No, I was not aware of that.Some translators will contact me to ask me what my intentions were about particular things, and sometimes tell me cool things about how their own language poses problems that English wouldn't (for instance, some languages gender verbs, so that sentences were I could totally avoid referring to a character's gender in English, that's not possible in some languages).Some I never hear from, just sometimes a copy of the translation will eventually turn up in the mail--which I can't read, because I have only some badly-remembered high school Spanish and a bit of German, which I took in college, but neither is enough to do more than say "hello, thank you, where's the bathroom."I have no idea why the translator would have made such an inexplicable choice.EDITED TO ADD: Some folks have taken a look at a few pages of the French edition for me, and it appears that the translator has actually done something kind of interesting, though I might for various reasons quibble with it. He appears to use masculine forms for ships--because ship in French is masculine, apparently? I know not. But.Breq refers to people in the feminine unless she's speaking a non-Radchaai language. But ships appear to be referred to in the masculine, and she refers to herself this way, which, if the translator is using the masculine to stand in for the English "it" would make a good deal of sense.So if that's what was happening, I'm not to worried about it, it's an interesting choice. I would feel differently if Breq was gendering characters throughout the book, or if, say, Seivarden were referred to with masculine forms throughout the book, which doesn't appear to be what's going on.EDITED AGAIN TO ADD Here's a really interesting comment by someone who has read the French translation. http://sigaloenta.tumblr.com/post/141... I am even more convinced that the French translator did some really interesting things with pronouns and I'm perfectly happy with what he's done.