Hi,
I tried to answer before and something went wrong with my email client
so I don't know if the previous message arrived.
On 2026-02-17 08:16, Cayetano Santos wrote:
I always work in english but most of you know that I am a native spanish
(Castilian) speaker.
Some other Guix user has raised the concern that the Guix manual is
written using exclusive language. In particular, using the non-neutral
feminine plural.
I consider this a bug that we should fix.
See the intro in "guix-manual.es.po", where it states "NdT: En esta
traducción se ha optado por usar el femenino para referirse a ...".
So this is all but a bug, meaning that this is on purpose. And common in
all translations: french translation, for example, uses "utilisateurs et
utilisatrices", "utilisateurs", "utilisatrice·eur·s", "utilisatrices et
utilisateurs", "utilisateur·rice final·e", "développeur·euse", etc.
Charming.
I guess the same is common in Portuguese, Italian, Russian, German ...
and Castillian.
C.
The file you mention says:
> msgid "When writing documentation, please use gender-neutral wording
when referring to people, such as
@uref{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they, singular
``they''@comma{} ``their''@comma{} ``them''}, and so forth."
Which is translated to spanish as:
> msgstr "Cuando escriba documentación, por favor use construcciones
neutrales de género para referirse a la gente@footnote{NdT: En esta
traducción se ha optado por usar el femenino para referirse a
@emph{personas}, ya que es el género gramatical de dicha palabra. Aunque
las construcciones impersonales pueden adoptarse en la mayoría de casos,
también pueden llegar a ser muy artificiales en otros usos del
castellano; en ocasiones son directamente imposibles. Algunas
construcciones que proponen la neutralidad de género dificultan la
lectura automática (-x), o bien dificultan la corrección automática
(-e), o bien aumentan significativamente la redundancia y reducen del
mismo modo la velocidad en la lectura (-as/os, -as y -os). No obstante,
la adopción del genero neutro heredado del latín, el que en castellano
se ha unido con el masculino, como construcción neutral de género se
considera inaceptable, ya que sería equivalente al ``it'' en inglés,
nada más lejos de la intención de las autoras originales del texto.},
como @uref{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they, singular
``they''@comma{} ``their''@comma{} ``them''} y demás."
The spanish translation does NOT say the same that the english one, and
it is full of modern revisionist rhetoric about language use there is no
consensus in.
It is ok to use "personas usuarias" as that's globally correct spanish
according to current consensus, uses the feminine because "personas" is
a feminine word, which is inclusive by meaning. It sounds weird but it
is correct.
Saying "usuarias" means exclusively female users. That's what current
consensus in spanish language means. And saying "usuarias" alone does
not refer to the fact that they are "personas" by any means.
Even further, what it is stated in the block is wrong. All spanish
speakers would understand the use of the masculine form as an inclusive
plural, as that's what it means, and it's not a use of "it" as the text
there suggests.[1]
Those who are going to read the manual may not know what we actually
mean by using that, I insist, exclusive wording, and may be confused by
it. We can do better than this.
[1]:
https://www.rae.es/buen-uso-espa%C3%B1ol/el-empleo-gen%C3%A9rico-del-masculino
PS: I don't live under a rock, even if sometimes I wish I did. I know
why this is done and I'm deliberately avoiding to talk about the
reasons, hoping that someone understands that we are not the center of
the world, and we should try to be comprehensible among anything else,
as that is IMHO the only honest way to be inclusive.
