A colleague contacted me for help. She had to translate
a sentence containing "Alaska", and was wondering
how to deal with its gender. Her dictionary was telling
her that Alaska is masculine, but she thought it should
be feminine, as the -a ending is normally associated
with the feminine form.
This is a common issue with proper
nouns, which don't necessarily have a clear
gender. There is no neutral pronoun in French and
so it can be difficult to decide whether something
is male or female: is February a "il" or
a "elle"?
There is a general rule that says that, when in doubt,
a noun should be awarded the gender of the generic
noun it's linked to. For example, Paris is "la
ville de Paris", and will be considered female.
February is a month (un mois, masculine) and
hence a he. However, a problem arises when a noun
can be associated with several generic nouns. Alaska
could be seen as a State (un État, masculine)
or a region (une région, feminine).
That's when translators start reaching for headache
tablets.
To get around this problem, I have a little trick
that helps me deal with the situation : I displace
the gender issue altogether.
For example, if I had to translate
Alaska is colder than Morocco
I wouldn't try and decide whether it should be
L'Alaska est plus froid que le Maroc
or
L'Alaska est plus froide que le Maroc
I would simply enrich the sentence to get rid of
the issue, for example:
Le climat de l'Alaska est plus froid
que celui du Maroc (Alaska's climate is colder
than Morocco's).
The adjective "froid" isn't associated
with the gender-confused "Alaska" any more,
but with the very male "climat".
Another example, which can be useful when translating
marketing materials:
Fabulouspots is present in 75 countries
becomes
La société Fabulouspots est
implantée dans 75 pays
Et voilà !
