“Gender Wars” in English to Polish Videogame Translations

Abstract

The paper discusses numerous problems with grammatical genders encountered in-game translations and resulting from the rich and complex structure of gender forms in Polish and most other Slavic languages. The main issues are described precisely and some translator tricks which allow for circumventing them are proposed. Also, some solutions for game developers, enabling the implementation of some gender-dependent functions into localized game versions are recalled from the Author’s practice or suggested anew.