Gender conventions notice in documents

The string should be available in Rosetta for languages that require so.

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Hi Yaniv, thanks for your bug report.

Yaniv Abir wrote:
> In some languages, such as Arabic or Hebrew, there is a distinction
> between male and female. Accordingly, it is custom to right guides in
> the male form ( for historical reasons) and add a notice that sais
> "although this guide is written in the male form, it is directed at both
> sexes.

Questions of localisation don't concern us - the relevant translation
team can adjust the language and style of the document to suit the
particular culture.

However, we do need as a team to decide on the convention for doing this
in _English_. There was a mailing list thread about this some time ago,
and nothing was decided. What does the team feel is the best convention
to adopt for gender?

When this is decided, we can update the styleguide.

Matt
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Hi Yaniv,

 Each translators team has it's own specific language guide lines. For Hebrew I think it would be best to follow the already established GNOME hebrew transaltors team (upstream) or any other general upstream hebrew translation available. (there's also the debian hebrew translattors etc.)

 We can then republish those guide lines on the israeli wiki and point people there before they start translating.

It is best to follow what upstream practices especially with localisation; the styleguide indicates this as well that if its not indicated explicitly, we look into what upstream has done. I do not have a demographic of the number of languages that follow a gender convention, but english, as a whole has very little unless stated explicitly.

My prior message was scrrubed.

I think I was misunderstood,

I did not mean that Ubuntu should dictate a certain gender convention for translation. My question is whether there is a way to add a clarification to the translations of ubuntu-docs in laguages that require that, that states "Although this document is written in the male form, it addresses both sexes", as is customary.

<quote who="Yaniv Abir" date="Sun, Jun 04, 2006 at 12:02:07PM -0000">
> I think I was misunderstood,
>
> I did not mean that Ubuntu should dictate a certain gender convention
> for translation. My question is whether there is a way to add a
> clarification to the translations of ubuntu-docs in laguages that
> require that, that states "Although this document is written in the male
> form, it addresses both sexes", as is customary.

I think we can safely assume that this is the case unless stated
otherwise. With the noteable exception of mencal in universe, I can not
think of a single example of a piece of software in Ubuntu where it
would be essential to use a gendered third person pronoun in the
documentation. Perhaps I'm just being unimaginative.

Regards,
Mako

--
Benjamin Mako Hill
<email address hidden>
http://mako.cc

Creativity can be a social contribution, but only in so
far as society is free to use the results. --RMS

... And even if it is essential, the rule the writers follow needn't be mentioned anywhere the readers can see it. It's irrelevant to them.

Again, I'm not asking for a rule ragarding the subject. In Hebrew, when
you write guides, manuals etc., your write in the male form, always.
That's why it is customary to put a little notice at the begging of the
text saying that the guide address women as well. I'm asking - is there
any way we can add that notice to the Hebrew translated ubuntu-docs?

Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:

> ... And even if it is essential, the rule the writers follow needn't be
> mentioned anywhere the readers can see it. It's irrelevant to them.
>
>

Can you explain why it might be important to have such a notice? If this is the convention, is it necessary to include a notice? Given that the original English doesn't do it, how damaging would it be to stick to the English?

You can assume it's non-trivial to include such a notice.

All documentation are written in the male form in Hebrew. This is both for historical reasons and for practical reasons (it's mostly shorter than the female or plural form). As the idea of equality between the sexes entered the consensus in the Western world, a demand for equality within the Hebrew language arose. Thus, being unable to effectively change the gender rules of the language, a notice stating that a guide was written for both sexes equally became standard.

Adding the notice to Ubuntu documents will make them more user friendly in two way:
A. It won't alienate women users
B. It will determine astandard form for translation (i.e. the male form), so awkward attempts to use the plural (and mostly non-gender specific) form will not be used.

Ah, now I understand. Thank you for explaining so patiently, Yaniv. :-)

One way to implement this would be to have an extra paragraph on the front page of the help system. In Hebrew, that paragraph would say whatever is the Hebrew for "Ubuntu Help applies equally to women and men, but is written in the male form for convenience". In almost every other language, including English, that paragraph would be empty.

> In Hebrew, when
> you write guides, manuals etc., your write in the male form, always.

Please don't misunderstand this suggestion. I'm not trying to say "let's not add that paragraph". Indeed, let's add such a paragraph :)

Furthermore, I don't even know Hebrew... This is just some brain-dump.

If Hebrew is a bit like English, is it possible to communicate with the translators so they translate in passive voice[1] or using double-pronouns[2]?

English also has this problem (using "he" as "everyone"); I do above in any English text I write in order not to write sexist.

Examples:
[1] {Ubuntu should be installed} instead of {He should install Ubuntu}
or
[2] {S/he should install Ubuntu on her/his computer} instead of {He should install Ubuntu on his computer}

Reason I propose this, is because you'll not be reinforcing sexist norms by continuing to write the guide in male form. To the contrary, this will be a nice way to create a writing technique that will defy those very societal norms.

Sorry if this was too political for a bugzilla :)

No, because in English we need to dodge only gender-assuming pronouns ("he/she"). In Hebrew, the gender-assuming words include most verbs AND almost all nouns, so they can't be avoided.

Perhaps this will help explain the problem (Yaniv, please correct me if I'm off-base). Imagine if our English help had to look like this to cater for both sexes: "If you/youess know/shnow the name of a program you/youess want/wint to install, enter/unter it in the Search field. Otherwise, begin/legin by choosing/troosing a software category on the left."

That would be intolerable, so we'd stick to just the male forms (or just the female forms!) and add a disclaimer at the start. That's the situation Hebrew is in, as I understand it.

Exactly right.

This could be done with a &gender-notice; entity in the system documentation. It would be easy to add, and languages which don't need the notice can leave it blank. We could even name it &locale-notice; for use as a general notice for locales which don't use English-like language conventions.

It could either be added to the system help front page or at the beginning of every article. I can fix this in the next week or so if this solution is acceptable...

I think the idea of having an (optional) paragraph on the front page will work. However this is probably best integrated upstream, as otherwise we will need to include it in Ubuntu's patch on yelp. Yaniv, have you tried talking to the Gnome documentation maintainers about this?

Have anyone communicated this request upstream?

this is a languaje bug, but in the new version this bog dont be

The user Juan Sebastian Cobaleda Cano is a troll, or something. We, in the Ubuntu-Co Team are checking all his changes in Launchpad. Sorry for the problems.

Moving to ubuntu-docs package as per new bugs policy.

How to install adobe flash player on ubuntu desktop os because can not find packgage plugin

you just need find the install_flash_player_10_linux.deb,then install the
deb package,you will solve it!

2009/11/27 kittipong <email address hidden>

> How to install adobe flash player on ubuntu desktop os because can not
> find packgage plugin
>
> --
> Gender conventions notice in documents
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/47504
> You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu
> Documentation Project Team, which is a direct subscriber.
>
> Status in Ubuntu Documentation: Invalid
> Status in “ubuntu-docs” package in Ubuntu: Confirmed
>
> Bug description:
> In some languages, such as Arabic or Hebrew, there is a distinction between
> male and female. Accordingly, it is custom to write guides in the male form
> ( for historical reasons) and add a notice that says "although this guide is
> written in the male form, it is directed at both sexes" for the purpose of
> clarification.
> This string should be available for translation in Rosetta for languages
> that require adding it to the dcumentation.
>
>
>

On Fri, Nov 27, 2009 at 7:35 PM, kittipong <email address hidden>wrote:

> How to install adobe flash player on ubuntu desktop os because can not
> find packgage plugin
>
> --
> Gender conventions notice in documents
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/47504
> You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu
> Documentation Project Team, which is a direct subscriber.
>
> Status in Ubuntu Documentation: Invalid
> Status in “ubuntu-docs” package in Ubuntu: Confirmed
>
> Bug description:
> In some languages, such as Arabic or Hebrew, there is a distinction between
> male and female. Accordingly, it is custom to write guides in the male form
> ( for historical reasons) and add a notice that says "although this guide is
> written in the male form, it is directed at both sexes" for the purpose of
> clarification.
> This string should be available for translation in Rosetta for languages
> that require adding it to the dcumentation.
>
>
>
I guess you want a flash plugin for your web browser. Do correct me if I am
wrong.
Here's how to install it:
Type this in a terminal with a working connection to the Internet:
$ sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree

restart your browser after you are done.

--
Yours sincerely,
Dipanjan Chakraborty

excuse me, but this is totally the wrong place to discuss Flash installation. This is a bug report about "Gender conventions notice in documents", not a general place to discuss any bug in Ubuntu. For documentation about Flash in Ubuntu, please see https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats/Flash, and if you have problems with the installation, see https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats/Flash#flashtrouble. Thank you!

On Fri, Nov 27, 2009 at 11:04 PM, ilinux <email address hidden> wrote:

> you just need find the install_flash_player_10_linux.deb,then install the
> deb package,you will solve it!
>
> 2009/11/27 kittipong <email address hidden>
>
> > How to install adobe flash player on ubuntu desktop os because can not
> > find packgage plugin
> >
> > --
> > Gender conventions notice in documents
> > https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/47504
> > You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu
> > Documentation Project Team, which is a direct subscriber.
> >
> > Status in Ubuntu Documentation: Invalid
> > Status in “ubuntu-docs” package in Ubuntu: Confirmed
> >
> > Bug description:
> > In some languages, such as Arabic or Hebrew, there is a distinction
> between
> > male and female. Accordingly, it is custom to write guides in the male
> form
> > ( for historical reasons) and add a notice that says "although this guide
> is
> > written in the male form, it is directed at both sexes" for the purpose
> of
> > clarification.
> > This string should be available for translation in Rosetta for languages
> > that require adding it to the dcumentation.
> >
> >
> >
>
> --
> Gender conventions notice in documents
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/47504
> You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu
> Documentation Project Team, which is a direct subscriber.
>
> Status in Ubuntu Documentation: Invalid
> Status in “ubuntu-docs” package in Ubuntu: Confirmed
>
> Bug description:
> In some languages, such as Arabic or Hebrew, there is a distinction between
> male and female. Accordingly, it is custom to write guides in the male form
> ( for historical reasons) and add a notice that says "although this guide is
> written in the male form, it is directed at both sexes" for the purpose of
> clarification.
> This string should be available for translation in Rosetta for languages
> that require adding it to the dcumentation.
>
>
>
ok.got it ~

--
Hello,It's CALM Again~

restart ur computer then use recovery method...

This bug has been open for a long time (over 4 years) without progress so I'm reducing its importance to Wishlist.

I don't think there is any progress likely to be made implementing this suggestion in ubuntu-docs, based on the amount of time that has passed so far.

This seems to me to be something that is only likely to make progress if implemented upstream. If progress is to be made, I think that the issue should be discussed with the upstream Gnome Hebrew and Arabic translation teams, and then with the Gnome documentation team, to see if and how this should be addressed.

For the time being I'm marking this as "Won't Fix".