woke up thinking several of my recent sci-fi favorites would have trouble with some of their characters’ pronouns if they were to be translated into Ukrainian for a very funny reason
the thing is, “it” in casual use isn’t primarily dehumanising/instrumentalising
it’s affectionate, sort of a diminutive, used in a “not old enough to be gendered” way
so you have anglophone writers using “it” for their characters to underscore that they treat themselves or are treated by others as inhuman instruments
and with Ukrainian (and probably other Slavic languages) you immediately have to deal with that the most widespread use of “it” is for “small child” or “baby /affectionate”
воно таке мале й таке миле
this would be harder to translate for Derin’s Public Universal Friends - there is this whole emphasis on how it is a choice to become one, and the vetting process is decades long. nobody calls a PUF cute; they’re recognized as useful but slightly terrifying in the “I chose to make myself into an instrument” way
and for Martha Wells’ Murderbot this could probably work out of the box, because a lot of the story hinges upon the different perceptions of itself that Murderbot has in comparison to its humans, and a lot of the storyline has humans adopting Murderbot the same way it adopts them. so here the child!it could probably work pretty well
speaking of which i need to get back on a translation project i’ve been procrastinating on