The Loss of Gender Fluidity in French to English Translation (and Some Possible Solutions)

Isobel Geddes

French (like many other European languages) uses articles to mark gender on adjectives, nouns and past participles. In general, it can be said that those assigned male at birth will use masculine grammar and those assigned female at birth will use feminine. However, it is possible for authors and other writers to break these rules in order to convey gender fluidity, for example. Such examples have been shown in books that date back long before ‘non-binary’ or ‘transgender’ were known terms in society; through switching between the use of feminine and masculine grammar. Unfortunately, upon translation into English, much of this subtle representation is lost as translators choose to use just one gender in the English version. In this article, I will explore some of the possible solutions than translators have used previously to overcome this barrier.

One possible solution to counteract this problem would be to use a key, such as m and f, that could be placed after any French gendered noun, adjective etc, to convey which gender the original author had chosen, for example. This can be shown in the following sentence:

Je suis devenu influente = I became (m) influential (f)

Here the ‘devenu’ is the masculine form of the verb ‘devenir’ (to become) whilst ‘influente’ is the feminine form of the adjective ‘influent’ (influential). In the English version, the use of m and f convey a similar meaning by highlighting which gender the words have been assigned, seeing as English is not a gendered language.

An alternative solution could be to replicate the use of the ‘double e’ in the French language which reflects the female gender.

E.g. I am luckee

Unfortunately, this solution comes with more downfalls as it only really works with adjectives and it is hard to adapt all adjectives to reflect this. Furthermore, any masculine words would simply have to be portrayed as masculine through initiative, rather than a given sign which means the art of gender fluidity is partially lost.

Additionally, designing a new font would be a possible option to maintain the gender fluidity. By creating two different fonts that could be used to reflect masculinity and femininity, the issue could easily be resolved, as the author/translator would just switch fonts depending on the original text. For instance, a font has been created that incorporates the Mars and Venus symbols into the English alphabet, which works well as these symbols are already quite widely used in our everyday society.

Previously, in cases where the gender is never revealed, for example through the use of names that cannot be identified as male or female, translators have decided to create/modify pre-existing English pronoun sets. However, some argue that the assignment of a specific set of pronouns removes the sense of gender fluidity because it can be said that the character is still assigned a gender (just not male or female). Furthermore, some argue that the appointment of a set of pronouns removes in some aspects the idea of genderless pronouns. 

To summarise, translators have come up with various techniques to portray gender-fluidity that is illustrated in the original language. However, each method is hardly perfect; in fact one can argue that a perfect solution is not possible because gender is so subjective thus there will always be opposing arguments to the translation. Whilst this article explores how gender fluidity is translated from French into English, it is important to note that many French authors struggle portraying genderless identity themselves. Arguably, it can be said that it is much harder to present a non-binary character in a gendered language, although one should also note that we do still see in English common examples where the masculine form dominates both genders.