MyOtheHedgeFox wrote:nicolae wrote:It has already been stated outright by the devs: the gods don't have explicit genders.
In traditional mythology, gods have them -- or at least have them stated outrightly.
Crawl
does use a mythology of its own, in which gods just happen to be genderless beings.
But -- oh well. What should the translators do with them? Use neutral gender if possible or imagine something on their own?
Several routes are possible:
a) try to enforce genderless translation
This won't work in all languages, and may sound wooden and artificial in others. For example, in German you could say "this god or goddess" but German already tends to use long words and will have enough trouble to stay within the length restrictions without adding artificial means to make texts even longer. I've finally remembered the term "Gottheit", which is sort of gender-neutral (closer than "Gott" in any case), even if it uses the female grammatic gender. That one might actually work.
b) ignore the issue and just use whatever is normally used for unknown gender in the given language
In effect, this is likely to have all gods appear as male in the greater part of languages. I really don't care much for this solution as it would cheapen a part of Crawl's mythology.
c) assign the gods genders as translators see fit
This is likely to result in the gods having different genders in different languages, which might be an indirect way to say "we don't know". This one might very well be the most practical solution.
d) randomize god gender per game
This would complicate the descriptions a bit as they would have to contain placeholders to be replaced with "this god" or "this goddess" as appropriate. Also requires coding to handle gender for all the gods, though that will have to be done for items and monsters anyway. Still, extra work for flavour that might end up confusing people.