Amharic to Malay: do not treat every ending as an owner marker
Amharic and Malay suffixes can each have several functions
Amharic third-person possessive marking can coincide with definite marking in some noun forms. Malay -nya also has more than one grammatical function: besides third-person reference, it can participate in emphasis or nominalisation. The presence of an ending in both languages therefore does not establish a direct suffix-to-suffix translation. Interpret the source function first, then evaluate the target construction.
In an Amharic report about a car, the form mekina-w can mean the car or his car depending on context. A Malay rendering should not automatically assert ownership just because the source has that ending. Likewise, do not analyse every target -nya as identifying a male owner. The surrounding noun and predicate determine what the form is doing. This prevents a familiar-looking fragment from introducing an owner, or an ownership distinction from disappearing under an assumption that the source merely marks a known item.
The reader may or may not belong to we
Amharic first-person plural reference does not itself distinguish Malay kami from kita. Kami excludes the addressee, while kita includes the addressee in the group. The difference affects whether an Amharic notice describes the sender’s plan or a joint plan involving its reader. It is a participation distinction, rather than a more formal and less formal version of the same group.
For a message from a service provider, identify who performs each promised action. The organisation’s staff sending a document excludes the customer from the sending group. A proposal that staff and customer discuss the document can include the customer. Repeated first-person plural Amharic reference need not produce the same Malay pronoun throughout if the group actually changes. Preserve the task and its participants together so the target does not turn an internal commitment into an instruction assigning work to the recipient.
Separate location words are not broken source morphology
Amharic can express grammatical relationships through attached material. Malay uses the separate location preposition di in an expression such as di rumah, at home or in the house. The official spelling distinguishes that separate preposition from attached di- in passive verb forms. A target space may therefore be grammatically necessary rather than a failure to preserve the source word as one unit.
When translating an Amharic instruction about where something is kept, check the relationship expressed by the whole Malay phrase. Joining a location preposition to its noun does not make the result more faithful to an attached source form. Conversely, separating a genuine verb prefix would damage a different construction. Keep the source verb with its location or object so those functions remain distinguishable. Word boundaries in the two languages are not a reliable measure of whether the same meaning has survived; the target’s own spelling and grammatical role establish the correct grouping.
Language references