Category of Gender in English and Ukrainian

When we want to indicate the gender (male – female) of a certain human or animal we add some words to a noun that help to identify its gender:

Male	Female
boy-friend	girl-friend
he-cousin	she-cousin
(he)-wolf = dog-wolf	she-wolf
(dog)-fox	vixen, bitchfox
(he)-goat = (billy)-goat	she-goat = nanny-goat
(bull) elephant	she- (cow-) elephant
(bull) whale	she- (cow-) whale
seal	she- (cow-) seal
pea	pea-hen (пава)
sparrow	hen-sparrow (горобчиха)
partridge	hen-partridge (куріпка)
lobster (омар)	hen-lobster
(buck) hare	doe-hare (зайчиха)
(buck) rabbit	doe-rabbit
(cock) crane (журавель)	crane-hen

There is another group of words in English that have absolutely different words for males and females:

Male	Female
bull	cow
boy	girl
rooster, cock	hen
man	woman
deer	doe – самиця (оленя, зайця, кролика, щура, миші чи тхора), hind
hog, boar (самець домашньої свині)	pig (свиня)
uncle	aunt
bridegroom	bride
alligator	shegator (she-alligator)
sheep	ewe
pigeon	dove
wild boar (дикий кабан)	wild sow (самиця кабана)
nephew	niece
elephant	cow-elephant, elephant cow, she-elephant

Some nouns of the female gender are formed from the corresponding nouns of male gender by adding suffixes –ess, -er and some others:

actor – actress, host – hostess, poet – poetess, lion – lioness, tiger – tigress, leopard – leopardess, widow – widower.

The name of the country when it is considered as a political unit, often belongs to female gender and is replaced by the pronoun she:

England has an unfavourable balance of trade. The value of her imports is much greater than the value of her exports.

Англія має пасивний торговий баланс: вартість її імпорту значно перевищує вартість її експорту.

The word ship - судно, корабель usually belongs to female gender and is replaced by the pronoun she:

The ship left the port in the morning. She has a cargo of coal on board.

Корабель вийшов з порту вранці. Він має на борту вантаж вугілля.

In the following example the category of gender in both Ukrainian and English and their reflection in translation are considered. The category of gender in Ukrainian is expressed much clearer, more exactly and vividly than in English: in Ukrainian indicators of gender are included into nouns (flections or endings), other words correlated with them like adjectives, participles, forms of Past Tense of verbs and pronouns. In English distinctive gender differences are possessed only by personal and reflexive pronouns of the third person singular (he, she, it, his, hers, himself, herself):

I once met a Bulgarian artist. She was tall, stout and already middle-aged.

Якось я познайомився з однією болгарською художницею. Вона була високою, повною і вже немолодою.

Here, the gender of the person is expressed by the pronoun she, in Ukrainian gender is expressed by the inflexional indicators in the forms of eight words. The gender of the person, marked by the pronoun “I” in English is not expressed in any way, and in Ukrainian – познайомив ся.

There are cases, when gender meanings in English text remain unexpressed, but they require clarification and precision in the corresponding Ukrainian equivalents:

A friend of mine has told me about it.

can be translated in two ways:

1) Про це мені розповів один мій знайомий

2) Про це мені розповіла одна моя знайома.

If the gender of a person (the word friend), can not be clarified from the broad context or a situation, then the choice of the Ukrainian equivalent will be to a considerable extent an arbitrary, and determined exclusively by translator’s intuition: teacher – вчитель(ка), student – студент(ка), writer – письменник (письменниця), cook – кухар(ка).

In Harper Lee’s book “To kill a mockingbird” the narration goes on behalf of a girl. But the whole text is written in the first person singular, and this becomes clear for the reader of the original only on the twelfth page of the text, in the end of the first chapter (where the word sister appears for the first time). For the reader of the Russian translation this becomes clear already on the first page as soon as the verb form „я говорила“ appears (in the first sentence of the text).

Even more serious difficulties emerge when the context, even the most extended one, does not contain at all any indicators of gender. As an example, such kind of texts can be found in the sonnets of Shakespeare, which cause much “trouble” to both literature experts and translators. It is known that the majority of these sonnets are built in such a way, that it is unclear from the plot, whether the author appeals to a man or a woman. (Different versions about Shakespeare’s personality exist: as if it was a woman redressed into woman’s cloth or it was a man, who had lovers among men, etc.)

Let us take three sonnets of Shakespeare – 66, 40 and 58:

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