Update French translations to not use politically sided language.

[lra]

The use of "é·e·s" is not in the french language, as stated by the Académie française and color bluesky as political.

This PR removes those to keep the platform neutral.

[surfdude29]

Pinging @Signez for input

[Signez]

The Académie française should not drive our linguistic choices as it is a French translation for all francophonie ; making our translation gender neutral was a voluntary choice (see #2425).

I suggest to close this PR, unless you suggest an epicene alternative for all the (very rare) times we used the point médian.

[lra]

making our translation gender neutral was a voluntary choice

You are forcing your non-french translation on everyone using french. That's the core issue. To make it easier to understand the context for the non-french speakers: it's like forcing to pick Pronouns on signup. That's how painted this is.

When we switch to french language, we have no choice but to use your opinionated translation.

The Académie française should not drive our linguistic choices as it is a French translation for all francophonie ; making our translation gender neutral was a voluntary choice.

That's exactly the issue here: you are being political instead of neutral. Your translation is not french, the academia is the principal French council for matters pertaining to the French language.

This "french-inclusive" language is not used anywhere except on politically sided platforms.

What I suggest with this PR is to go back to neutral french, to not paint the platform as one-sided.

Another alternative is to have a "french" and a "french-inclusive" locale so people can pick their translation.

Right now, french users have no choice.

[Signez]

You are forcing your non-french translation on everyone using french.

We do literally dozen of choices of that kind each and every time we translate the UI. Should we use téléverser or envoyer to translate upload in French? Should we use hashtag, étiquette or mot-clé when we translate tag?

What I mean here is that there is no neutral choice in translation. And using a non-gender-neutral translation when alternatives such as Mastodon (and even Twitter at that time) have chosen a gender-neutral translation, that would be a choice too.

We made the opposite choice, and we were very open about it when we did (see our discussions in #2425 and the associated pull requests, where we openly talked about minimising the use of the interpunct / point médian to avoid this kind of frown — frown we never had before today, btw).

Your translation is not french, the academia is the principal French council for matters pertaining to the French language.

That's your point of view, and you are entitled to it, but I respectfully disagree.

Académie Française's views on the matter are not consensual at all (see Les Linguistes Attérés's scientific point of view on that matter). I don't see why we should discard the UN opinions on the matter, or the one from the Governement of Canada.

You are forcing your non-french translation […] it's like forcing to pick Pronouns on signup […] you are being political instead of neutral

Please be respectful of the work of other contributors and not imply what other contributors might intend. There is no Contributor Covenent in this project so I can't refer to it, but I don't feel safe with this kind of rhetoric, especially when all our work were done in the open for literally months now.

(Also, naming this pull request "Update French translations (<date>)" when it's about reverting our work is not the most open way of acting — but again, not judging your intentions here, I'd just prefer if you were explicit on wanting to remove some gender neutral language in Bluesky UI.)

[lra]

What I mean here is that there is no neutral choice in translation. And using a non-gender-neutral translation when alternatives such as Mastodon (and even Twitter at that time) have chosen a gender-neutral translation, that would be a choice too.

French is neutral, your translation is not. No translated book, no newspaper, nothing use this kind of language, except politically far-sided platforms. Because this is not officially french. You are harming Bluesky by doing this.

We made the opposite choice, and we were very open about it when we did (see our discussions in https://github.com/bluesky-social/social-app/issues/2425 and the associated pull requests, where we openly talked about minimising the use of the interpunct / point médian to avoid this kind of frown — frown we never had before today, btw).

This issue is representative of nobody, 3 users participated.

That's your point of view, and you are entitled to it, but I respectfully disagree.

That's not my POV, that's a fact.

Please be respectful of the work of other contributors and not imply what other contributors might intend. There is no Contributor Covenent in this project so I can't refer to it, but I don't feel safe with this kind of rhetoric, especially when all our work were done in the open for literally months now.

I did not lack any respect. The use of this language is political, you know it. And you are just painting the whole platform with this.

You don't feel safe? What about the millions french users who don't agree with your views. I'm asking to stay neutral here.

(Also, naming this pull request "Update French translations ()" when it's about reverting our work is not the most open way of acting — but again, not judging your intentions here, I'd just prefer if you were explicit on wanting to remove some gender neutral language in Bluesky UI.)

Fixed.

[Signez]

No translated book, no newspaper, nothing use this kind of language, except politically far-sided platforms.

Do you consider Mastodon a politically far-sided platform? Also, most of those exemples don't have the restrictions of space we do have here, and prefer the double usage, i.e. using both feminine and masculine form (here, it would be 815 abonnées et abonnés).

Also, Belgium uses inclusive forms — following the same principle of only using point médian when we find no épicène alternative and we have no space to use both masculine and feminine forms.

It's not unheard of, and again, it was done to fix this issue, that would be reopened if we merged your contribution.

This issue is representative of nobody, 3 users participated.

I don't understand your point of view. Do you think that translation choices should be put to a popular vote?

That's not my POV, that's a fact.

The French Wikipédia also says this:

The usefulness of the Académie française, which today has no normative but only moral authority, is sometimes questioned. Its legitimacy has also been called into question: only one linguist has counted among its members (most of whom are writers), Gaston Paris, who died in 1903. Criticism is also levelled at the ethics of the institution, which offers many advantages to its members.

(emphasis mine, of course)

So yeah, I insist: that's an opinion, not a fact.

I did not lack any respect. The use of this language is political, you know it. And you are just painting the whole platform with this.

Again, you are implying intentions and that's not respectful. I contributed those translation way after my original contributions to the French translations (and internationalization for that matter). After the issue was raised, I tried to fixed it, while trying not to put point médian everywhere, but only where space was lacking and no épicène word were available for us to use in the translation.

You don't feel safe?

I don't feel safe, no. And the agressive tone of that last post is not making me feel safer either.

Fixed.

Thanks.

I have to add to non-French speakers that the usage of language inclusif is not considered political by a lot of people and institutions (again, it's a United Nation best practice, a Canadian government one, a Belgium government one), and this is the first time iirc we have such a complaint on this project.

This shouldn't read as Update French translations to not use politically sided language. but Update French translations to revert gender-neutral language.

[lra]

French is neutral, your translation is not.

No dictionary define the words you used, like I posted in the PR description, or again :

Those words don't exist in any dictionary, and using this language is not welcoming for those that don't have your opinion.

I'm not denying your work, but you should not use it as a way to propagate your ideas. This is making the platform not welcoming for lots of people. Using french is not causing any technical issue, if you merge this PR, nothing is going to break.

If you really wanted to respect everyone's opinion, you'd keep the translations neutral.

[Signez]

Well, this discussion isn't productive anymore; you're just repeating an argument I don’t understand (le français est neutre, which doesn't mean anything in my opinion), you quote dictionaries which, by design, don't show such forms (nor would they show abonné(e)s, which is a very common form used for decades), and you continue to imply things about my behaviour (again, I'm not trying to use [translation] as a way to propagate my ideas, I'm following the best practices I could find to fix a very clearly explained problem #2425).

I think the discussion should have been clear by now, and I hope the Bluesky team will do the right thing by not reverting our work here.

[notjuliet]

c'est des connards dans ton genre qui me font avoir honte en mon pays @lra

[gaearon]

Hi @lra, thank you for your feedback. We try to keep these kinds of decisions within the purview of the individual teams driving each translation, and we trust the translator teams to acknowledge and weigh the feedback they receive. As @Signez noted, this change was partially informed by earlier feedback, and the team weighed different options before arriving at the current solution. Your feedback has been noted too.

I'm going to close this thread because the arguments have been considered, and we're starting to go in circles. In particular, personal attacks and questioning maintainers' motivations makes the discussion needlessly emotionally charged, and not good for anyone. Please remember this work is voluntary and open source.

We can expect the translations to continue evolving in response to user feedback. This feedback has been heard and acknowledged by the team. Thanks everyone for your time.