Bangla to Belarusian: a past-tense ending changes which information it carries
Person in the source, gender in the target
The University of Texas describes Bangla verbs as combining a root with aspect, tense, and person information. Its example kha-cch-il-am means I was eating: the final component identifies the speaker. The same source explains why an explicit আমি can be omitted without making that particular sentence anonymous. A Belarusian past-tense translation needs a different grammatical analysis.
Christian Cardell Marchant’s Belarusian course shows past forms agreeing in gender and number rather than person. Я чытаў and Я чытала both mean I read in a past context, with masculine and feminine speaker agreement respectively. The Bangla first-person ending does not choose between them. Conversely, a Belarusian past form on its own does not identify first person simply because its Bangla equivalent did.
An honorific reference is not evidence of gender
Dimock, Bhattacharji, and Chatterjee present তিনি as an honorific third-person reference that can mean either he or she. In a past-tense narrative, a translator may therefore know that the Bangla writer refers respectfully to someone while still lacking the information required for Belarusian masculine or feminine agreement.
This becomes consequential across several clauses about the same person. Selecting a masculine Belarusian past form in the first clause and a feminine form in the next would introduce an apparent change of referent unsupported by the Bangla. A named person or an established description can resolve the agreement; the respectful pronoun alone cannot. Plural past agreement introduces a separate number decision, rather than solving an unknown singular gender.
My does not keep one shape before every Belarusian noun
The Bangla course gives আমার as a first-person possessive. Changing the thing owned does not require the owner word to acquire the grammatical gender of that thing. Belarusian possessive pronouns, however, decline to match their accompanying noun in gender and case, with separate plural forms.
For example, мой дом means my house, while мая кніга means my book. Both owners are the same first-person speaker; the difference belongs to the nouns and their agreement. A Bangla list of personal belongings can consequently produce several Belarusian forms where the source repeatedly has আমার. Those variations should not be interpreted as different owners, and the nominative forms illustrated here cannot simply be retained after every preposition.
Duration can use a case form without an extra preposition
Marchant’s accusative chapter also describes an accusative expression of duration without a preposition. Its example of living with someone for a month uses месяц directly as the time span. This matters when a Bangla sentence expresses how long a past situation continued: translating the duration does not necessarily require inserting a Belarusian equivalent of English for.
The same chapter distinguishes a construction with за for the time needed to accomplish something. A month of residence and a month allowed for completing a task describe different relationships between time and event. Preserving that relationship matters independently of choosing the correct past-tense gender.
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