Fifteen male and female members

[marco_on_the_grassland]

Let me share a frustrating memory from 25 years ago when I was working as a scientific and technical translator. I was given a trial sentence by a translation coordination company when I was subcontracting the translation work of another company. The sentence was: "Fifteen male and female members have been dispatched there." I translated this sentence to mean "A total of 15 members, both male and female, have been dispatched." However, the translation company pointed out that this was incorrect and that the correct translation should be "15 males and 15 females." I thought this was ridiculous, so I checked with my English informant (translation collaborator) at the time, who confirmed that "it is impossible for it to mean 15 of each gender in any context." I would like to confirm this again here.

 

[jutfrank]

Which interpretation is the correct one depends on what the speaker or writer means.

You're saying that the company gave you this sentence to interpret entirely without context, right? If so, yes, I completely agree that it's ridiculous to interpret that there were 30 people instead of 15, and if it was really true that the writer did mean that there were 30 and not 15, then the company were either trying to trick you, or were completely clueless in their selection of the trial sentence.

 

[marco_on_the_grassland]

Yep. Of course, although the text I was instructed to translate was not just this sentence, there was no part before or after this sentence that suggested the number of people, and it was impossible to infer that.

 

[Tarheel]

Fifteen is fifteen. It's not thirty.

You're the expert, but since it's from English to English I wouldn't call it a translation. Instead, I would call it a rewrite.

 

[jutfrank]

It's from English to Japanese, @Tarheel.

 

[Tarheel]

I just checked. Nowhere in the OP does it say the translation is from English to Japanese. (As everybody knows, I'm not good at figuring things out. )