies of the same person, the art is just an example of a Baker that you could possibly be buying.
Have you ever imagined a female baker when you heard the word "Bäcker" (or the Italien word for a male baker)? I haven't. The male word is not "neutral". The female word is as good (or bad) as an example for all possible bakers as the male word.
And the art in Dominion is pretty small. When I play I never really look at the pictures. It's more that I remember colours and shapes. Baker is a good example. It took me quite some time until I even realized there was a woman in the picture (actually it was when a male friend I was playing with announced he was buying a BäckerIN).
Finnish also has gendered job titles a lot of jobs (many of which actually originate from the -in suffix in German), and the female ones are only ever used when you want to put particular emphasis on the person's gender. For instance, I think I'm more likely to imagine a female teacher when I hear the male word for teacher. I know this is not quite the case with German, and I'm not sure to what extent it applies to German (because I still don't speak it), so I was basing it on market squire saying that the male word is the default.
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The male word is not "neutral". The female word is as good (or bad) as an example for all possible bakers as the male word.
Maybe the male word is not exactly neutral, but it can be used as such. The female one can not.
It's a thing called "generic masculine". I'm aware that it is widely and controversly discussed, but it actually can be used if a) the gender is not known, b) the gender is not relevant, or c) both genders are addressed.
So, I hear you, and I understand that all this is very "male biased", but that's the way it is. It's evolving I guess (which is good), but currently there is mostly a generic masculine, and very rarely a generic feminine (which also exists, but for other and fewer cases).
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I think part of your problem is that the primary language of many (most) people on this board has, by-and-large, gender-neutral nouns. Now, the board is not demographically typical, and probably has a lot more people with experiences with those languages (including quite a number of native speakers). (I will also note that you make a comment about the German board being mostly male - this board is WAY heavily male; I am not sure what difference that is going to make here, but it's something that's true).
But English is very low on gendered nouns, and even though I've studied languages with them, it's always a bit difficult to wrap my head around. True, though, something like "Baker" is a little different. We have some examples, though, and in general it seems that using the "male" word, at least for us (again, I don't know German), is closer to neutral than using the "female" word, while not really being totally neutral. The examples which spring to mind are "waiter" and "actor". You will get "waiter" used to describe both men and women sometimes, even though "waitress" is also a word. More to the point though, "actor" is often used to describe women who act, or even just one woman who acts, even though "waitress" is also definitely a word that isn't incredibly strange. On the other hand, I've never heard "waitress" refer to a man, or "actress" refer to a man. Again, I don't know how much this is worth, but there you go.
Perhaps the bigger point, though, isn't so much that people disagree with you. Maybe even they agree, it could be done better (though, what specific suggestion do you have?). The thing about "this doesn't matter much to me" comes in though. It doesn't matter that much to most people, in terms of, sure I agree, but what do you want me to do about it? The big point is, we would have to go pretty far out of our way to try to make any kind of change, and the incentive to do that isn't there.
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You're not buying 10 copies of the same person, the art is just an example of a Baker that you could possibly be buying.
Have you ever imagined a female baker when you heard the word "Bäcker" (or the Italien word for a male baker)? I haven't. The male word is not "neutral". The female word is as good (or bad) as an example for all possible bakers as the male word.
When I hear the word "Bäcker" i think about a male baker because all bakers i know are male. If I hear the word "Friseur" I definitely think about female haircutters.
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Perhaps the bigger point, though, isn't so much that people disagree with you. Maybe even they agree, it could be done better (though, what specific suggestion do you have?). The thing about "this doesn't matter much to me" comes in though. It doesn't matter that much to most people, in terms of, sure I agree, but what do you want me to do about it? The big point is, we would have to go pretty far out of our way to try to make any kind of change, and the incentive to do that isn't there.
I started this discussion in the English forum because I can't register in the German forum. Mainly I want to adress the German forum members who support Altenberger with the translation. I thought they might be more open for a discussion (as they know about Donald's effort tfor the visibility of women) than the publisher. My suggestion is to use female job titles when there's a woman in the picture.
I won't deny that I was hoping for at least a little support but I understand that it's difficult if you don't speakt German and you don't care about the German edition.
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My suggestion is to use female job titles when there's a woman in the picture.
How is the picture at all relevant? You are still not buying 10 copies of the same person.
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My suggestion is to use female job titles when there's a woman in the picture.
How is the picture at all relevant? You are still not buying 10 copies of the same person.
I am pretty sure that if we had a card called Policeman and showed a woman, people would think it was a mistake. At the very least they'd think we were awful. And we're just not doing that, in English, even if there's a chorus of voices saying how totally fine it would be.
It's hard to know how these things go in other languages, and they change over time. I am comfortable saying "you guys" to refer to a group of men and women; maybe in a few decades that will sound sexist, like "he" does now.
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I am pretty sure that if we had a card called Policeman and showed a woman, people would think it was a mistake. At the very least they'd think we were awful. And we're just not doing that, in English, even if there's a chorus of voices saying how totally fine it would be.
The card Hero shows a woman. Do English speakers commonly use the word "hero" this way? (Not a rhetorical question; I genuinely want to know. I always assumed that "hero" is male and "heroine" is female.)
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The card Hero shows a woman. Do English speakers commonly use the word "hero" this way? (Not a rhetorical question; I genuinely want to know. I always assumed that "hero" is male and "heroine" is female.)
"Hero" does not seem male to me, despite the existence of "heroine." Context may be relevant; it may be something that has changed over time, one way or another. Maybe people don't like "heroine" because of heroin. Maybe "hero" seems okay for women because it starts out "her." Man I don't know these things. But the plan was always for that line of travellers to be women, the prototype shows women on all of them, and no-one ever commented on it.
Okay my minimal research suggests that "hero" was once not gender-neutral but is now, and that "heroine" is now mostly used to mean a female protagonist.
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But contrary to that: I have never heard of a "superheroine" only a "superhero" so in that sense it is still neutral.
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I agree with Japo completely. If you buy a card that has a female baker drawn on it, the card name should be the word for female baker. The fact that the few cards that are specifically female-named in German (Witch, Sea Hag, etc) clearly points to harmful stereotypes and sexism.
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I agree with Japo completely. If you buy a card that has a female baker drawn on it, the card name should be the word for female baker. The fact that the few cards that are specifically female-named in German (Witch, Sea Hag, etc) clearly points to harmful stereotypes and sexism.
Do you seriously think you are buying 10 copies of the same person?
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What would we do if there were no images?
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We'd have Isotropic in text mode.
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Send us all a link to the German Forum, we'll all go vote to make Baker female.
How has no one suggested this yet?
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Mainly I want to adress the German forum members who support Altenberger with the translation. I thought they might be more open for a discussion (as they know about Donald's effort tfor the visibility of women) than the publisher. My suggestion is to use female job titles when there's a woman in the picture.
We suggested some changes to Altenburger, but there wasn't much we could do about card names; they wanted to stick with their choices.
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I agree with Japo completely. If you buy a card that has a female baker drawn on it, the card name should be the word for female baker. The fact that the few cards that are specifically female-named in German (Witch, Sea Hag, etc) clearly points to harmful stereotypes and sexism.
Do you seriously think you are buying 10 copies of the same person?
No, I think I'm buying 10 copies of a card. A card that is represented by a picture of a person.
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No, I think I'm buying 10 copies of a card. A card that is represented by a picture of a person.
Well, the card is neither male nor female. It's a piece of paper.
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No, I think I'm buying 10 copies of a card. A card that is represented by a picture of a person.
Well, the card is neither male nor female. It's a piece of paper.
Right, it's a piece of paper that is represented by a picture of a person. It's also represented by a card name. It's logical that the person the card is represented by would match the name the card is represented by. Like how when the card has a picture of a library, they name the card "Library". Or when it has a picture of a Baker, the card is named "Baker". Straight-forward and logical.
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Right, it's a piece of paper that is represented by a picture of a person. It's also represented by a card name. It's logical that the person the card is represented by would match the name the card is represented by. Like how when the card has a picture of a library, they name the card "Library". Or when it has a picture of a Baker, the card is named "Baker". Straight-forward and logical.
When the card is represented by a picture of a female person and also represented by a female card name, it gives you the idea that all the things that are cantrips and give you one coin token (which is associated with baking) are female. If the card is represented by a picture of a female person and the default card name, it gives you the idea that some of the things that are cantrips and give you one coin token can be, for example, female.
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Or if there is no picture at all it doesn't matter what the artistic rendering of that card ends up being. The function comes first, the name comes second, the picture comes last.
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Right, it's a piece of paper that is represented by a picture of a person. It's also represented by a card name. It's logical that the person the card is represented by would match the name the card is represented by. Like how when the card has a picture of a library, they name the card "Library". Or when it has a picture of a Baker, the card is named "Baker". Straight-forward and logical.
When the card is represented by a picture of a female person and also represented by a female card name, it gives you the idea that all the things that are cantrips and give you one coin token (which is associated with baking) are female. If the card is represented by a picture of a female person and the default card name, it gives you the idea that some of the things that are cantrips and give you one coin token can be, for example, female.
That's the problem. There is the default and there are women. It's pretty much the same discussion like you had about male pronouns in the card descriptions (which is the same in German).
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Right, it's a piece of paper that is represented by a picture of a person. It's also represented by a card name. It's logical that the person the card is represented by would match the name the card is represented by. Like how when the card has a picture of a library, they name the card "Library". Or when it has a picture of a Baker, the card is named "Baker". Straight-forward and logical.
When the card is represented by a picture of a female person and also represented by a female card name, it gives you the idea that all the things that are cantrips and give you one coin token (which is associated with baking) are female. If the card is represented by a picture of a female person and the default card name, it gives you the idea that some of the things that are cantrips and give you one coin token can be, for example, female.
Peddler also has a woman in the picture i just noticed and it is a Baker variant ;)
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Hum. I have a hard time deciding what i think of this.
For several cards, i think it's fair game to use the male form. Whyever this is the case, the male form in german is still kind of regarded as the word for a profession per se: A female can be a "Bäcker", but a male can't be a "Bäckerin". Writing "Bäcker" there doesn't line up with the picture, but it does a better job at including all bakers than "Bäckerin" does.
Now, the question is whether you want to think of Dominion cards as individual people, or about a name for a set of people. I actually think the original question in the german forum reflects the problem rather accurately: Are we talking about Candice*, the baker from around the corner, or about the set of all people with her profession? I personally think Dominion is not consistent here: You can't have 10 times the same person, but of course Peasant and Page tell stories of individuals. A long time ago people apparently decided to go with the abstract profession thing, and it worked fine for a while, because theonly relevant females were Witches, and well, Witches are kind of their own profession and some of the few examples where the female form is the standard. I assume a Nurse would have been the same (at least with a female depicted). With the increase in women (on cards named after the person shown), this problem surfaced, and well, they apparently decided to go through with it.
I agree it's not necessarily a good choice. Baker is a little weird, but hey, again, it's a profession, see my point above. For Hero, i think it's ridiculous to use the male form, as obviously the cards depict one character's story. Even when going with the male form usually, they should have made an exception here. Also, i honestly doubt a male nurse would be translated as "Krankenschwester", even though that's (or used to be) the standard expression here.
*This is actually the name our group uses to refer to Baker. Don't ask why.
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Right, it's a piece of paper that is represented by a picture of a person. It's also represented by a card name. It's logical that the person the card is represented by would match the name the card is represented by. Like how when the card has a picture of a library, they name the card "Library". Or when it has a picture of a Baker, the card is named "Baker". Straight-forward and logical.
When the card is represented by a picture of a female person and also represented by a female card name, it gives you the idea that all the things that are cantrips and give you one coin token (which is associated with baking) are female. If the card is represented by a picture of a female person and the default card name, it gives you the idea that some of the things that are cantrips and give you one coin token can be, for example, female.
That's the problem. There is the default and there are women. It's pretty much the same discussion like you had about male pronouns in the card descriptions (which is the same in German).
This is true. It's not necessarily a problem created by Altenburger, but it exists, and one can at least state that Altenburger did not make an effort to break the pattern.
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Are we talking about Candice*
*This is actually the name our group uses to refer to Baker. Don't ask why.
+1 because I find this hilarious
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My play group refers to Baker as "Cassie" so in that sense the picture named the card.
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I just read that in the English rulebook for guilds they use the pronoun „she“ for player. In the German translation they use „Spieler“ and „er“. This is another example of how the German editors ignore Donald's/Jay's (?) try for gender equality in Dominion. This time you can't explain it with the male pronoun being the default. It's the same in English!
It's so sad.
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I just read that in the English rulebook for guilds they use the pronoun „she“ for player. In the German translation they use „Spieler“ and „er“. This is another example of how the German editors ignore Donald's/Jay's (?) try for gender equality in Dominion. This time you can't explain it with the male pronoun being the default. It's the same in English!
It's so sad.
I for one am not trying to explain anything. It's cool the english Guilds rulebook did this and it's remarkable. It would have been nice if the german rulebook would have done that, too, but it didn't. I'm not sure how outstanding Guilds was for doing this in english, but i personally never heard of a german rulebook (for a game not exclusively aimed at girls) that did this. So maybe Altenburger thought "Let's not risk anything." Whatever the risk is supposed to be here...
Either way, i will take this thread as a reason to reword my fan cards to be gender neutral.
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Say I really beat you up with a Warrior in a particular game. After the game we're talking about it. I might say, "yeah it really hurt you." That's fair, "it" is a card after all. I might say, "She really beat you up." I would not say "He sure beat you up." Card shows a woman.
In a way it's related to the whole plurals thing. In English you pluralize a title by adding "s" or "es." It's clearest to say, "two copies of Catcher in the Rye," but if you must, it's "two Catcher in the Ryes." It's not, oh, "two Catchers in the Rye," as if you were pluralizing the words rather than the title. That's just silly.
At this point we have 20+ years of Magic: The Gathering, with endless card titles. People refer to those titles in plural form all the time. And they don't say "four Llanowar Elveses," "four Birds of Paradises," "four City of Brasses." It's "four Llanowar Elves, four Birds of Paradise, four Cities of Brass." They treat the titles like they're the words making them up.
The gender equivalent would be to treat Baker like a woman. Four female Bakers.
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Either way, i will take this thread as a reason to reword my fan cards to be gender neutral.
Here's an early spoiler for Empires: the word "he" appears on no cards.
When we made that decision, I looked online, and it turned out the Washington Post had switched to "they" a week earlier. They felt like no-one would even notice.
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Either way, i will take this thread as a reason to reword my fan cards to be gender neutral.
Here's an early spoiler for Empires: the word "he" appears on no cards.
When we made that decision, I looked online, and it turned out the Washington Post had switched to "they" a week earlier. They felt like no-one would even notice.
Was the person who felt like no one would even notice a male or female?
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Was the person who felt like no one would even notice a male or female?
You are trying to treat something positive as negative? No-one would notice, meaning, people who might scream at them for being so awful as to use "they," would not actually notice. Not, "no-one would notice because it's all just a joke hey why are we even changing this, bros before hos."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-post-drops-the-mike--and-the-hyphen-in-e-mail/2015/12/04/ccd6e33a-98fa-11e5-8917-653b65c809eb_story.html
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Was the person who felt like no one would even notice a male or female?
You are trying to treat something positive as negative? No-one would notice, meaning, people who might scream at them for being so awful as to use "they," would not actually notice. Not, "no-one would notice because it's all just a joke hey why are we even changing this, bros before hos."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-post-drops-the-mike--and-the-hyphen-in-e-mail/2015/12/04/ccd6e33a-98fa-11e5-8917-653b65c809eb_story.html
I think Gendo was poking fun at "they" used in "They felt like no-one would even notice" possibly being a singular "they". Or you noticed that joke and made one of your own? I don't know. The post above is confusing me a bit.
I'm glad to hear the word "he" won't be used on any cards in Empires.
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Either way, i will take this thread as a reason to reword my fan cards to be gender neutral.
Here's an early spoiler for Empires: the word "he" appears on no cards.
When we made that decision, I looked online, and it turned out the Washington Post had switched to "they" a week earlier. They felt like no-one would even notice.
For what it's worth, i read you last sentence as: "'They' (the word) felt like no-one would even notice." Edit: To you, Donald X.
Made complete sense to me. It's probably the word that makes the most accepted solution, so i figured, yes, 'they', that's a word people might not even notice.
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I think Gendo was poking fun at "they" used in "They felt like no-one would even notice" possibly being a singular "they". Or you noticed that joke and made one of your own? I don't know. The post above is confusing me a bit.
I'm glad to hear the word "he" won't be used on any cards in Empires.
I see. I of course thought he was saying, oh those people who thought no-one would notice, how dare they not think this was more momentous. My "they" was just a usual "group of people." Though as it happens one gets to make the call.
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That's the problem. There is the default and there are women. It's pretty much the same discussion like you had about male pronouns in the card descriptions (which is the same in German).
Complain to the German language. It's not something the translator should have the power to change.
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That's the problem. There is the default and there are women. It's pretty much the same discussion like you had about male pronouns in the card descriptions (which is the same in German).
Complain to the German language. It's not something the translator should have the power to change.
A translator should not have the power to change "she" to "er".
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The gender equivalent would be to treat Baker like a woman. Four female Bakers.
Sry Donald, this is a serious question. I've never played Magic and I'm not a native speaker. You mean "for female Bakers" not "4 female Bakers", right?
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A translator should not have the power to change "she" to "er".
There is no "she" in Baker.
Gender stereotypes shouldn't enter the equation when you're translating things. You just need to find a balance between being faithful to the source text and being readable in the target language (considering the target audience). If the perfect balance requires your translation to be "sexist", then it should be sexist, and in this case, you can't be both faithful to the ST and readable in the TL without using the male job title — if you make it "Bäckerin", it's no longer faithful to the ST because the ST doesn't imply that all the Bakers are female, and you could make it something like "Bäcker oder Bäckerin" but then the readability in the TL would suffer.
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The gender equivalent would be to treat Baker like a woman. Four female Bakers.
Sry Donald, this is a serious question. I've never played Magic and I'm not a native speaker. You mean "for female Bakers" not "4 female Bakers", right?
No, I meant the quantity four. In Magic you often have four of a card (the limit), which is where "four" came from there; I said "four female Bakers" because I'd just been saying "four Llanowar Elves." I will repeat this concept though.
People pluralize a Magic card name like City of Brass as if it weren't a title - as if there were a city, made of brass, and we were talking about it. So, Cities of Brass. The conventional English plural of that title is actually City of Brasses. But no-one says that, ever (though you can dodge this issue by referring to "copies of City of Brass").
People treat the name like it's the thing and not just a title, for language purposes, to pluralize it. I was suggesting that gender is similar; people treat the name like it's that thing and not just a title.
The whole idea that "a baker can be male or female, we just depicted one that happened to be female" is not how people actually respond to the cards. When Baker is female, players feel like all 10 Bakers are female. The fact that a baker can be male doesn't matter; these ones are all female.
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A translator should not have the power to change "she" to "er".
There is no "she" in Baker.
Gender stereotypes shouldn't enter the equation when you're translating things. You just need to find a balance between being faithful to the source text and being readable in the target language (considering the target audience). If the perfect balance requires your translation to be "sexist", then it should be sexist, and in this case, you can't be both faithful to the ST and readable in the TL without using the male job title — if you make it "Bäckerin", it's no longer faithful to the ST because the ST doesn't imply that all the Bakers are female, and you could make it something like "Bäcker oder Bäckerin" but then the readability in the TL would suffer.
In the source text, it's a female baker, but as it happens the word for that in English is gender-neutral.
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A translator should not have the power to change "she" to "er".
There is no "she" in Baker.
Gender stereotypes shouldn't enter the equation when you're translating things. You just need to find a balance between being faithful to the source text and being readable in the target language (considering the target audience). If the perfect balance requires your translation to be "sexist", then it should be sexist, and in this case, you can't be both faithful to the ST and readable in the TL without using the male job title — if you make it "Bäckerin", it's no longer faithful to the ST because the ST doesn't imply that all the Bakers are female, and you could make it something like "Bäcker oder Bäckerin" but then the readability in the TL would suffer.
In the source text, it's a female baker, but as it happens the word for that in English is gender-neutral.
So I am, in fact, buying 10 copies of the same person?
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So I am, in fact, buying 10 copies of the same person?
In Magic, Legends (and Legendary things, and now they're all Legendary instead of Legend) represent unique people/monsters (and places). Why do you get to play four of a Legend in your deck? Originally you didn't - they're supposed to be unique. It was bad for gameplay though, for no reason. What if we both play a copy of the same Legend? Originally one of the copies died - only one of us can have that Legend on our side. That was bad for gameplay too. These days we both get to have that Legend on the table at once (and play four copies). You don't get to have two copies in play yourself but that's it. I'm not sure what the flavor explanation is when we both have the same Legend - the Legend is putting in hours for both of us? If they fight each other, that's uh internal struggle?
Anyway I haven't put that work into Dominion's flavor (ask anyone). I can't tell you the in-universe official explanation of there being ten Bakers. But to people playing the game, all Bakers are female.
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i personally never heard of a german rulebook (for a game not exclusively aimed at girls) that did this.
The Swiss game "Anno Domini" has female gender pronouns in its rulebook. But that's the only example I know, and maybe this kind of thing is handled differently in Switzerland.
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I think it's worth pointing out that german is a language where every noun has a gender. "Spieler" (player) is male. If you wanted the Guilds rulebook to use the female form, you couldn't just replace "she" with "sie". To be grammatically consistent, you'd be forced to also replace the word "player" with something else. As i pointed out before with Baker, "Spielerin" feels like it intentionally excludes male players, while "Spieler" includes everyone. You can argue why female has to be a special, more restrictive variant of the male version, and i agree it's an issue, but it's an issue that has grown historically and has been mixed with grammar, making it part of the language itself. This still doesn't mean Altenburger couldn't have used Spielerin, but it would have taken a bit more from them than just "stick to the original".
On the other side, take the word "Person"(person, obviously), which is grammatically female in german. "Ich bin eine Person" can be said by people of either gender with no issue at all. Using it to translate the word player, the entire rulebook could have been grammatically consistent using the female pronoun exclusively, and i personally don't think it would have been noticeable even. The only problem is that "person" sounds a bit remote and doesn't mean quite the same as "player". Still, it's a solution i'll keep in mind for myself.
The problem with "Spieler", to some degree, is that it exists in two variants, and one of these is the default. Unlike "Person", "Spieler" actually implies a slight statement about gender. By using the default, you include more people, but some of them feel like they are only half-included. On the other hand, by using the female version, you make a statement, but you also actually include only half of the people. Both aren't ideal.
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What's wrong with "Spieler(in)"? And then use "er/sie" throughout the text.
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Sorry that I dont check the forums too often.
i personally never heard of a german rulebook (for a game not exclusively aimed at girls) that did this.
The Swiss game "Anno Domini" has female gender pronouns in its rulebook. But that's the only example I know, and maybe this kind of thing is handled differently in Switzerland.
Also Andrea Meyer's "Bewitched Spiele" have female gendered rules (e.g. "Frigiti"). Although it is just her self-publishing company, she has a pretty good reputation in the German boardgaming world.
What's wrong with "Spieler(in)"? And then use "er/sie" throughout the text.
Rulebooks are not fun to read for people anyway. This would make it even harder to read.
I totally think this is a serious question! Thanks Jabo for opening this discussion. In the poll in the German forum I implied to ask the question neutrally, just recapping the most important arguments for both sides (pictured gender = name's gender // irrelevance of gender for a job). Both arguments are viable from my point of view. When we had to make a decision, I rather tended to the generic masculine solution. I think having a male name and then a female picture would be better because it would underline that gender is not important for these cards.
But after Donald's comment, I rather tend to the female names solution for the new cards:
The whole idea that "a baker can be male or female, we just depicted one that happened to be female" is not how people actually respond to the cards. When Baker is female, players feel like all 10 Bakers are female. The fact that a baker can be male doesn't matter; these ones are all female.
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As we are currently complaining about Dominion translation anyhow: Royal Carriage in german tells you to "re-resolve" the card, not to play it, and Summon has no "if you do" to make it whiff with Watchtowered cards. It's like nobody even asked me to read over them. Seriously, i could make a living from proof-reading menu cards or boardgame rules.
Intrigue was the only Hans-im-Glück Dominion game that didn't have at least one mechanical mistake in it, and i'm relieved that much was improved with the new versions translated by Altenburger. It pays that they talk to fans, so in general i think there's hope.
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Royal Carriage in german
Sc0UT was uploading German scans of the cards to the wiki for a while, but he only put up Base and Intrigue. Would you mind helping him out?
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Royal Carriage in german
Sc0UT was uploading German scans of the cards to the wiki for a while, but he only put up Base and Intrigue. Would you mind helping him out?
Sorry, i can't see myself doing that. Too little use for the community, too much time for me. Plus, my Scanner stinks.
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Was the person who felt like no one would even notice a male or female?
You are trying to treat something positive as negative? No-one would notice, meaning, people who might scream at them for being so awful as to use "they," would not actually notice. Not, "no-one would notice because it's all just a joke hey why are we even changing this, bros before hos."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-post-drops-the-mike--and-the-hyphen-in-e-mail/2015/12/04/ccd6e33a-98fa-11e5-8917-653b65c809eb_story.html
I think Gendo was poking fun at "they" used in "They felt like no-one would even notice" possibly being a singular "they". Or you noticed that joke and made one of your own? I don't know. The post above is confusing me a bit.
Yeah, it was just a joke response because "they" happened to be used in a sentence while discussing the use of the singular "they".
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Royal Carriage in german
sc0UT was uploading German scans of the cards to the wiki for a while, but he only put up Base and Intrigue. Would you mind helping him out?
I'm busy at the moment, new job, new city, new people, ... Help would be appreciated. ;)
In theory, I can scan and uplaod all the cards but Prince in the long term.
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i personally never heard of a german rulebook (for a game not exclusively aimed at girls) that did this.
The Swiss game "Anno Domini" has female gender pronouns in its rulebook. But that's the only example I know, and maybe this kind of thing is handled differently in Switzerland.
The rulebook for Haggis does it too: http://www.bambusspiele.de/download/haggis.pdf
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I'm glad we had this discussion. I think that most of us agree that gender issues should be paid attention to when translating the cards.
So what are we going to do next? Who will talk to Altenburger? And who does the translation?
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I think that most of us agree that gender issues should be paid attention to when translating the cards.
If so, most of you are wrong.
Gender issues really don't enter the picture unless the source culture has vastly different norms regarding genders than the target culture (for example, if you're translating a modern western source text into a target culture where it is highly unusual for women to have a job). In that case, you have to consider if you should change the meaning of the text to match the target culture's expectations, keep the original meaning but explain in a translator's note how the text should be perceived differently considering the cultural differences, or keep the original meaning and expect the target audience to know about the cultural differences without the need to modify or explain anything.
If you're translating a modern western source text into another western language, such cultural differences aren't there, and you should only focus on delivering the most accurate and the most readable translation. Otherwise you're doing an awful job at translating the text.
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If you're translating a modern western source text into another western language, such cultural differences aren't there, and you should only focus on delivering the most accurate and the most readable translation. Otherwise you're doing an awful job at translating the text.
I agree with you. There appear to be two issues at hand here: 1st is whether using a gender-specific pronoun makes the translation more or less correct, and 2nd is whether the cultural expectation of using a male pronoun as gender-inclusive is valid in the first place.
The English language really needs more gender-neutral pronouns.
I look at it like this: Why is it considered more OK for a woman to dress up in a more traditionally masculine fashion than for a man to dress in a more traditionally feminine fashion? My experience has been that if women dress something closer to what a man would wear, that is frowned on a whole lot less than a man who goes out in drag! SHOULD it be that way? I don't know, but culturally it's just different. I guess it's similar with pronouns...there's just something different about using a feminine specific pronoun that makes it decidedly feminine as opposed to neutral, whether it should be that way or not.
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The English language really needs more gender-neutral pronouns.
That's weird. For me, the main takeaway from this thread is the opposite: modern English already has an unusually high degree of gender-neutrality built into it (at least among Western European languages), as evidenced by how difficult it is to translate from English to German/French/Italian/etc.
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The English language really needs more gender-neutral pronouns.
That's weird. For me, the main takeaway from this thread is the opposite: modern English already has an unusually high degree of gender-neutrality built into it (at least among Western European languages), as evidenced by how difficult it is to translate from English to German/French/Italian/etc.
Well, english has always an implication about gender depending on the used pronoun (if you use the classics). You could argue that for languages using grammatical gender, this is not the case, as pronoun and actual gender need not necessarily be connected. It's a two-edged sword. On the other hand, 'they' in english allows for gender neutrality without effecting your options for nouns, making it a lot more flexible in that regard. You can be accurate, gender neutral and grammatically consistent in english without losing clarity.
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Well, english has always an implication about gender depending on the used pronoun (if you use the classics). You could argue that for languages using grammatical gender, this is not the case, as pronoun and actual gender need not necessarily be connected. It's a two-edged sword. On the other hand, 'they' in english allows for gender neutrality without effecting your options for nouns, making it a lot more flexible in that regard. You can be accurate, gender neutral and grammatically consistent in english without losing clarity.
Well, the singular they is very rarely used when referring to someone whose gender is known, which can cause problems. For example, if you translate a text from Finnish to English, most of the time you'll be fine because you can just translate "hän" into the appropriate gendered pronoun, but sometimes, especially in poems and short stories, a character's gender is most certainly known by the character who refers to them, it's just never revealed to the audience (comparable to how sometimes there are English love songs that can be sung to both genders by both genders because the characters are just called "me" and "you" — it doesn't necessarily have to be a great mystery or anything like that). In those situations, it wouldn't be entirely accurate to translate it as they, because it would feel like the character is going to great lengths to hide the other character's gender, which was probably not intended in the source text. Obviously, the gendered pronouns have the problem of being gendered. So either way, simply because English usually differentiates between the genders, it's not really possible to translate texts from more gender neutral languages into English without introducing content that did not exist in the source text.
The solution to this would be to start using the singular they more often even when the person's gender is known. I think that in Japanese, for example, even though gendered pronouns exist, because the gender neutral pronouns are also more widely used than "they" is in English, this problem is much less of a problem. Such a change would take a very long time, though.
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http://www.starcitygames.com/article/32523_Lets-Talk.html
This Magic article reminded me of some of the issues discussed in this thread.
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I understand the different opinions regarding the gender-specific translations. But I also feel, that it has to start with the English names. I always associate "Witch" with a female and "Wizard" or "Warlock" with a male person. For the next cards I expect more neutral names like "Sorcerer" or "Mage" which will make the translation much easier. On the one hand "Hexe" (witch) is never female in German and a "Hexer"/"Hexenmeister" (enchanter/warlock) is never female, on the other hand a "Magier" (mage) may be male or female, while a "Magierin" is explicitly female. Another example was already mentioned: A "Krankenschwester" is always a female nurse, male ones are "Krankenpfleger", while "Pflegepersonal" (nursing staff) is gender-independent. (Out of topic: Is there actually a female counterpart to "Jack of all Trades/Traits")
As long the cards show that a person may be female, I am okay with the generic masculinum. However, the card only show a woman, I feel that it is even more discriminating to use the female form. Peddler's German name ("Hausierer") is also used for criminal doorstep agents which try to force people to subscribe newspapers or buy overpriced useless things. The card name "Hausiererin" would explicitly refer the female peddlers, only the female ones.
So what about the idea, to show either two persons (a male and a female person) on the SAME card or using two different images for a card (5 male and 5 female per pile)? The suggestion to drop persons entirely (e. g. Bäckerei/Bakery is no option, because persons definitely belong to Dominion.
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So what about the idea, to show either two persons (a male and a female person) on the SAME card or using two different images for a card (5 male and 5 female per pile)? The suggestion to drop persons entirely (e. g. Bäckerei/Bakery is no option, because persons definitely belong to Dominion.
I do not imagine we will ever double up on art to address this translation issue.
I am generally against showing two people on a card named for one person, because then, which one is them? If I had been called on to judge a sketch of e.g. Woodcutter, I would have said, no dude, that's Woodcutters.
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I understand the different opinions regarding the gender-specific translations. But I also feel, that it has to start with the English names. I always associate "Witch" with a female and "Wizard" or "Warlock" with a male person. For the next cards I expect more neutral names like "Sorcerer" or "Mage" which will make the translation much easier. On the one hand "Hexe" (witch) is never female in German and a "Hexer"/"Hexenmeister" (enchanter/warlock) is never female, on the other hand a "Magier" (mage) may be male or female, while a "Magierin" is explicitly female. Another example was already mentioned: A "Krankenschwester" is always a female nurse, male ones are "Krankenpfleger", while "Pflegepersonal" (nursing staff) is gender-independent. (Out of topic: Is there actually a female counterpart to "Jack of all Trades/Traits")
As long the cards show that a person may be female, I am okay with the generic masculinum. However, the card only show a woman, I feel that it is even more discriminating to use the female form. Peddler's German name ("Hausierer") is also used for criminal doorstep agents which try to force people to subscribe newspapers or buy overpriced useless things. The card name "Hausiererin" would explicitly refer the female peddlers, only the female ones.
So what about the idea, to show either two persons (a male and a female person) on the SAME card or using two different images for a card (5 male and 5 female per pile)? The suggestion to drop persons entirely (e. g. Bäckerei/Bakery is no option, because persons definitely belong to Dominion.
This post confuses me. Could it be that you wrote "female" on several occasions where you wanted to write "male"?
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This post confuses me. Could it be that you wrote "female" on several occasions where you wanted to write "male"?
Sorry, I am not a native English speaker. As far as I see, all instances of "female" are correct. Which part did you not understand?
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On the one hand "Hexe" (witch) is never female in German
However, the card only show a woman, I feel that it is even more discriminating to use the female form.
I'm not sure about the second one. Either you mean "It's wrong you use the male form if a female is clearly depicted" or "if the picture is female and you use the female form, that discriminates against men because they are not even implicitly included".
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On the one hand "Hexe" (witch) is never female in German
Sorry, I meant that a "Hexe" is always female in German.
I'm not sure about the second one. Either you mean "It's wrong you use the male form if a female is clearly depicted" or "if the picture is female and you use the female form, that discriminates against men because they are not even implicitly included".
I meant nothing of both. If the picture shows a woman and the card's text explicitly refers a female profession description, it delivers the impression, that there are only female bakers and peddlers in the Dominion world. If the card has a generic name, it's more like: There are bakers of any gender and the art shows a female one for example. I remember somebody already noted exactly these thoughts in this thread.
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Yes, that was me, but Donald kind of convinced me here:
The whole idea that "a baker can be male or female, we just depicted one that happened to be female" is not how people actually respond to the cards. When Baker is female, players feel like all 10 Bakers are female. The fact that a baker can be male doesn't matter; these ones are all female.
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Good news: Someone from Altenburger finally answered my request:
vielen Dank für deine Nachricht. Bei der Übersetzung der deutschen Karten für Dominion Empires haben wir die Illustrationen stets beachtet und den Kartennamen ggf. als weibliche Version benannt. So wird es in Empires bspw. auch eine „Ingenieurin“ geben.
There will be female engineers (Ingenieurin) etc. in German Empires.