The Linguist

purposes and fit different specialisations and types of clients: 1 Splitting. Rather than using the general masculine form (e.g. lingwiści; 'linguists'), opt for both the masculine and the feminine form (lingwiści i lingwistki). 2 Osobatywy. Translating roughly as 'person forms', this is similar to person-first language but can be used with any noun. The masculine word studenci ('students') can be expressed as osoby studenckie ('studying people', or 'study people' to be more exact). 3 Non-gendered collective nouns. Examples include personel or kadra ('staff') and zespół ('team'). Instead of translating 'doctors and nurses' in the common way (lekarze i pielęgniarki), with 'doctors' being masculine 8 The Linguist Vol/61 No/4 2022 thelinguist.uberflip.com FEATURES AVOIDING STEREOTYPES Careers such as doctors, nurses and builders are often stereotyped according to gender, which may be reflected in the language used to describe them Alicja Tokarska outlines her approach to using inclusive language in the target text, and bringing clients on board A lthough most linguists have heard the term 'inclusive language', it is possible that only some use this way of writing in their daily work. At the beginning it may seem overwhelming and difficult, but incorporating inclusive language into translation practice is not impossible. I'd even say that, with enough practice and training, it's easy. Using inclusive language means opting not to use certain expressions or words that some groups might see as hurtful or exclusionary. Although this refers to many areas, such as a person's sexuality, race, religion and disability status, the subject that seems to be most widely discussed is gender. For different languages, the gender aspect will differ. For instance, in English, gender- inclusive language means replacing gendered expressions ('mankind', 'actress', 'stewardess') with their non-gender specific counterparts ('humankind', 'actor', 'flight attendant'). Polish, my native tongue and the language I translate into most often, needs an opposite approach. The language is gendered like many others, including French, Arabic and Ukrainian. In Polish, it is not just nouns and adjectives that need to agree gender-wise; some verbs have different endings too. The verb robić ('to do'), for example, is not too problematic in the present tense, but its past tenses have a different ending for each grammatical person and gender, so 'I was doing my homework' changes depending on the speaker's gender. The biggest issues in Polish, and in many other gendered languages, are the general masculine form, grammatical agreements and past tenses. I have developed six techniques that I use in my work, which all serve different and 'nurses' feminine, personel medyczny ('healthcare staff') can be used. 4 Change the subject. Avoid using the gendered form of the subject in a sentence by restructuring the sentence. Wzruszyłaś się? ('Did you get (emotionally) moved?') can be changed to Wzruszyło Cię to? ('Did it (emotionally) move you?'). 5 Change the tense. Re-write a past-tense sentence in the (masculine) second person singular in the non-gender specific present tense. Try using Seans naszego serialu masz już zaliczony? ('Do you already have watching our show under your belt?') instead of Widziałeś już nasz serial? ('Have you already seen our show?') 6 Inclusive typography. Use the so-called 'floor' ( _ ) to acknowledge space for gendered forms that aren't masculine or feminine. This is a way to include non- binary people. A gender-inclusive noun 'translators' (tłumacze in general masculine form) becomes tłumaczki_e. Note that this is just one form of inclusive typography. Applying strategies Apart from the last strategy, which is much more modern, all of these techniques fit nicely in any type of text, although the extent of use might differ. Splitting can be very repetitive and shouldn't be used in every sentence: not only would it make the text extremely long (which is often an issue when producing marketing copy or subtitles), but it also wouldn't look very appealing stylistically. I believe that alternating splitting with general masculine forms shows readers that the aim is to make women more visible. Why words matter

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