German Locals are not readable

[jrk-omf]

The German Locals has been gendered and are hardly readable. Is there a way to provide a "normal" German local file. This is not usable.

[farhatahmad]

@danimo @Ithanil Thoughts?

[Ithanil]

I'm probably the wrong person to ask, because I think in general we went completely crazy with artificially inclusive language and extreme political correctness. But that's apparently not the mainstream opinion.

[danimo]

I'd disagree with gendered language being "hardly readable" (unless the person is visually impaired and the translation somehow interferes with TTS). However I realize that there is no normative action. Maybe we can use de_DE (vs de) for "compliant" German? Whatever we do, we should sync between Greenlight and upstream BBB (where we received quite some requests for gendered language).

Note: while I am a translation admin for the Bigbluebutton HTML5 project on Transifex, I cannot look into greenlight. Can someone add me there, too?

[jrk-omf]

Maybe I just needs to add some thoughts: In Germany we have the "Rat für deutsche Rechtschreibung" which provides the "amtliche deutsche Rechtschreibung", which defines legal language definitions. I know this could be political, but there is only one valid language definition, and this should been applied. This rules are not followed by the acutal German Language Pack.

[danimo]

@jrk-omf I referred to "no normative action" in the context of the BBB project's German translation efforts. I think we are clear about the existence of a normative standard, but that's actually somewhat besides the point from a requirements perspective right now:

In Germany, so far at least two states force "official language rules" on their public servants (Saxony, Bavaria) via recently introduced legislation, which implies that BBB (and Greenlight) needs to offer if it is used in this context (IANAL). On the other hand we have users/customers that have expressed their strong preference for gender-neutral language again and again.

So apart from any personal political standpoint, just looking at the requirements, we as the project ought to provide both, and of course we should be consistent about it across applications.

[danimo]

Now that I have access to this project on transifex as well, I reviewed the strings, some of which were simply incorrect (singular vs. plural). As a first step, I fixed those and changed most of the 'Binnen-Doppelpunkt' notations to something less "stumbly" (e.g. Nutzer:innen -> Nutzende). I guess that won't soothe you, but should at least be no longer semantically incorrect and it's easier to read.

[Ithanil]

Now that I have access to this project on transifex as well, I reviewed the strings, some of which were simply incorrect (singular vs. plural). As a first step, I fixed those and changed most of the 'Binnen-Doppelpunkt' notations to something less "stumbly" (e.g. Nutzer:innen -> Nutzende). I guess that won't soothe you, but should at least be no longer semantically incorrect and it's easier to read.

That certainly improves the 'situation' without complicating things.

[jrk-omf]

@jrk-omf I referred to "no normative action" in the context of the BBB project's German translation efforts. I think we are clear about the existence of a normative standard, but that's actually somewhat besides the point from a requirements perspective right now:

In Germany, so far at least two states force "official language rules" on their public servants (Saxony, Bavaria) via recently introduced legislation, which implies that BBB (and Greenlight) needs to offer if it is used in this context (IANAL). On the other hand we have users/customers that have expressed their strong preference for gender-neutral language again and again.

So apart from any personal political standpoint, just looking at the requirements, we as the project ought to provide both, and of course we should be consistent about it across applications.

That's definitely the best approach, thanks for considering it.

[debuglevel]

Considering that probably around 80% of our users are Gen Y and Gen Z, they will simply laugh at us, if we'd use non-gendered language.

But as german language files are traditionally already separated into du (informal "you") and Sie (formal "you"), we could also do this here. As the Sie-users probably do not want gendered language anyways, conservative language rules could be applied here. du could then use the gendered language which is broadly adopted by the younger generation.

[Ataman]

After reading the de.json file I can concur that the language reads rather weird.

At least in german, people have been using the male version of user (Benutzer) for ages and I never heard anyone complaining about it. Probably because the 'user' is mostly seen as a thing instead of the actual human behind it. I don't consider my user as something that needs to be gendered. It's just a bunch of data inside a database. The string for user_deleted shouldn't have to be gender neutral because you're not actually deleting me. You're deleting a row inside a table that isn't even owned by me in the first place. (Just to confirm, we really aren't trying to delete actual humans, right?)

In my opinion, the gender-neutral language should be removed as long as the strings are not about something that happens to the actual person. If it does, the noun Person should be used instead. (i.e. Benutzende Person gelöscht., again, don't do that).

Additionally, the usage of the formal/informal "you" is still not consistent as of today.

[debuglevel]

In Germany, so far at least two states force "official language rules" on their public servants (Saxony, Bavaria) via recently introduced legislation, which implies that BBB (and Greenlight) needs to offer if it is used in this context (IANAL).

My (bavarian) university president just stated that it does not matter because of "Freiheit der Lehre" (federal law that anyone can teach how they want) applies :D