"A tűzoltók és a rendőrök az áruháznál dolgoznak."
Translation:The firefighters and the policemen work at the department store.
28 Comments
A perfectly suitable gender-neutral way of translating the sentence is: "The firefighters and the police are working by the department store". "Police officers" can also be correctly used, but the word "police" in this context is perfectly fine.
I feel that female police officers might take offence at the presumption "rendőrök" are men only, can "the police" not be an acceptable answer?
I don't think that "police" or "fire" alone would do the job. Why not firemen and firewomen and policemen and policewomen, firefighters and firefightresses, etc... everywhere in DL?
"The police" or "police" are the standard (non-offensive) shorthand way of describing "police officers" in spoken and written English e.g "Police attended the scene of the crime a short time later." or "The police were on the scene within minutes". "Firefighters" is the equivalent gender non-specific term.
The reasons why no-one would say "firemen and firewomen" are that a) firewoman/firewomen are words that don't exist in English b) its and incredibly long-winded way of saying something and c) you are unnecessarily making a distinction regarding the sex of the individuals fighting the fire (which is generally irrelevant- and if truly necessary for some purpose can be done through other means).
The alternative, using non-inclusive language e.g "policemen" when there is the possibility (or reality) of a mixed group of individuals is insulting to women. My concern about giving the translation of "rendőrök" as "the policemen" in English is that nonnative speakers will think its acceptable to use non inclusive terms and then if they repeat them may come across as uneducated or rude.
I know that there are different terms for occupations in Hungarian depending on the sex of the individual e.g. "rendőr" and "rendőrnő" much like in English there was (and amongst some older individuals probably still is) e.g. manager - manageress. I'm obviously not a native Hungarian speaker and am interested to know how this is managed in spoken and written Hungarian, particularly with respect to describing mixed sex groups of individuals within an occupation (? how it should be managed).
So policeman is "offensive"? I lived in England for many years and I have never heard such a statement. Is this specific to American English? You should remind this to Mr. Trump because he is using it all the time. I lived in the US as well and I have heard many educated people talk about firemen during the 9/11 dramatic events (they must just have been rude). By the way, the word firewoman exists in American English (Farlex).
I find it a bit excessive (to avoid the word outrageous) to state that a native English speaker may think that someone is rude or uneducated because he/she is using a non inclusive term. If that native English person is intelligent enough, he/she should recognized that he/she is being addressed in a language which is not the mother tongue of his/her interlocutor. This means that, maybe unlike him/her, the non-native English person speaks at least two languages.
As for the female police officers or firefighter who are learning Hungarian here, they have the opportunity to propose their own politically correct answer, as we all do. Did I write enough "he/she" to prove that I am not rude or uneducated? To finish this, too long, comment, I do think that this type of issue should be discussed in another forum. DL has enough work to do to correct the "real" mistakes to complete the final version of Hungarian.
The current trend in America is to avoid terms that are gender specific. We would definitely say "the police" for plural. The term police officer is now preferred to policeman or policewoman. In general, you could say "The police responded to the emergency" or "Police officers responded to the emergency" or "A police officer responded to the emergency." Similarly, we rarely use fireman anymore. The preferred term is firefighter since it is gender neutral. We no longer say waitress/waiter as the preferred term is now server. Steward or stewardess is also gone, replaced by flight attendant. The move towards being "politically correct" in everything in America is a bit overdone in my opinion but that is how it is. All that said, I was also thinking that "the police" should be an acceptable answer here.
Yes, another trend is to use "America" instead of USA. Canada is also in America; we still tend to be more relaxed about the use of non-gender specific terms, probably like the 75% of non-US native English speakers, speaking English either as a first or second language in the rest of the world.
It's not really a matter of being inoffensive, but being more accurate. Since the gender isn't expressed in the Hungarian statement, I believe firefighters and police would be the more accurate translation. And good luck trying to remind Trump of anything!
Language changes when there's a need for it. Decades ago there weren't as many women working in the police or fire departments, so there wasn't a big push to adapt the language. The more important issue was that women weren't often being hired to do those jobs. But that's changed (and is still changing), so the language has evolved to reflect that. Therefore, it's reasonable to expect that someone will write "police officer" to translate "rendőr". We all know how frustrating it is to get a translation completely right, and then have it be rejected because we included a (valid) word that isn't accepted. Fortunately, this discussion is an old one, and I think the gender-neutral words are accepted in almost all cases now.
That's a problem with English, there's no elegant way to refer to someone in the third person if you're using a pronoun. Unfortunately, we don't have "ő."
The term "police" (typically for the plural) is definitely in everyday usage in the media here in the USA, for example: "The police were at the scene until 4:00 a.m."
Australia is the same. I would allow "police" as the plural for policemen, policewomen, or a combination of the two.
I can't imagine "firefightress" ever being used, since even some actresses in the U.S. now prefer to be called "actors".
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"Firemen and firewomen..."
Welcome to German where all jobs have always been gendered and you are now legally bound to use both (in job ads) because the formerly used terms which probably just reflected the reality of the average gender in that profession were not considered inclusive. This has and probably will not change a bit the reality that almost no women want to work in engineering and on the other hand that most nurses are female. But still any company has to search for engineer/"engineeress" and male nurse/ nurse.
Terrible practice. Instead of real inclusion and getting to illusionary desired quotas, which just can't be forced, it pretends to include now and annoys probably almost everyone, incl women.
Thankfully English probably can't have this problem to that extend since there is no "male" article and Hungarian is so far rather relaxed about gendering.
Yes, Hungarian is ahead of English in this way. The third person singular pronoun is the bane of every English-language writer's existence.
As far as professions are concerned, people have sometimes just created new terms out of existing words such as "firefighter" and "police officer." I don't understand why these terms have to be gendered. Tűzoltó and rendőr aren't inherently gendered.
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I would not say it is ahead. It just never went there? Or has there ever been gendered pronouns in Hungarian? And while rest of Europe was busy making witch hunts, Hungary decided to go ahead and eliminated their gendered third person?
Funnily enough that is easy in German, everything is gendered, except "man" which is NOT man, but any human being, singular and plural. Translated to az ember or az emberek in Hungarian (odd) and you, one, they, someone or somebody in English (also odd).
Does this sentence just mean that the police are working near the department store or could it also mean that the Department Store employs them?
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Az áruháznál dolgoznak means only the place where they work (near the department store), az áruháznak dolgoznak - the department store (an institution) employs them, but they can work anywhere, e.g. a driver, az áruházban dolgoznak - they work inside and, most likely, they are employees. EDIT: One more thing: étterem, áruház, gyár are buildings, they don't employ workers and people work inside them, near them... If a person, let's call him Mikó, has a restaurant then the ones who work for him 'Mikónál dolgoznak' or 'Mikó éttermében dolgoznak'.
The adessive case -nál/-nél expresses a position near or in the vicinity of someone/something.
This example tells us only that the police officers and fire fighters are working at/near the store. Perhaps the store is burning. There is not enough context to know definitively whether or not they are employees of the store.
If the example were "Az eladók az áruháznál dolgoznak", one could reasonably assume that the sales assistants work for the store. The Mikó restaurant examples above also convey employment.
But the sentence in the example, standing by itself without context, does not denote/specify employment, only location proximity.
I'm shocked that 'fire fighter' and 'police officer' are invalid. This is 2016, how very sexist.
If your doing a language app and calling an accurate translation sexist....... Smh
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Are they working inside the store or outside next to the store. For example the fireman with a hose on the outside and the policeman stopping people from getting too close to the fire. Or are they actually employees of the department store?
I am confused by the ending: -nal. It seems sometimes it means "by" and sometimes "in." When I put that the translation was "the firefighters and police officers work by the department store," it was wrong. It seems that in other lessons when I have put that something is "in" when it is written "-nal" it is wrong.
