Bodo to Greek: a suffix marking the recipient does not make that person the owner
The source distinguishes participant relations
Basumatary’s Bodo study illustrates accusative, dative, genitive and sociative marking on pronouns. A Greek translation should therefore recover whether a person is affected, receives something, owns an item or accompanies somebody before selecting the target construction. These relations cannot be inferred merely from recognising the same person in several clauses.
The Greek documentation describes direct objects in accusative and indirect objects in genitive in its overview. A Bodo recipient should therefore remain a recipient rather than become the owner of a nearby noun just because a Greek construction uses genitive material. Case terminology identifies a form, while the complete construction establishes its function.
An incorporated family anchor can need explicit expression
Basumatary’s examples ada and bida identify my elder brother and his or her elder brother. A Greek translation must retain that family anchor even when the Bodo source does not place a separate owner pronoun before the kinship term. Translating only elder brother can leave the intended relationship unresolved.
A source request to give something to another person’s brother contains both possession-like family reference and a recipient relation. The Greek target must express whose brother is involved and who receives the item. Do not let an indirect-object form accidentally become the sole ownership expression, since that would merge two distinct source relations.
The copula and an existential verb do different work
The Greek documentation distinguishes copular είμαι from typically existential υπάρχω. A Bodo statement identifying who somebody is should consequently be separated from a statement that somebody exists or is available in a situation. A broad English explanation using be does not determine which Greek relation is needed.
This matters in a family exchange that first identifies a relative and then says whether a suitable helper is available. The relative’s identity and the availability claim should not collapse into a single target predicate. Recover which proposition the Bodo sentence actually asserts before selecting a familiar Greek verb.
Word order alone does not identify the acting participant
The Greek overview notes that case marking supports different word orders and that topicalised objects may occur with an object clitic. A Bodo actor–recipient event therefore cannot be translated by assigning the first Greek noun the actor role automatically. The target forms and construction must preserve the recovered source roles.
If the source foregrounds an item or a recipient, a changed target order need not change who performs the action. Conversely, copying a source order without the appropriate Greek forms can reverse the relation. Keep the family anchor, the person receiving and the person acting distinct throughout the sentence. That produces a Greek translation of the actual Bodo arrangement rather than a string containing the right people in the wrong relationships.
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