Establishing the Most Appropriate, Formal and Academic Filipino Translation of the Term “Male Homosexual”

There are at least seven alternative Filipino translations of the English term “male homosexual,” namely: bading, bakla, bayot, binabae, gay, ikatlong kasarian, and lalaking homosekswal. Each of these alternatives has its strengths and shortcomings. By looking at these alternatives’ acceptability as a Filipino term, precision, formality, and political correctness, this paper attempts to offer the most appropriate Filipino translation of “male homosexual” that may be used without hesitation by any writer/speaker in a formal and academic context. To attain such goal this paper used focus group discussion among selected reputable Filipino experts to generate qualitative thoughts concerning the problem at hand as well as its preliminary solutions. This was followed by an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to generate quantitative answers to the same problem at hand. This was followed by a content analysis of selected journal articles that are written in Filipino and talk about homosexuality. The focus group discussion and the AHP established that the Filipino term bakla is the most appropriate, formal and academic translation of the English term “male homosexual.” This is corroborated by the content analysis that revealed that the same term is the one that is also the most used and preferred term. These findings suggested that the term bakla is the politically correct translation to be utilized in scholarly works.

Keywords – Filipino Male Homosexual, Translation, Bading, Bakla, Bayot, Binabae, Gay, Ikatlong Kasarian, Lalaking Homosekswal.