Arabic to Yucatec Maya: distinguish habitual action from what is happening now
A source present-time verb can leave more than one target interpretation
Arabic present-time interpretation can involve a verb form, particles, and context, including whether an activity is habitual or currently happening. Yucatec Maya has its own aspectual constructions. Selecting a target merely because both sentences concern the present can miss the distinction between a routine and an event underway.
UADY uses kin k’aay for habitual singing and tin k’aay for its corresponding current-activity construction. Arabic imperfective morphology alone is not a direction to choose the habitual Maya construction: an imperfective source may describe the performance underway. Read the surrounding Arabic particles and time expressions before choosing between those target patterns. Conversely, a statement identifying someone’s regular activity should not be made into a live report merely because its Arabic verb is translated with an English present-tense gloss. The Arabic distinction between perfective and imperfective is therefore not a two-column replacement chart for the Maya habitual and current patterns.
An Arabic owner suffix needs a complete Maya possession pattern
Arabic can attach personal possession directly to a noun. Yucatec Maya normally uses person markers before a possessed noun, with separate constructions for an ownership claim standing alone. Moving an Arabic suffix to the front of the target word is therefore not enough to translate every sentence about ownership.
The UADY lesson gives intia’al for mine in an answer identifying whose item something is. Bare person markers used with nouns do not provide that same standalone answer. For an Arabic exchange about a document, distinguish this is my document from a reply meaning it is mine after the document has already been named. Retain the same owner while allowing the grammatical construction to change. Also separate the owner’s identity from the number of items. A target marker that looks short does not justify omitting the noun when the Maya construction still requires it.
Maya vowel marks carry distinctions beyond Arabic vowel length
Arabic vowel length is meaningful, but Maya’s Latin-based orthography distinguishes several vowel types and marks glottalised consonants as well. INALI’s writing standard includes short vowels, long vowels, high-toned long vowels, and rearticulated vowels. An Arabic reader should not interpret every Maya accent as an optional aid comparable to short-vowel marks omitted from ordinary Arabic writing.
Keep apostrophes and vowel marks when copying the target sentence. A mark inside a Maya word can describe its sounds rather than introduce a quotation or show possession. The source’s right-to-left direction also does not carry over into ordinary Maya text, which uses Latin writing. Preserve an Arabic personal name through its established representation where appropriate, while leaving the Maya words around it in their own spelling. For an event invitation, the participant’s name, the habitual-versus-current interpretation, and the target’s vowel distinctions should all survive together. A recognisable root without its grammatical and written context is not a complete translated message.
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