How to indicate that the source language is gender-neutral?

Question

The source language in question is Standard Chinese. It is a gender-neutral language. One big thing that English speakers complain about English is the gendered pronoun, namely the third person singular pronoun. In contrast, Chinese does not use pronouns as heavily as English speakers. Sometimes, pronouns may be inserted to indicate emphasis on possession, but it's completely fine to remove the pronoun altogether. When a Chinese text does use pronouns, the pronoun may be 他/她/它 (pronounced identically as Ta), but historically, in literature, 他 was not used to indicate gender, and 他 also means "other", as in 其他.

There are ways to convey gender. One way is to use Chinese kinship terms, but this is only relevant in specific circumstances. Another way is to directly ask the person in the conversation about the sex/gender of the person, because 他/她/它 are all pronounced the same. And another way is to assume a gender for the unknown person. As part of the Chinese Internet culture, some people may use TA, because 他 is too masculine, 她 definitely implies the feminine, and 它 implies an object. Aside from that, Chinese is the most gender-neutral language in the world since antiquity.

How does one indicate the gender-neutrality of Chinese with English dialogue? There is the English singular they, but English speakers seem to use it for a specific purpose - to indicate that the gender of the person is irrelevant, unknown, or that person's chosen gender. But the listener usually does not assume gender at that point, probably because it's culturally accepted that "they" is the gender-neutral pronoun. Chinese, on the other hand, works a bit differently. Even though the listener hears TA, the listener may actually assume male or hold no such assumptions but then directly ask the other person about this unknown person's gender.

The author cannot simply ignore it either. Sometimes, writing English naturally means you have to think in English and insert in pronouns that would have been left out in Chinese. These pronouns indicate gender. The Chinese language not only allows removing pronouns, but also the entire subject from a sentence; and Korean and Japanese also do this. So, as a result, the Chinese-language writer can easily write a whole paragraph without a single gendered pronoun. Meanwhile, the English-language writer has to insert some kind of pronoun (he/she/it/they).

Answer 1

The only way I see to maintain the effect you're talking about is not to use pronouns. You can use the character's name. You can use their profession / rank / etc. You can say "we did", "they did" (talking about multiple people) since the plural hides gender. If you're describing a group situation, it's easier to hide that you're doing this, since it makes better sense to give names all the time when you're talking about several people. You can talk about inanimate objects instead of the person manipulating them (e.g. "the gun fired" instead of "she fired the gun").

For example:

We were together at a pub yesterday. Alpha was telling this joke, we were all on the floor laughing. Then Echo says [..], and that annoyed Whiskey. So suddenly, Whiskey up and draws a gun on Echo, and Alpha gets between them to try and stop this madness.

You can assume, but you have no idea whether Alpha, Echo and Whiskey are male or female.

Answer 2

In the 1990s, I was really hoping that the Z or X pronouns (zie & zir, xie & xir) would win for the non-gender-focused option - they follow the he/she pronunciation style, which indicates sapience (which "it" does not).

This link https://genderneutralpronoun.wordpress.com/tag/zie-and-hir/ shows several different ones and their conjugations.

Would any of these map onto your situation?

Answer 3

So one way to convey this idea in English is that many common English Names are unisexed names OR have diminutive names that are unisex. For example, Jesse is both a male name and a female name (Though often, it's accepted that the spelling Jesse is male, and the spelling Jessie is female, both are common variants. Another is the French Gene/Jean which in English are pronounced the same way and usually follow male/female though the latter is usually an acceptable male spelling.). For pet names, Alex is acceptable diminutive for Alexander (Male) and Alexandra (Female). A less common one is Mike, which is almost always a diminiutive of the male Michael but occasionally finds it as a pet name of a female Michelle. Gabe is short for either Gabriel (Male) or Gabrielle (Female).

English has a benefit of being a language that is filled with a high volume of lone words especially in names (in fact, most if not all common English names are anglicize versions of Hebrew names, owing in part due to the Israeli influences of Christianity. In fact, a great number of names with biblical sources have a feminized version in most European Languages (Gabriel/Gabrielle are both named for Gabriel, a "male" angel (biblical angels aren't really gendered... or even humanoid... that was Roman depictions of them. They're actually so bizarre looking that their catch phrase is "Fear Not")). This isn't just an English Phenomena, as most Europe did this Most European Languages have gendered words. Another one is the traditionally female name Ashley to a Modern Ear was originally a very exclusively male name.

While it is a bit dated, (though not so much, I'm old enough to remember when it was still acceptable) that if the gender was unknown, it was acceptable to default to He/Him as pronouns for animals and most professions (if it was traditionally a female profession, like teaching, it was defaulted to She, but Doctors are Hes until told other wise... so are engineers... and soldiers). It's not uncommon to see plots where the mean dog with a masculine name like Brutus or Killer was in some distress and the heroes were worried him... until they realized that Brutus wasn't a he because the cause of the distress was that "he" had gone into labor and was really a she. The gender neutral "He" and the use of diminutive names (especially in American naming conventions) would allow for similar gender reveals though writes do have to mind their pronouns, it's easy to avoid as certain roles have certain assumptions.