| Recently there was a huge backlash in Poland over the translation of the anime series She-Ra and the Princesses of Power on Netflix [1]. There's a non-binary character named Double Trouble and the translators decided to change its gender to male and named it Kłopotowski (Mr Trouble). All this despite the fact that we do have neutral pronouns in Polish. Unfortunately not everyone agrees on the use of neutral form because it was sometimes used as an insult. There are other options though, for example you can use the plural version (just like they/them in English) or Dukaj's pronoun (introduced in the hard science fiction novel Perfect Imperfection [2] by Jacek Dukaj, “a space opera to end all space operas”) which is similar to the neutral pronoun but replaces the “o” suffix with “u”: it was / ono było / onu byłu. The discussion about the infelicitous translation started on social media [3][4] and eventually was covered by mainstream media. One of the translators gave an interview [5] and said that the reason for the unfortunate decision was organizational chaos and lack of information flow. 1. https://www.netflix.com/title/80179762 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_Imperfection 3. https://www.facebook.com/MistycyzmPopkulturowy/photos/246543... 4. https://www.facebook.com/catusgeekus/posts/2450286248592517 5. https://wyborcza.pl/7,75410,25383618,awantura-o-meskie-konco... (paywall) |