Catalan to Arabic: seva identifies the possessed noun without identifying a female owner
A feminine source possessive does not necessarily mean her
CPNL’s Catalan possessive table places la seva under feminine singular possessions for several kinds of owner. The feminine form agrees with what is possessed. It does not independently establish that the owner is female.
Michigan State’s Arabic lesson contrasts كتابه with كتابها for a book belonging to a male or female third-person owner. That target contrast concerns the possessor. A Catalan phrase containing seva therefore needs its owner resolved from the passage before one of these Arabic suffixes is selected. Choosing the feminine-owner suffix solely from the source ending would transfer gender to the wrong participant.
Changing the possession’s gender need not change its owner
Consider an original Catalan account where one man leaves his book in his car. The possessed nouns have their own grammatical genders, but the owner remains the same man. A translation should not infer a new female owner when the source possessive changes with the noun.
The Arabic lesson shows possessive suffixes attached to nouns, including how a noun ending in taa marbuta changes to an open taa before the suffix. The complete target word can thus change in more than one way: its noun shape can respond to suffix attachment while its suffix identifies the possessor. These changes should be analyzed separately rather than read as interchangeable gender signals.
The plural of the possession is different from a plural owner
CPNL lists els seus and les seves for plural possessions, while seu forms can also refer to more than one third-person possessor. In formal written Catalan, llur and llurs specifically require a plural possessor. Even there, the number of possessed things remains a separate matter.
For a source describing two colleagues sharing one office, retain several owners and one office. For a different source describing one colleague’s several offices, retain one owner and several possessions. An Arabic rendering that makes the noun plural cannot compensate for a possessive suffix identifying the wrong ownership group. Determine each number from the source relation rather than treating every plural ending as evidence of several owners.
A Catalan home expression does not assert legal ownership
CPNL explains casa meva as the house where the speaker lives, with the possessive following casa and no article in that expression. The source phrase can identify a home without making a separate statement that the speaker owns the property.
An original Catalan invitation to eat at casa seva may therefore locate the meal at somebody’s home. It should not become an Arabic assertion that the host has purchased the building or holds legal title to it. Likewise, translating the location must preserve whose home is meant when several people have been mentioned. The target suffix can make a possessor distinction more explicit than the Catalan phrase, but that grammatical choice should clarify the intended person rather than strengthen a residential relationship into an unsupported claim of ownership. Read the source noun, its agreement, and its discourse referent as separate pieces of evidence.
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