An interesting question

[james_davis_nicoll]

Claire asked Ann Leckie:
Hello. I wondered if you were aware of the fact that in the french translation of Ancillary, Breq is male ?

Comments

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Doesn't French require everything to have gender?

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

Grammatical gender is different from actual gender. Nouns have to have gender, but their grammatical gender may not be the same as the gender of the thing described, if it has any. In French, some examples are (cribbed from the Web):
bébé "baby" is always masculine, even if the word is used to refer to a baby girl. Here is a list of words that behave in the same way:
Une vedette "a star" is always feminine.
Un guide "a guide" is always masculine.
Une personne "a person" is always feminine.
Une victime "a victim" is always feminine.

So saying "il est une victime" is perfectly grammatical and correct French.

[awesomeaud.livejournal.com]

I wonder if there's anything that can be done about that? It seems to be taking a HUGE liberty with the source material.

[megazver.livejournal.com]

Jim Butcher's Russian translators have, for some reason, decided that the 'u' in his last name is supposed to be pronounced as 'ah'.

So Russian readers know him as Jim Buttchair.

[martianmooncrab.livejournal.com]

and joy and horror of the English language is that is very fluid and we can make up stuff if we need too, words and genders included.

French (and I have discovered that I dislike books translated from French to English) is so "protect the linga franca" that it it doesnt evolve as fast to compensate in translations.

They should have put in disclaimers on Leckie's book.

[ann-leckie.livejournal.com]

So, some folks over on Tumblr have looked at a few pages of the translation, and just on the strength of that, it seems that the translator has actually done something kind of interesting, though I might for various reasons quibble with it. He appears to use masculine forms for ships--because ship in French is masculine, apparently? I know not. But.

Breq refers to people in the feminine unless she's speaking a non-Radchaai language. But ships appear to be referred to in the masculine, and she refers to herself this way, which, if the translator is using the masculine to stand in for the English "it" would make a good deal of sense.