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Social network site Facebook will press members to declare whether they are male or female
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Social network site Facebook will press members to declare whether they are male or female, seeking to end the grammatical device that leads the site to refer to individual users as "they" or "themself."
The Internet phenomenon, which boasts 80 million users worldwide, exploded in popularity over the past year as a convenient way for Web users to communicate and share personal details with selected groups of friends or acquaintances.
But grammatical errors in the automated messages Facebook uses to personalize pronouns when members share information with their friends have proliferated since the site expanded from English-only into 15 new languages in recent months.
"We've gotten feedback from translators and users in other countries that translations wind up being too confusing when people have not specified a sex on their profiles," Facebook product manager Naomi Gleit said in a company statement.
In English, when users fail to specify what gender they are, Facebook defaults to some form of the gender neutral, plural pronoun "they." That option is unavailable when the plural is always masculine or feminine in other languages.
"People who haven't selected what sex they are frequently get defaulted to the wrong sex," Gleit wrote.
Unless the gender of the user is clear, Facebook does not know which pronoun to use to notify other members add information to the site. This common English problem is multiplied in languages where masculine and feminine distinctions are grammatically ingrained.
The site will now ask users to specify whether they are male or female on their basic membership profile. It will prompt existing users to define themselves.
Facebook has an opt-out option for members who choose not to specify their gender or do not consider gender to be clear cut. Members can remove mention of gender from messages about their activities.
"We've received pushback in the past from groups that find the male/female distinction too limiting," Gleit said.
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(Agencies)
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社交網站Facebook今后將會要求其會員表明性別，以避免在提到個人會員時使用“他們”或“他們自己”這樣含混的語法表達。
該網站在全世界擁有8千萬會員，它方便網絡用戶與選定群組內的朋友或熟人共享個人詳細信息，因此在去年人氣暴漲。
可是，自從該網站在近幾個月從單一的英文界面擴展為15種語言界面以來，Facebook自動處理的會員共享信息中的語法錯誤越來越多了。
Facebook產品經理納奧米?格雷特在一份公司聲明中表示：“我們從其他國家的譯者和用戶那里得到反饋說，個人檔案中性別不詳導致翻譯出來的信息讓人摸不著頭腦。”
在英語里，用戶性別未知的時候，Facebook就會默認用復數形式人稱代詞“they”表達。可是當其他語言里面的復數形式也分男女的時候，這種做法就行不通了。
格雷特寫道：“沒有表明性別的那些人經常會被弄錯。”
如果不清楚用戶的性別，Facebook就不知道用哪個代名詞通知其他用戶添加信息。這個在英語里面普通的問題在那些性別與語法密不可分的語言中被擴大了好多倍。
從現在起，該網站會要求新注冊用戶在會員基本資料中聲明性別。同時也會督促已注冊會員這樣做。
Facebook為那些不愿意或者認為沒有必要表明性別的會員提供一個“隱藏”選項。會員可以選擇在其相關活動信息中不顯示性別。
格雷特說：“過去這段時間，我們收到了一些群組提出的反對意見，他們認為男女性別區分以后限制太多。”
（英語點津 Helen 編輯） |
