I also had a chuckle.
Like, seriously, i deal with these issues in the texts every day.
Today, I translated the famous sutta about the two acrobats protecting each other, SN 47.19. Although this is such a well known sutta, I never realized that the student was a woman. Yep, that’s right, her name is consistently feminine. Yet translators have mostly erased her gender (Ven Bodhi), or changed it to masculine (Woodward). Only Ven Thanissaro gets it right. This is all because of the commentary, which apparently couldn’t grok the fact that a woman could be a professional sportsperson.
Then, in the next sutta, SN 47.20, we have the simile of the janapadakaḷyāṇī. Ven Bodhi translates this as “the most beautiful girl in the land”. Ven Thanissaro has “beauty queen”. Woodward has “the fairest lass in all the country-side”.
Now, the thing is, the word janapadakaḷyāṇī says nothing about beauty. On the contrary, kalyāṇa is the standard word for “good”, as in “morally virtuous”. Sure, it can be extended further than that, but still. A word whose normal connotation is “quality, virtue, goodness” is rendered, by male translators, so as to refer to physical appearance alone.
I don’t mean to suggest that beauty is irrelevant. The janapadakaḷyāṇī is frequently referred to as the supreme object of male sexual desire, and obviously physical attractiveness plays a part. Compare modern terms like “celebrity” or “star”. We assume, rightly or wrongly, that they’re going to be beautiful. But it would be pretty insulting and reductive to simply say “beautiful girl” instead of “celebrity”.
Moreover, the sutta itself emphasizes her skills at dancing and singing. She’s a highly talented and trained entertainer, not just a “beauty queen”.
In addition, translations such as “girl” and “lass” go beyond objectifying to infantilizing. Once again, there is nothing in the term itself to suggest that she’s a “girl”. Maybe she was, but that’s not what the word says.
So how to render? Perhaps “the finest lady of the land” would do.