Abstract
Gender inequality is embedded in our communication practices and perpetuated in translation technologies. This becomes particularly apparent when translating into grammatical gender languages, where machine translation (MT) often defaults to masculine and stereotypical representations by making undue binary gender assumptions. Our work addresses the rising demand for inclusive language by focusing head-on on gender-neutral translation from English to Italian. We start from the essentials: proposing a dedicated benchmark and exploring automated evaluation methods. First, we introduce GeNTE, a natural, bilingual test set for gender-neutral translation, whose creation was informed by a survey on the perception and use of neutral language. Based on GeNTE, we then overview existing reference-based evaluation approaches, highlight their limits, and propose a reference-free method more suitable to assess gender-neutral translation.
Abstract (translated)
性别不平等在我们的交流实践中得以体现，并通过翻译技术得以延续。当翻译成语法性别语言时，机器翻译（MT）通常通过不必要的二元性别假设导致固有男女性别表现。我们的工作关注于满足日益增长的对包容性语言的需求，重点关注从英语到意大利的性别中立的翻译。我们从基本点入手：提出一个专用的基准并探讨自动评估方法。首先，我们介绍GeNTE，一个自然且双语的性别中立测试集，其创建受到了关于中立语言感知和使用情况的一项调查的启发。基于GeNTE，我们 then 概述了现有基于参考的评估方法，指出它们的局限性，并提出了更适用于评估性别中立翻译的免费方法。
URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.05294
