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English nouns which don't denote people or animals with natural gender do not (apart from a few rare examples) use grammatical gender. So for example, "table" is always an "it" in English, whereas it could be masculine or feminine in another language.
So, is English missing out by not using genders in this way? If so, are there sentences which cannot be translated into English without losing some of their meaning?
Well, obviously you can't translate many things literally, as you would constantly end up with sentences such as "it gave it to it" in English, where in the source language with genders you have a perfectly clear "she gave it to him".
However, there are usually easy ways around this, the most obvious one being: kick out the pronouns and replace them with nouns. "The cat gave it to the kitten." If anything, you gain meaning by doing that (though you might waste quite a few syllables if you're translating a poem).
To me, this question sounds a lot like "How could one possibly translate from English to a language that doesn't have articles?" To which any professional translator should answer: "Without breaking a sweat".
[Disclaimer: I am a native speaker of two languages, one with genders but without articles, and one with genders and articles.]
Edit.
Here's an example I should have thought of right away. It is still not quite what you are looking for, but I'm getting closer step by step.
Imagine any TV show where several candidates compete for whatever the prize is. The host is about to announce who is going to proceed to the next round. He says, "I have good news for one of you", or "The last one to reach the final is...", or something to that extent. Now, in many languages with genders he could give a subtle hint by using either the female or the male form of "one" (un/une, einer/eine, один/одна, um/uma, etc.). In English, the equivalent would be something along the lines of "I have good news for a male candidate", or "The last one to reach the final is a female, and her name is...". Which, of course, wouldn't be anywhere as succinct, and not subtle at all. The closest you could get to that kind of hint in English would be "I have good news for you guys", or "The last one of you gals to reach the final is...", but that still doesn't quite cut it (even if we ignore for a moment that guys does not necessarily refer to males).
In fact, in order to avoid giving any hints accidentally, in those languages it is quite common for the host to say "I have good news for one or one of you", or "The last one or one to reach the final is...", where the first one is the male form, and the second one is the female form. When translating that into English, you'd just drop one of the ones, so that one or one become one — which, of course, is more succinct without losing meaning, but the original expression is not really translatable "as is".
Edit 2.
Here's yet another example.
In German, a language with grammatical genders, there is quite a lot of confusion going on whenever you want to say that Angela Merkel is the first chancellor to do something. Normally, Angela Merkel is referred to as die Bundeskanzlerin, a female form of the noun der Bundeskanzler, or "female chancellor" for short. So, naturally, the first thing you try is "Angela Merkel ist die erste Bundeskanzlerin, die X macht" ("Angela Merkel is the first female chancellor to do X"). However, that sounds kind of pointless, because Merkel is the first female chancellor ever, so no matter what she does, she can't help being the first female chancellor to do it.
In order to avoid that pointlessness, journalists sometimes use the male form of chancellor: "Angela Merkel is der erste Bundeskanzler...". Grammatically, this is probably the most sensible thing to do. However, to many Germans this sounds strange, and even funny, much like saying "Angela Merkel is the first man to do X".
In order to avoid that confusion, some political commentators bring the adjective weiblich ("female") into the equation: "Angela Merkel ist der erste weibliche Kanzler, der X macht". However, this brings us right back to where we started ("Merkel is the first female chancellor to do X"), in addition to introducing yet another bit of humor, because the sentence now reads much like "Merkel is the first female man to do X".
As if that weren't enough already, some political commentators completely overdo it by using both the adjective "female" and the female noun, as in "Angela Merkel ist die erste weibliche Bundeskanzlerin, die..." ("Merkel is the first female female chancellor to..."). This, of course, is the most stupid thing they could possibly do, but it's also the funniest, since it sounds much like "Angela Merkel is the first female woman to do X".
I am fairly confident I could come up with lots of similar examples in other languages with grammatical genders (say, French or Russian). By not having genders, English completely avoids that type of confusion, but it also misses out on all the humor associated with it.
This isn’t really an answer to the question, but I wanted to point out that grammatical gender is but one type of noun class system, and non-Indo-European languages often have completely different and far more complex systems of noun classes. One example from the Wikipedia article on noun classes,
The Dyirbal language is well known for its system of four noun classes, which tend to be divided along the following semantic lines:
I — animate objects, men
II — women, water, fire, violence
III — edible fruit and vegetables
IV — miscellaneous (includes things not classifiable in the first three)
Which brings to mind Borges’s “Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge’s Taxonomy”:
These ambiguities, redundancies, and deficiencies recall those attributed by Dr. Franz Kuhn to a certain Chinese encyclopedia called the Heavenly Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge. In its distant pages it is written that animals are divided into
(a) those that belong to the emperor;
(b) embalmed ones;
(c) those that are trained;
(d) suckling pigs;
(e) mermaids;
(f) fabulous ones;
(g) stray dogs;
(h) those that are included in this classification;
(i) those that tremble as if they were mad;
(j) innumerable ones;
(k) those drawn with a very fine camel's-hair brush;
(l) etcetera;
(m) those that have just broken the flower vase;
(n) those that at a distance resemble flies
The linguist George Lakoff discussed Borges in view of Dyirbal in his book Women, Fire and Dangerous Things:
Borges of course, deals with the fantastic. These not only are not natural human cateogires—they could not be natural human categories. But part of what makes this passage art, rather than mere fantasy, is that it comes close to the impression a Western reader gets when reading descriptions of nonwestern languages and cultures. The fact is that people around the world categorize things in ways that both boggle the Western mind and stump Western linguists and antropologists.
This brings me back to original question—what a strange idea it is to me, as a native English speaker, that one would assign gender to inanimate objects.
There's a joke in French that it's pretty much impossible to translate into English because of this problem:
So one guy says to another "Regard, le mouche". The other guy replies "C'est la mouche". The first guy turns, impressed: "You've got good eyes."
OK. It's not a great loss to the English language, but still...
"Cosí fan tutte" (Title of an opera by Mozart). A concise English translation is "That's what they all do" - except that this does not convey that it is all females only.
I can think of a relatively dull example. I used to work for an agency that built the websites for Marks & Spencer.
Whilst I was working there, M&S introduced a new range of women's clothes called Per Una and it really used to bother me that they struggled to translate it elegantly — they generally used For One Woman, whereas I think For Her would have been a more elegant translation, personally.
One example from German literature that would be very hard to translate accurately is "das Mensch". It is grammatically incorrect on purpose. "Mensch" is male, not neuter. The intended meaning is that this person is a mere thing and not a real human being.
This article gives a number of possible answers:
In 1994, the city of Buchholz had to put up with this reproach from the local newspaper, the Oldenburgische Volkszeitung. The 34,000 inhabitants of this small community had resolved that, henceforth, all official documents would use only the feminine grammatical form. The mayor Joachim Schleif became the butt of the media’s language hysteria
[...]
Again and again, grotesque new locutions were used so as to make gender-sensitive language ridiculous. Now Mitglieder (members) and Mitgliederinnen( [“members” in the feminine grammatical form) appeared at meetings, Grüninnen (member of the Green party in the feminine grammatical form; something like “she-Green”) pursued a sustainable politics, and suddenly one spoke even of Menschinnen (feminine grammatical form of the generic noun for “human beings”), Bürgerinnensteigen (pun, using the feminine grammatical form for the German word for “pavement”) Nichtraucherinnenabteilen (“non-smoking compartment” in the feminine grammatical form), Amtsmänninnen (“office-holder” in the feminine grammatical form) and Erstsemestlerinnen (“freshwomen”).
In these cases, the feminine grammatical gender is used improperly in order to create humor. In the native language, where the correct gender is obvious, the humor is obvious. In English, the joke requires additional explanation.
When speaking English, I often find myself having to add female/male or even names to help the listener understand that I’m talking about a man or a woman. In English you can’t just say: “I have a new friend” because the listener has no idea if it is a male or a female (not that it always matters, but still…).
This type of confusion can be seen among new English students (that speak Spanish), as they are not sure if it’s he or she. This is a small example in a sea of situations that can arise from the lack of gender in the English language.
