Misgendered in Translation?: Genderqueerness in Polish Translations of English-language Television Series

Abstract

In recent years, the English-speaking world observed growing awareness of the gender non-binary/genderqueer community. Among other things, this involved the issue of inclusive language, e.g. the singular they pronoun has been declared the word of the year by the American Dialect Society in 2015, and by Merriam-Webster in 2019. There is also growing media representation of characters using singular they in popular culture. This, however, poses a challenge to translators, as some languages – like Polish – are much more heavily gendered and lack an obvious equivalent of singular they. This article analyses Polish translations of three English-language television series featuring non-binary characters and discusses good practices one can employ when dealing with similar trans-