engleski

Gender Correctness and Translation

Gender Correctness and Translation Željko RIŠNER Faculty of Law / Department for Foreign Languages, Osijek, Croatia Abstract — The present-day world is largely characterized by processes of globalization that include various phenomena occurring in all spheres of human existence and activity. One of these phenomena is the position of English as the predominant language of communication between cultures in the modern world. The growing influence and importance of the English language and the spreading of its usage across cultures throughout the world inevitably results in the spreading of tendencies marking the development of English as well. These tendencies include the requirement for gender correctness, which has gained so much importance over the past few decades since it has emerged that it is now frequently referred to as political correctness. This paper deals with the possibility to meet this requirement in the Croatian language, with special focus on the field of law. The analysis sets out from the fact that, unlike English, Croatian is a gender- marked language, which makes it almost impossible to avoid the gender. This inevitably causes problems in translating from Croatian to English and even more so from English to Croatian where the translator is frequently forced to “guess” the gender. The analysis then moves on to the possibilities for the replacement of gender marked expressions with constructions such as adjective + noun ‘osoba’ (person – e.g. osumnjičena osoba = general/gender unmarked, instead of osumnjičenik = man or osumnjičenica = woman), or the noun ‘osoba’ + local/field determination (e.g. osoba u znanosti = unmarked, instead of znanstvenik = man and znanstvenica =woman, or osoba u sudstvu = unmarked, instead of sudac =man and sutkinja = woman).

Croatian language, English language, gender correctness, language of law, translating and interpreting.

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