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He said, she said: Which is it? Facebook asks
Social network site Facebook will press members to declare whether they are male or female
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.
社交网站Facebook今后将会要求其会员表明性别，以避免在提到个人会员时使用“他们”或“他们自己”这样含混的语法表达。
该网站在全世界拥有8千万会员，它方便网络用户与选定群组内的朋友或熟人共享个人详细信息，因此在去年人气暴涨。
可是，自从该网站在近几个月从单一的英文界面扩展为15种语言界面以来，Facebook自动处理的会员共享信息中的语法错误越来越多了。
Facebook产品经理纳奥米•格雷特在一份公司声明中表示：“我们从其他国家的译者和用户那里得到反馈说，个人档案中性别不详导致翻译出来的信息让人摸不着头脑。”
在英语里，用户性别未知的时候，Facebook就会默认用复数形式人称代词“they”表达。可是当其他语言里面的复数形式也分男女的时候，这种做法就行不通了。
格雷特写道：“没有表明性别的那些人经常会被弄错。”
如果不清楚用户的性别，Facebook就不知道用哪个代名词通知其他用户添加信息。这个在英语里面普通的问题在那些性别与语法密不可分的语言中被扩大了好多倍。
从现在起，该网站会要求新注册用户在会员基本资料中声明性别。同时也会督促已注册会员这样做。
Facebook为那些不愿意或者认为没有必要表明性别的会员提供一个“隐藏”选项。会员可以选择在其相关活动信息中不显示性别。
格雷特说：“过去这段时间，我们收到了一些群组提出的反对意见，他们认为男女性别区分以后限制太多。”
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