Asexual terminology in alternate languages

[Robin L]

I'm just wondering if Chinese is the only language having translation problems. The terminology for sexuality and attraction seem to originate from western languages, so it's harder for eastern languages.

[A Taste of Harmony]

I don't know where to start with Korean, either.

Currently I'm not looking into much communities in Korean, but it's just so different to English.. *sigh*

Not sure about Japanese though.

[howyoufeel_org]

I have written a little on Swedish

http://www.howyoufeel.org/?q=sv

[Guest member25959]

I know that the German AVEN's interpretation of "does not experience sexual attraction" is something totally different

[ithaca]

This is really interesting. In English "asexual" means both the person who does not feel sexual attraction, and a kind of reproduction mostly used by bacteria/amoebas/etc. In Italian we have different words for these 2 concepts: "asessuale" for the orientation, and "asessuato/a" for the reproduction, but it's also used to refer to organisms without sexual organs. Even though we do use "asessuale", it's such a new term (literally) that many many people (in the press and IRL) just say "asessuato/a" and get confused thinking we have no genitals, or at least no sex whatsoever.

We also had, as most languages I think, to bring gray-asexual as it is: gray-asessuale, because translating gray only made it worse

As far as demisexual goes, we had a little discussion whether it was better translated as "demisessuale" or "semisessuale" and we went with the former.

[Robin L]

The problem with Chinese is, 「無性戀」means both asexual and aromantic. We are trying to come up with terms for "romantic", but they sound awful and pointless to me, even the ones that I invented.

Add in "demi-", "gray-", and other relationship stuff, and things just turn into a giant jumble. This is now taking up a lot of my brain power.

[Lord Happy Toast]

Are there many Korean language asexual communities? I first found AVEN in Fall 2007, and at the time I was taking 3rd year Korean, so I tried to find some Korean language asexual communities to improve my Korean. (I would use the language a lot more if it was something I used for communication, and not just an object of study.) However, I couldn't find any at the time. A couple years ago, I looked again and found one. I think it's a members only group, so I managed to create an account and get the moderator to let me join, but I haven't looked at it in a while (and I've forgotten my login...)

I've only taken one semester of Chinese, but I definitely plan to study more when I get a chance to again. I very briefly asked a Chinese linguist I know, who suggested the term 无性爱吸引恋, though it is rather long.

[A Taste of Harmony]

In Korean it's same as what what RobinL said. In Korean characters it's written as 무성애.

And the link Lord Happy Toast has posted, that's the only community I'm aware so far as well, but again it's been a while I looked up asexuality in Korean. I'm not a member in that community yet. I hoping to discover more.

[Notte stellata]

The problem with Chinese is, 「無性戀」means both asexual and aromantic. We are trying to come up with terms for "romantic", but they sound awful and pointless to me, even the ones that I invented.

Yeah, it's a problem with all the sexual orientation terms in Chinese. The -sexual root in English became 戀 in Chinese, which is closer to romantic attraction. It's not such a big deal in hetero-, homo-, and bi-sexual orientations, because most people's romantic orientations match their sexual orientations anyway. But when it comes to asexuality, it gets super confusing.

I very briefly asked a Chinese linguist I know, who suggested the term 无性爱吸引恋, though it is rather long.

I think 无性吸引 would be better. It literally means "no sexual attraction." I think the character 恋 should only be used in romantic orientation terms, but that would require a total reform of all the existing sexual orientation terms...

[_9000]

This seems like an old post, but I just wanted to add just in case the original poster wanted to know.

In Korean, asexual is 무성애자 (moo-seung-ay-ja) and the only known asexual community is this: http://cafe.naver.com/asexual/

Although there are 1 or 2 posts almost daily, it seems like there aren't much meet ups and discussions.

Also, since you have to have Naver ID(in which you have to put social security number and all of personal info), I didn't feel secure/confident enough to join the community.