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« on: February 03, 2016, 09:48:04 pm »
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.
