Bulgarian to Tatar: ownership moves onto the possessed noun
Моя книга becomes a noun with a possessive suffix
Bulgarian моя книга means “my book.” Its possessive agrees with feminine книга. Tatar китабым expresses “my book” through a first-person possessive suffix attached to the noun itself. The Tatarstan Academy’s paradigm contrasts китабым, китабың, and китабы for “my book,” “your book,” and “his or her book.” These endings identify the possessor rather than reproduce Bulgarian feminine agreement.
The third form does not itself distinguish a male from a female owner. Bulgarian неговата книга and нейната книга make that contrast explicit through different possessive stems. A Tatar rendering can consequently use the same possessive noun form where Bulgarian has distinct words. Whether the owner’s identity must be restated depends on the intended reference, not on the Bulgarian noun’s gender.
A genitive owner and a possessive noun are not redundant pieces
Bulgarian can introduce a named owner with на. Tatar has a genitive marker on the owner, alongside possessive marking on the thing owned in relevant constructions. Those two positions represent the two participants in the relationship. They should not be reduced to a single replacement for Bulgarian на on the assumption that any additional suffix repeats the same word.
The Academy also distinguishes possession from its six-case system. A possessive suffix answers who owns the thing; a case suffix helps express the noun’s role in the larger sentence. A book belonging to someone can simultaneously be an object of reading, a source, or another participant. The corresponding target structure can therefore require more information on one noun than Bulgarian ordinary noun morphology displays.
The suffix may leave the number of owners unresolved
Burbiel explains that a form with -лары or -ләре can have more than one interpretation: a plural possession associated with one owner, a possession associated with several owners, or plural possessions associated with several owners. The surrounding context and explicit possessor phrase resolve the intended relationship.
Bulgarian separately distinguishes неговите деца, “his children,” from техните деца, “their children,” and can distinguish техният син, “their son,” from plural sons. Treating one Tatar suffix as an automatic one-to-one equivalent of Bulgarian “their” would ignore the contribution of the noun’s plural structure. A translated family description needs both questions answered: how many people own or are related to the referent, and how many referents are meant.
Свой has a useful parallel, but not the same form
Bulgarian свой refers back to the subject as possessor in appropriate constructions. Burbiel distinguishes a Tatar subject’s own possession through үз in possessive constructions from a possession associated with another person. This is a reference distinction rather than a new masculine or feminine ending.
For example, Bulgarian Той видя своя приятел identifies the friend as his own, while a different possessive can point to another person’s friend. The target must keep that reference while using Tatar’s own possessive arrangement. Familiar Cyrillic letters make the two versions easier to compare visually, but they do not turn Bulgarian possessive words into equivalent Tatar grammatical units. Agreement, possessor identity, number, and subject reference remain separate parts of the translation.
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