Bulgarian to Icelandic: the chosen verb helps determine the noun form
Do not assign one Icelandic form to every Bulgarian object
Bulgarian has largely lost noun case declension, while Icelandic retains nominative, accusative, dative and genitive. A Bulgarian object can therefore remain visibly stable across different verbs even where its Icelandic counterpart must change case. Translation needs the target verb and its associated noun construction, not just a dictionary equivalent for the noun.
Rögnvaldsson’s paper illustrates this with Ég sé hann, Ég hjálpa honum and Ég sakna hans: seeing, helping and missing the same male referent require different pronominal forms in those examples. For a Bulgarian personal message, determine the action before evaluating the Icelandic reference to the person. Making every target object look identical would erase a grammatical distinction rather than improve consistency.
An experiencer is not guaranteed a nominative form
Icelandic documentation also describes subjects in oblique cases. That is an important warning when translating a Bulgarian description of a feeling, need or experience: identify the target construction before assuming that the person who experiences something must receive a nominative pronoun. The semantic participant and the morphological case are separate questions.
A Bulgarian sentence beginning with a person may prompt a reader to expect a similarly shaped Icelandic beginning. Yet the right translation can preserve exactly the same experience while assigning that participant a case dictated by the Icelandic predicate. This is not an invitation to use any oblique form freely. It means that the selected verb’s documented construction must guide the form instead of the Bulgarian word’s position alone.
A preposition can distinguish two different journeys
Rögnvaldsson contrasts Hann kom með mig with Hann kom með mér. In his examples, the first concerns bringing the speaker along and the second accompanying the speaker. The preposition looks the same, while the pronoun’s case contributes to the different relationship. A Bulgarian transport description therefore needs its participant roles interpreted before the Icelandic wording is settled.
Ask who initiated the movement and how the people travelled in relation to each other. A source description of accompanying a visitor should not become a claim of bringing that visitor merely because a target phrase uses the correct-looking equivalent of with. This is a case where a small target inflection can change the event being reported, not merely its grammatical polish.
Agreement must follow the Icelandic noun selected
Bulgarian and Icelandic both distinguish three nominal genders, but they do not thereby assign identical gender to every translated noun. Icelandic noun phrases additionally require case choices, and its participial forms can carry gender, number and case. Choose the actual Icelandic noun and construction before checking the associated descriptive forms.
In a Bulgarian account of helping, missing or accompanying someone, the central review issue is therefore the relationship expressed by the target predicate. Gender agreement, object case and prepositional case are connected to that construction but are not interchangeable rules. A sentence can retain familiar Indo-European features and still need extensive rebuilding to say the same thing about the same participants.
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