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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/33891
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

The question is not whether the translator knows the true gender, the question is whether the character doing the speaking knows the gender of the person behind the door. If they don't, using the default seems plausible and probably be the best option. If he/she does, they would, in real life, use the correct form. Using the default male conjugations and pronouns would, come the reveal, be retroactively incorrect and can make viewers feel cheated.

A perfect solution would:

- be appropriate, every day language
- not give away the gender of the person
- be consistent with the in-world reality (people who know the gender generally wouldn't make grammatical errors relating to the gender)

None of the three solutions proposed satisfies all three requirements.

A potential solution that does satisfy all requirements, but is not necessarily practically possible regarding the number and type of interactions, would be to, yes, be more creative and explore other formulations or grammatical constructs. Think along the lines of an equivalent of "they" instead of "he" or "she", choice of words that obscure gender (example in spoken french: "mon ami(e)" instead of "ma copine/mon copain"), impersonal statement/questions ("How are things?"), or maybe using a descriptive noun instead of a pronoun (example in French would be to refer to the person behind the door as "the beast" (la bete) and use feminine constructs).

Original score: 52