Bodo to Lingala: person roles must survive a change of sentence order
The person at the end is not automatically the actor
Bodo’s case-marked pronouns provide clues about the people involved in an event. Basumatary gives bi-ɯ aŋ-khɯu liŋhordɯŋ for a third person calling the speaker. The example puts the affected person before the calling predicate. A Lingala rendering should preserve that direction of calling even though its usual simple-clause arrangement is different.
Meeuwis describes Kinshasa Lingala simple sentences as subject, verb, object. A translation can consequently move the affected participant after the verb. That is not itself a loss of the Bodo object marker’s meaning. The useful question is whether the target still identifies the third person as caller and the writer as the person called.
The survey also notes that an independent subject pronoun is normally expressed for contrast, while the verb carries subject marking. A target with no separate equivalent of Bodo bi can still identify its subject. Conversely, an extra independent pronoun might introduce a contrast that a neutral Bodo statement did not intend. Check the verb’s person information before adding a pronoun simply to match the number of source words.
A source plural ending does not predict a single target prefix
Bodo forms ordinary plural personal references differently from honorific ones. Kinshasa Lingala noun plurals instead include several prefix pairs. Meeuwis illustrates mo-konzi and ba-konzi for leader and leaders, and e-lóko and bi-lóko for thing and things. A plural expression in the source does not identify one universal Lingala plural prefix.
For a Bodo message involving leaders and the objects they bring, keep the two kinds of plurality apart. The group of people and the number of objects can change independently. Selecting a plural prefix for one noun does not settle the other, and it does not by itself supply the verb’s subject information.
The account concerns Kinshasa Lingala. Its modifiers do not generally agree in noun class in the way a reader might expect from a broad description of Bantu languages. Some adjectives vary in number, but a translator should not manufacture a full class-agreement pattern from the prefixes visible on the nouns.
With someone is not necessarily ownership
Basumatary distinguishes Bodo -ni for a genitive relation, -nɯ for a recipient and -zɯŋ for accompaniment. These differences matter in an instruction involving someone’s item and the person taking it along. A Lingala connective or preposition can cover several relations, so its repeated appearance need not mean that these source roles have merged.
Meeuwis describes na as serving accompaniment and several other relational functions, alongside its connective uses. The intended reading therefore depends on the target construction. A person accompanying the writer should not become the owner merely because the same short target form can occur in possession-related material elsewhere.
For this pair, the grammatical changes work together: participant order can change, subject reference can reside on the verb, and plural prefixes can differ by noun. Those changes are compatible with a faithful translation only when the original caller, affected person, owner and companion remain distinguishable in the resulting Lingala sentence.
Language references