Bosnian to Dari: distinguish a desired action from an inferred completed event
Wanting an action does not assert that it occurs
Columbia’s Bosnian course distinguishes želiš, expressing wanting, from moraš, expressing obligation, and možeš, expressing ability or possibility. Their complements can concern the same action without making the same claim about it. A translation should preserve that modal relationship instead of retaining only the action verb.
Baker’s Dari grammar demonstrates desire with a subjunctive complement. His example u mexʌja bɛdawa means that someone wants to run. The desired running is not thereby asserted to be taking place. A Bosnian message about wanting to participate should likewise remain a desire rather than become a report that participation is already occurring.
The source complement pattern need not survive as a target infinitive
Bosnian teaching materials illustrate both infinitival complements and da followed by a finite verb in suitable constructions. Neither surface pattern establishes that Dari should use its dictionary infinitive. Baker’s desire examples instead show a finite subjunctive expressing the wanted event.
For an original Bosnian account in which a parent wants a child to leave, retain both participants. The parent holds the desire; the child performs the desired action. Translating the embedded verb without its participant can turn the sentence into the parent’s own intention to leave. Conversely, a speaker’s wish to travel personally should not acquire another traveler simply because the target has a separate complement clause.
A conclusion about an earlier event is different from an instruction
Baker illustrates a perfect subjunctive with unʌ bʌjad ʌmada bʌʃan, interpreting it as an inference that people must have come. This is a conclusion about a completed event, rather than an order requiring their arrival. The participial construction matters alongside the modal expression.
Consider two original Bosnian messages: one requires visitors to arrive before a meeting; the other concludes from the occupied room that they have already arrived. Both may involve a necessity expression, but only the first places an obligation on the visitors. The second concerns the speaker’s reasoning. The Dari translation needs to retain that difference rather than turn evidence about an arrival into a new demand.
An unrealized alternative should retain its time and status
Columbia’s conditional lesson presents conditional auxiliaries with an L-participle for hypothetical or courteous meanings. Baker distinguishes Dari constructions for desired events from constructions concerning completed possibilities. The label subjunctive therefore cannot, by itself, settle whether the source concerns a present wish, an earlier alternative, or an inferred result.
For a Bosnian reflection about what somebody would have done differently, identify which event failed to happen and when the alternative belonged. A target sentence saying somebody now wants that action changes the reflection into a current desire. Likewise, a tentative conclusion that a visitor has arrived should not become a contrary-to-fact statement that the visitor would have arrived. Preserve the source relationship between desire, evidence, and event time before choosing the particular Dari construction.
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