Bodo to Thai: the owner and the speaker can require different personal choices
A compact family word does not reveal the writer’s gender
Bodo apha means my father in Basumatary’s account, while ada means my elder brother. Those expressions identify a family relationship and its first-person anchor. They do not independently say whether the writer is male or female. A Thai target using a gender-associated first-person expression must not obtain that information merely from the relative’s sex.
Hartmann and Hudak discuss Thai phom and dichan as first-person forms associated with male and female speakers. Their profile also notes the use of kinship terms and titles as personal substitutes. A Bodo message from a woman about her father should not acquire a male speaker simply because the relative is male.
The practical distinction is between the person described and the person speaking. If the target names a family member and expresses my through a first-person form, the form concerns the writer, not that family member. Where the source leaves the writer unidentified, avoid claiming that a gendered target choice was explicitly supplied by the Bodo expression.
The companion and the owner can occupy different target phrases
Bodo uses -ni in an owner expression and -zɯŋ for accompaniment. A source can therefore distinguish someone’s child from the person who goes with that child. Thai expresses personal and possessive relationships through its own word order rather than by retaining those source case endings.
The NIU profile gives luuk phom for my child. Its separate count expression luuk saam khon denotes three children through a noun, number and classifier pattern. An owner expression and a counting expression consequently supply different information, even when both involve the same child noun.
A Bodo message about three children travelling with the writer needs both the quantity and the participant relation. A target phrase meaning my child alone would lose the number and might change companionship into parenthood. A phrase counting children alone would leave the companion or owner relationship unresolved. Identify those roles before deciding how the Thai phrases should combine.
The position of a small word can alter the event
Basumatary’s Bodo tomorrow example places gabɯn explicitly in a future travel statement. Thai also uses separate time expressions and grammatical words rather than a tense ending corresponding mechanically to the source predicate. A preserved time word is valuable, but the other elements still need their target order.
The NIU profile contrasts a negative expression with daay before the going verb, meaning did not go, with one where daay follows it, meaning cannot go. The distinction is between an event not occurring and lack of ability or possibility. It cannot be solved by finding the same individual words in both strings.
For a Bodo explanation of travel arrangements, preserve whether the writer reports a missed journey or says the journey is impossible. Then keep the correct speaker, companion and quantity of people. This direction combines several independent decisions: who says I, whose relative is mentioned, who goes together, and what the predicate actually claims. A Thai sentence can use plausible personal vocabulary while getting any one of those relationships wrong.
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