Bodo to Catalan: respectful address does not select the target verb by number alone
Read the Bodo addressee before choosing a Catalan treatment
Narzary’s description distinguishes ordinary and honorific second-person Bodo forms, and separately distinguishes singular from plural reference. Respect and participant count are consequently two source properties, not one interchangeable signal.
CPNL describes Catalan vostè and vostès as formal address forms, alongside vós in another treatment pattern. A Bodo honorific singular reference must therefore remain an address to one person even if the selected Catalan construction uses a verb form associated with another grammatical person or number. The source’s actual audience must be established before the target treatment is chosen.
Vostè and vós require different grammatical patterns
CPNL specifies third-person verb agreement with vostè and second-person plural agreement with vós. Thus a respectful Bodo source does not determine one universal Catalan polite ending. The appropriate treatment must be applied throughout the target construction.
The distinction is not a reason to reinterpret the Bodo addressee as a third party or a group. Both Catalan treatments can concern the person being addressed. When a Bodo message asks one reader to act, the target can preserve that reader through different conventional agreement patterns without changing who should perform the task. Conversely, mixing their endings can obscure an otherwise clear address.
A gender-neutral source pronoun does not identify ell or ella
Narzary states that Bodo personal pronouns do not display gender distinctions and gives a singular third-person form covering both he and she. A source third-person reference consequently cannot supply a Catalan gender choice merely through its personal-pronoun shape.
CPNL distinguishes ell and ella, with corresponding plural forms ells and elles. Where a Catalan expression requires that distinction, identify the referent from the Bodo passage rather than inventing it. Honorific treatment in the source does not settle the person’s gender. A respected individual can be referred to without the Bodo pronoun itself encoding the target opposition.
An absent target subject is not necessarily a lost source participant
CPNL explains that Catalan personal subject pronouns are often unexpressed because reference is understood from the clause or discourse. A Bodo pronoun therefore need not receive a repeated overt Catalan pronoun at every occurrence. Preserving reference and copying every visible personal word are different tasks.
Narzary’s Bodo paradigm also distinguishes grammatical functions, including genitive forms with -ni. An ownership expression should not be treated as an independent subject simply to retain an overt target pronoun. In this direction, determine who is addressed, who is discussed, and who owns any mentioned item. Then select a coherent Catalan treatment and the reference forms its construction requires. Correctly choosing a formal pronoun cannot compensate for changing one addressee into several or assigning a gender unsupported by the source.
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