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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/33927
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/33927
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

You do (often) have a fourth option: **rephrase the problematic sentence** to avoid gender-marked words.

For example, instead of translating "How are you?" literally into a language like Hebrew that has gendered second person pronouns, rephrase it as, say:

> "How's it going?"

or:

> "Is everything all right?"

or something else that doesn't make a direct reference to the listener, and translate _that_.

This trick works particularly well for dubbing or for translating written works, where someone watching or reading the translated version usually won't have the original available to compare it with. With subtitling, there's a risk that if the rephrased form is too different from the original, and not particularly idiomatic in the target language, some bilingual viewers may notice the discrepancy and either suspect that something odd is going on, or simply wonder what's wrong with the translation.

That said, in many cases you may be able to choose an idiom that sufficiently natural and concise in the target language that any differences compared to the original can pass off as just an attempt to keep the translated version short (important with subtitles!) and idiomatic.

Original score: 6