722779 - Add support for gender-aware translations

Status: NEW

(Core :: Internationalization, enhancement)

Description

[Amir Aharoni]

What did you do?
I translated messages in the interface of Firefox, Thunderbird, AMO and other Mozilla products to Hebrew.

What happened?
I had to write the masculine form of "you", even though about half of these products' users would prefer to see the feminine form.

What should have happened?
I should have been able to use both forms. Masculine can be the default (at least for Hebrew), but a user should be able to ask the software to address her as a woman.

It is already possible in varying degrees of completeness in Facebook, Google+ and MediaWiki. It is true that these all are web applications and they are much more identity-aware, while Firefox is much more of a desktop application, but lately Firefox has been getting more and more into the business of working with user identity, with initiatives such as Sync and BrowserID. It should, therefore, be possible to use the gender setting of the user to word the interface messages accordingly.

Comment 1

[Axel Hecht [:Pike]]

With l20n, this should be possible with some UI.

I wonder if there are strings that would expose gender preference to the web, like js error messages in the worst case.

Alex, would we be concerned about that? Like, if a website can fingerprint the language, is a "call me she" preference a significant burden, in particular if it's opt-in?

Comment 2

[:aceman]

I think the reporter wants that there is some setting in Firefox (TB, etc) where the user choses his/her gender and then the Firefox UI and messages call him/her in the proper gender. In messages like "You are currently on the Aurora update channel." (in Help->About).

I do not know if this would be any real gain in the UI, but yes, some people may wish it. When I translate stuff I try to avoid this problem and reword the sentences into a neutral form (like "You have to ..." -> "It is necessary to...") or use a more formal form of YOU that is gender-neutral. Maybe not all languages have these possibilities.

But the summary has to be updated, the reporter actually requested the opposite of what he wrote.

Comment 3

[Amir Aharoni]

I don't really care what the title of the bug is, but Firefox is not really gender-neutral. As most programs, it happens to be mostly gender-neutral in English, because English is mostly gender-neutral. A lot of messages address the user in the second person (you) - that is true for any messages that use the imperative to tell the user to "press", "click", "close", "open", "check", "download", "install" etc. In Hebrew the second person is not gender-neutral and it's hard, and sometimes impossible, to re-word them to be neutral. Gender is needed in many other contexts, too. And it's true for many other languages.

In Facebook it's possible to have variants of the same message if the person reading the message or the subject of the message is male and female; you have to re-write the whole message even if only one letter changes.

In MediaWiki you write only one message and it works more or less like this: "{{GENDER:$1|He|She}} uploaded the file", where "$1" is a parameter with a username.

I prefer the MediaWiki way because it's less repetitive, but anything will do as long as i, as a translator, am not forced to address female users with a masculine imperative.

Comment 4

[:aceman]

No problem with your wish. I have even confirmed it.
I have not yet seen any program that would do what you wish. Websites are different, they often request the gender at register time, so they can use it. But a desktop program or OS newer requests this.

So your request is actually a choice for Mozilla developers:
1. Either rewrite the English messages into neutral form (e.g. "You have to ..." -> "It is necessary to..."), 
2. AND/OR Implement infrastructure for translators to provide both gender forms of a message where it is needed.

Comment 5

[Tomer Cohen :tomer]

If operating systems will provide the active user gender information, it could be possible to implement it on the application level without asking the user for his/her gender every time they install an application. 

Until there will be such infrastructure, if ever, I'd suggest rewriting strings into natural form, and this is exactly what I am trying to do on my translations. In Hebrew, most of the time it is possible by adding some extra words such as "Click[male-form] here" → "Please [to-]click here".

Comment 6

[Amir Aharoni]

(In reply to :aceman from comment #4)
> No problem with your wish. I have even confirmed it.
> I have not yet seen any program that would do what you wish. Websites are
> different, they often request the gender at register time, so they can use
> it. But a desktop program or OS newer requests this.

Honestly, i haven't seen a desktop program that does that, either. But most popular desktop programs are written in English and aren't translated to as many languages as Mozilla is and they aren't as innovative and groundbreaking either :)

I totally agree that for identity-focused web applications like Facebook, Google+ and MediaWiki it's much more easy and natural to know the user's gender, but as i wrote in the description, Mozilla is getting into the identity business, too, and gender can be part of it. (An optional part, of course,)

> So your request is actually a choice for Mozilla developers:
> 1. Either rewrite the English messages into neutral form (e.g. "You have to
> ..." -> "It is necessary to..."), 

I don't need changes in English; "you" is good for both men and women. There may be other English messages which are not gender-neutral. Until proper gender support is implemented the localizers will find their ways.

> 2. AND/OR Implement infrastructure for translators to provide both gender
> forms of a message where it is needed.

That *is* needed.

Comment 7

[Gordon P. Hemsley [:GPHemsley]]

Simplifying the bug summary, since it was way too long.

Implementing this support is a big undertaking, precisely because Firefox (etc.) does not collect gender data (or any other personal data) about the user. It has sometimes been mentioned that doing so would not be a good idea, particularly because multiple people might be using the same computer or session.

However, Amir makes a good point about BrowserID. Perhaps there is an opportunity to collect demographic data (including gender) there. But that would have to be a separate bug filed with them.

As things stand, there simply is not a mechanism available for doing this, as we do not have the information available.

I read some l10n/l20n-related discussion that suggested that some languages have it even worse than the binary gender distinction problem—they have to account for different age ranges of the user, for example, and there may be 3 or more of them.

So, yeah, expanding localization beyond the traditional handful of languages is going to uncover a number of linguistic phenomena that the current localization systems will not be able to handle. This is just the tip of the iceberg, I think.

Comment 8

[Alex Limi (:limi) — Firefox UX Team]

I don't think there's a UI need here until there's a mechanism that can do this. Removing uiwanted.