Taking Aromantic Communities beyond English
Written by the AUREA team
Word count: 1310 words
Estimated reading time: approx. 7 minutes
It’s fairly undeniable that large swathes of aromantic circles have their roots in English speaking areas. Resources and articles are most commonly found in English, and our vocabulary tends to come from an English speaking background. Our terms are usually created by English speakers, to be used by English speakers, and sometimes it shows. So what do you do then if you’re an aromantic whose first language isn’t English?
Not too long ago, a legal advisory firm based in Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru named Ungender started a project to make Indian workplaces safe for all genders. While conducting workshops, they realised that people were struggling to grasp concepts related to gender, and often used terms without any real understanding of them. To tackle this problem, the firm began putting together an English glossary of common, unknown, understood, and misunderstood gender terms. However, this could only educate so far, given that only 10% of the Indian population speaks English.
They, along with the youth organisation Aazaadi Foundation International, started to also put together a Hindi gender dictionary of the terms. This proved to be a bit of a challenge, as for many of the words and phrases, this was the first time they had been described and defined in Hindi. They were literally creating the Hindi language for these words.
Aromantic terminology is much the same. Being such a young community, we’re still discovering our own English terms, let alone international translations for them. It’s a challenge we were curious about, so we decided to chat to a couple of the wonderful community members who have helped us with translating the AUREA website, a project that is always ongoing.
Evgeniy (He/She) - Russian
Evgeniy is responsible for most, if not all, of the content available on the Russian version of AUREA. He very graciously shared her process for translating with us, and why she enjoys being able to contribute his language skills to the aromantic community.
“My process for translating is pretty simple - I do a first pass and make sure it conveys the right information, then I read just the translation without the source material and correct any odd-sounding parts. I also like to leave it for a day or so and then come back and do a final check, it helps having a fresh look at things.
I enjoy most of the process of translating – it’s really rewarding to give these words a new form and make information about the aro community accessible to more people. Most English terms were easy to translate - almost all LGBTQ+ terms are transliterated straight from English. There were a few bumps along the way - whether to spell quoiromantic according to its pronunciation or its spelling, how to best translate soft-romo or non-SAM, etc. - but overall it was a painless experience. However, I ran into some problems translating from English, where gender is present in specific terms and pronouns, to Russian, where grammatical gender is found almost everywhere. The problem of gender-neutral language in Russian is a still developing one, and while there are creative solutions that have been gaining traction in recent years, it can still be a struggle to stay neutral because of the way the language is structured. I wanted this information to be accessible to everyone, so I did my best to keep it that way.
It was a very healing experience seeing words describing my experience and my community in my own language. As we are all aware, aros don't have the widest visibility, and the majority of the information and resources we *do* have are in English. I don't notice how having an integral part of my identity described only in a different language can be alienating until I read those same words in Russian - it feels like coming home. I sincerely, truly hope that my work has helped someone else feel that way too. It would bring me great joy to know that I helped someone find their own words for who they are.”
Zuzanna (She/Her) - Polish
Not only is Zuzanna the president of AUREA, she has also done a fair amount of Polish translation for our website, proving she is a person of many talents. Below she discusses both the easy and the hard parts of translating aromantic vocabulary, and the issues that arise when terms are based on words that just aren’t as well known in other languages.
“The English-speaking communities of aromantic people are robust and active. They’re also big and international. The national communities, and especially non-English-speaking ones, in my experience aren’t as big or active or don’t put out as many ideas. The discussion about what to call this and that experience seem to be mostly in English and so English terms grow naturally. If something is useful to many people it catches on and becomes widespread. There’s not as much discussion in my language and if it happens, it’s likely that it’s already happened in English before, and someone suggests an English term to them - and that means there are no organic terms in my language and we’re mostly translating English.
Translating words like demiromantic and other ones with Greek or Latin roots is easier - they’re foreign prefixes in English too and that means I can leave the prefixes be. I’m not a big fan of anglicization everywhere though and for greyromantic, I thought maybe translating the prefix would be better too. I asked people which version they’d rather see - with the “grey” prefix translated or left in English and the majority said that they use and prefer the untranslated version. So in the end, even though I liked the version with the translated prefix more, I left it with grey, since the words are supposed to reflect the community and be for the community and not the other way around.
The word queer, which I like very much, is not very popular in my language. People who’ve never had contact with nonheteronormative people and often even people who have or are nonheteronormative don’t know what queer means. It functions in the nonheteronormative language though. Still, that makes it a problem for a word like queerplatonic (which is not to say that English-speaking people intuitively grasp what it means), especially since the word queer can be used as a verb in it, in the same form that it would be used as a noun or an adjective. It’s hard to reflect that. Plus again, it’s best to take the cue from other users of the language and see if and how they adapted it.
By far the most difficult thing was staying as gender-neutral and inclusive to non-binary people in a gendered language anyway. Also the word to cuddle, which is so often used in English and I’m either unaware of a word that means the same activity in my language or it’s just synonymous with to hug. Which I guess could point to some cultural differences?”
Above are just two looks at the fascinating process of translating for a community that is still forming its own language and concepts. One thing is for certain however, being able to access terms and resources in your own language can be a hugely comforting thing for people. While AUREA’s plan to translate our website into as many languages as possible is very slow going, we believe it is definitely a worthwhile endeavor. If you would like to help us with this project, feel free to click on the volunteer link at the top of the website and send us an application!