• Home
  • News
  • Longform
  • Life
    • Jeans
    • Madam Zeenat’s Feminist Tarot
  • Health
  • Work
  • Culture
    • Books
    • Art
    • Music
    • Fashion
    • Cinema
    • TV
  • Sports
  • Kranti
  • Vaanthi
  • The FAK
  • About
    • Submissions
  • Home
  • News
  • Longform
  • Life
    • Jeans
    • Madam Zeenat’s Feminist Tarot
  • Health
  • Work
  • Culture
    • Books
    • Art
    • Music
    • Fashion
    • Cinema
    • TV
  • Sports
  • Kranti
  • Vaanthi
  • The FAK
  • About
    • Submissions
HomeNewsTechnologyNothing is Safe! Google Translate Makes Gender Neu ...

Nothing is Safe! Google Translate Makes Gender Neutral Languages Sexist

December 7, 2017

By Sharanya Gopinathan

Image courtesy Pixabay

Back on the 28th of November, a tweet by Iranian-American scholar Alex Shams went viral.

Turkish is a gender neutral language. There is no “he” or “she” – everything is just “o”. But look what happens when Google translates to English. Thread: pic.twitter.com/mIWjP4E6xw

— Alex Shams (@seyyedreza) November 27, 2017

He explained in the comments that Turkish is a gender neutral language, but when you enter Turkish sentences into Google Translate, the sentences get automatically gendered. And of course, in the most stereotypical manner possible. As his tweet shows, gender-neutral sentences get translated into sexist assumptions, like the idea that engineers are male, and nurses are female, and “she” naturally loves “him”.

Now, Facebook user Dina Utami has found a similar pattern in Bahasa Indonesia, a similarly gender-neutral language.

Shams explains in his thread that this happens because Google Translate picks up on how these words are commonly used online. So if the majority of references in its database to “engineers” are male, it categorises the word as male. He explains the danger of this phenomenon quite comprehensively. “Google Translate magnifies biases that exist in our culture – like unequal access to employment for women in all fields, or culturally constructed notions that women are unhappy, lazy, hopeless romantics always looking for husbands – and transforms them into translations. It has been argued that technology overcomes the biases of human beings, and because it is neutral the increasing automation of the world offers a way out of inequality. But as this small example shows, technology is far from neutral. Technology, like anything else, is what you make of it – and the way we are using technology is currently reinforcing the inequalities and biases of the world around us.”

Tags: Bahasa Indonesia, gender-neutral language, Google Translate, technology, Turkey, Turkish

Share!
Tweet

ladiesfinger

About the author

Related Posts

Hijabi Thrash Metal? Yes Please

Why is Tech Innovation for Women Fixated on Rape? What about the Rest of Our Lives?

Feminist Poet and Author Kamala Das Got Featured on a Google Doodle. And on a Kerala High Court Petition

What Indian Ads Today Tell Us About How Older Women See Themselves

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Trending

Sorry. No data so far.

Subscribe to our email newsletter!

You May Also Like

  • After Payal Tadvi’s Death Can We Allow Medical Education to Continue to Pretend to be Casteless? May 28, 2019
  • Jokha Alharthi’s Man Booker Win Reminds Us of Oman’s Recent Slave-owning Past May 24, 2019
  • In Avengers: Endgame, Black Widow is Sexy, Sterile and So Burnt By Marvel May 12, 2019
  • Let Us Admit the Sins of Atishi Marlena May 10, 2019
  • 20 Questions for SC Panel that Cleared the CJI of Sexual Harassment Charges May 9, 2019


Online Bachchi, Dil Ki Sachchi

Come on over for feminist journalism.

Politics. Pop Culture. Health. Sex. Law. Books. Work.

We write what we want to read.

  • Terms & Conditions
  • Privacy Policy
  • Refund Policy
  • About
  • Contact Us

Subscribe to our email newsletter!

Keep up with us!

Follow Us on FacebookFollow Us on TwitterFollow Us on YouTubeFollow Us on E-mail

Trending

Sorry. No data so far.

Copyright © 2018 The Ladies Finger
Subscribe to our RSS/Atom feed here