Azerbaijani to Setswana: rebuild agreement around the translated noun
A plural ending becomes part of a larger agreement pattern
Azerbaijani normally forms noun plurals with a suffix, while its descriptive adjective does not change to match a noun class. Setswana organizes nouns into classes whose prefixes help determine agreement elsewhere in the expression. Translating the noun correctly therefore leaves additional work for the words that refer to it.
Compare Azerbaijani insan and insanlar, person and people, with Setswana motho and batho. The target change occurs at the beginning of the noun. It belongs to a class pairing rather than a universal replacement for the Azerbaijani plural suffix. Another noun may use a different pairing, so a rule learned from people cannot be applied mechanically to every object.
The class also matters beyond the noun itself. SADiLaR illustrates setlhare se for this tree: the demonstrative is associated with the tree noun’s class. Azerbaijani bu ağac places the demonstrative before the noun without that class agreement. Replacing the two source words independently can therefore miss both the target arrangement and its agreement relationship.
Reference follows the thing being discussed
Azerbaijani o can identify a person or thing without a masculine or feminine pronoun contrast. This makes it tempting to expect a single equally general target form. Setswana reference may instead depend on the noun class of the antecedent. Identify the earlier noun before choosing a target pronoun or agreement form.
This is grammatical classification, not a claim about biological sex. The prefix in a word for a tree does not make the tree male or female. When translating an Azerbaijani paragraph that switches from a person to an object, target reference must follow that switch even though the source may reuse o.
A practical review is to connect every target referring expression to the noun it represents. In a message about a passenger, a ticket and a vehicle, the nearest source noun is not automatically the intended antecedent. Resolve the source connection first; otherwise, class agreement can make the target look internally consistent while pointing to the wrong participant.
A location is more than a translated place name
Azerbaijani evinizdə and evinizdən distinguish being at your house from movement away from it. Both also identify a possessor. Setswana locative expressions use their own combinations of locative forms and constructions; the Azerbaijani suffix cannot simply be pasted onto a translated noun.
Keep three pieces of source information separate while translating a route: the landmark, its relationship to the owner, and movement or position relative to it. A sentence telling someone to wait at a location has a different function from one telling someone to depart from it. SADiLaR treats locative phrases separately from ordinary noun phrases, which is useful evidence that a location should be checked as a construction rather than an isolated vocabulary item.
The resulting Setswana text may use more separate written elements than the compact Azerbaijani word. That is compatible with preserving the meaning. Equal word counts would be a poor test of whether the owner and the direction have both survived.
Language references