Afrikaans to Portuguese for Portugal: carry respect through the verb form
U does not automatically become an explicit você
Afrikaans u supplies respectful address without changing the ordinary present verb to a special person form. Portuguese distinguishes forms associated with tu from third-person address constructions. In Portugal, an explicit você is not a universally neutral equivalent of respectful u; usage varies with social relationship and setting.
For a first message to an unfamiliar customer, a suitable third-person construction may omit an explicit pronoun or use an appropriate title. For a close friend addressed as jy, tu may fit the relationship. Keep the same form of address through questions and requests. Changing only the Portuguese pronoun while leaving a verb from another address pattern can produce an inconsistent message.
This matters in short service questions: the intended respect is part of the source, even if the Afrikaans verb itself provides no visible agreement cue. Do not assume that adding por favor repairs an otherwise unsuitable choice of address. The recipient and relationship determine the construction as a whole.
An ongoing action need not imply a second task
Afrikaans Ek is besig om te lees explicitly describes reading in progress. A natural European Portuguese pattern is Estou a ler. Translating besig separately as busy can unnecessarily suggest that the sender is occupied with another task in addition to reading. The Afrikaans expression may simply mark the ongoing activity.
If the point is that the sender cannot answer immediately because they are busy, retain that practical meaning. If the point is just what they are doing now, the progressive construction can carry it. A bare Afrikaans Ek lees may also describe a habit, so keep nou or a frequency expression when it resolves the difference.
The a-plus-infinitive pattern is common in Portugal, though gerund constructions also exist in regional usage. Do not label every gerund an error. The useful check is whether the chosen sentence naturally expresses the intended ongoing event for the recipient, rather than enforcing a false ban on a grammatical form.
A negative can move a Portuguese object pronoun
Afrikaans Ek het hom gesien and its negative keep hom as an independent object word. In European Portuguese, an object clitic may follow a verb in a simple affirmative construction but precede it when negation triggers that position. Vi-o and Não o vi illustrate this change.
The pronoun still refers to the same person; changing its position does not change who was seen. Do not manually keep the affirmative layout after inserting a negative. Likewise, Afrikaans final nie should not produce a copied final Portuguese negative particle. Translate the single negative meaning within the target’s own construction.
When editing a completed translation, treat a change from confirmation to denial as a sentence revision, not just the addition of one word. The verb, pronoun placement, and time expression must still work together to say whether the encounter happened.
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