My post on slaves and sons reminded me of a point I’ve been thinking that I don’t think I’ve ever discussed with anyone or written anything about. The term “gender-inclusive” has come to be associated with a certain translation philosophy in Bible translation, namely the translation philosophy that considers it accurate to translate terms referring to multiple genders only with terms that in contemporary English can apply to multiple genders. In other words, using “he” to refer to a gender-unknown or gender-unspecified person or using “sons” to refer to a gender-mixed group would not be gender-inclusive.
It strikes me, however, that the term “gender-inclusive” is actually ambiguous, and the translations that use “sons” for a gender-mixed group or “he” to refer to a gender-unspecified or gender-unknown person are actually the gender-inclusive ones in one sense of the term. After all, they’re using usually-masculine terms in a gender-inclusive way, right? They’re using a sometimes gender-specific term in a gender-inclusive way. So why is it the opposite approach that always gets to be called gender-inclusive?
My post on slaves and sons reminded me of a point I’ve been thinking that I don’t think I’ve ever discussed with anyone or written anything about. The term “gender-inclusive” has come to be associated with a certain translation philosophy in Bible translation, namely the translation philosophy that considers it accurate to translate terms referring to multiple genders only with terms that in contemporary English can apply to multiple genders. In other words, using “he” to refer to a gender-unknown or gender-unspecified person or using “sons” to refer to a gender-mixed group would not be gender-inclusive.
It strikes me, however, that the term “gender-inclusive” is actually ambiguous, and the translations that use “sons” for a gender-mixed group or “he” to refer to a gender-unspecified or gender-unknown person are actually the gender-inclusive ones in one sense of the term. After all, they’re using usually-masculine terms in a gender-inclusive way, right? They’re using a sometimes gender-specific term in a gender-inclusive way. So why is it the opposite approach that always gets to be called gender-inclusive?
June 17th, 2010 | 6:55 am | #1
I learned Greek this year at Seminary, and have just begun to translate. That is a good question you pose. I’ve been wrestling with this too for my own work. How true to the culture in which Scripture was written do we stay? Where are we free to use more inclusive language?
The thing my teacher has emphasized is to let the text speak on it’s own terms. So I guess if we bring an agenda to the text, e.g. inclusiveness, I would worry that that could lead to problems where we compromise the text to suit our ends.
June 17th, 2010 | 1:31 pm | #2
Is this post perhaps an example of Hebrew parallelism rendered in English? :-)
June 18th, 2010 | 9:24 pm | #3
Jake, I’m not getting into whether a translation should do which thing. Different translation philosophies can have a place for different purposes, and I think it fits fine with a more dynamic policy like the NIV to do what it did in the TNIV. That was just a matter of being consistent with how it had handled other matters all along. Given the ESV’s translation policy, what it generally does is just what it should (although in specific it’s sometimes inconsistent with its stated goals).
Here I was just wondering if the term “gender-inclusive” is helpful to use in that debate, and it seems it’s not, because both translation philosophies could be rightly called gender-inclusive (even if meaning different things by it in each case).
June 18th, 2010 | 9:25 pm | #4
David, that’s probably a relic of the editing attempts to get something written in Movable Type to appear right in WordPress. But I suppose I better leave it this way now that you’ve commented on it, or you’ll look like you don’t know what you’re talking about.
June 19th, 2010 | 7:18 am | #5
Oh, no. Feel free to correct it. We can easily remove these comments.
June 19th, 2010 | 7:32 am | #6
I agree with your point here, Jeremy. Other languages function in a similar way. For example, French has two words for the third-person plural pronoun they: ils (m.) and elles (f.), the former being used for an assembly of both sexes. In languages in which grammatical gender plays a more prominent role than in English it would be virtually impossible to make the sorts of alterations that generally come under the inclusive language rubric.
The languages with which I am familiar all use the generic male form in a gender-inclusive sense. An interesting exception is the French word for a person: une personne, which is feminine. But this comes from the Latin persona (feminine noun), meaning mask, so this is a matter of grammatical and not biological gender.
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