My native language, Bengali, does not have gendered pronouns; but English does. So I was interested to find out how Google Translate would assign genders while translating from Bengali to English.

For my first test, I chose sentences of the form “S/he is very X” where X is a personality / character trait.

The results are quite insightful. The characteristics that are historically considered to be masucline (e.g. bravery, strength, responsibility) are assigned male pronouns. And vice versa, historically female characteristics (sensitivity, empathy, affection) are assigned female pronouns.

The second set of sentences are of the form “S/he is a X” where X is an occupation. Similar to the first set, historically male-dominated occupations are assigned male pronouns. The only occupations with female pronouns are: nurse, health-worker, dancer, tailor, and domestic-worker.