Tone & Gender Neutral Adjustments

[ehuthmacher]

Conduct research on tone and gender neutrality adjustment methods

• Volunteer: Jesica Greco

[jesgreco]

After doing some research regarding UX writing and the empathy with the gender, I've come to the conclusion we can replace nouns or adjectives in Spanish by paraphrasing or changing the perspective of the phrase; sometimes it is not easy, but you need to be creative, and avoid using the final "e" or "X" or “@”.

Gender: Avoid being sexist by replacing the verb/noun by a phrase. Examples:

Welcome to the Open edX platform! --> Les damos la bienvenida

Change the perspective of the phrase -

I'm the owner of the car --- The car is owned by me - Soy dueño del auto / El auto me pertenece.

Tone: Agreed to be formal, or at least also we can try replacing verbs in the infinitive form when you're giving instructions:

• Open the website - Abrir la página web / Abra.

There is a book which helps a lot to avoid this sexist language in Spanish called "UX writing con empatía de género" which also made some research in different companies, like Rappi, some banks, so I've implemented those techniques in my translations.

Also, I got together with Ana Garcia, and regarding Spanish from LatinAmerica it happens the same, and we've agreed to proceed in the same way.