charlie@cca.UUCP (Charlie Kaufman) (02/04/84)
I would like suggest another way to look at the issue of feminising
literature. People have complained about changing the author's words
and hence meaning without permission. What about the case where the
original was written in some other language. Now you are changing the
words of an earlier translator. There exists no direct word for word
translation between languages, and subtleties exist in meanings. The
word "man" in English is sometimes meant to include women; sometimes
not. Other languages have similar constructs with ambiguous meanings.
The translator must go from the words of the author to the ideas the
author was trying to express and back to words in the new language.
This is why translation is an art not a science. If one were
translating the English word "man" into a language which did not have a
word which ambiguously could mean males only or could mean all humans,
one would have to guess at the intent of the author.
English is a living language. Words have different meanings in 1984
than they did in 1970, and they have different meanings to different
people. While "man" is still defined as sometimes refering to generic
people in the dictionary, its usage in that way is declining in response
to feminist pressures. This makes old written material "out of date"
and potentially confusing. To some degree feminising it can be thought
of as an English to English translation which changes the words in order
to preserve the meaning.
There are clearly dangers in allowing someone to change a text and claim
to preserve the meaning. There are also dangers in changing the meaning
of words without updating all old text. Some would solve this problem
by not allowing language to evolve. But that's a different debate...
--Charlie Kaufman
charlie@cca
...decvax!cca!charlie