Catalan to Chinese (Traditional): a question is not always a statement with punctuation
Two occurrences of a verb can ask one question
Oxford’s Mandarin grammar describes affirmative-negative questions built around a verb and its negative counterpart. Its shì-bu-shì pattern asks whether a classification is true. The repeated verb does not assert two contradictory facts.
A Catalan question asking whether someone is a student can therefore receive a Chinese construction that looks repetitive in a literal word-by-word reading. Removing the negative or the repetition to make the result resemble the source’s shorter question could alter the construction. Judge whether it requests a yes-or-no decision before editing its apparent redundancy. The Traditional script target does not create a separate question grammar from Mandarin written in Simplified characters.
A question asking who needs a different kind of answer
Oxford separately explains that Mandarin question words occupy the position of the requested information rather than necessarily moving to the beginning. Its description distinguishes asking who performs an action from asking whom someone is looking for.
Catalan CPNL also distinguishes interrogative què from relative què or que. A source clause saying that the writer does not know what someone wants contains a request for missing information inside a larger statement, not simply a yes-or-no question about wanting. A Chinese rendering that replaces the unknown object with an affirmative-negative verb question would ask a different thing. Preserve which participant or object is unknown, even when its target position differs from the source word order.
A short answer can repeat the predicate rather than an independent yes
Oxford illustrates Mandarin affirmative and negative replies through the relevant predicate: shì versus bú shì for a classification question, for example. Its account cautions against expecting one fixed affirmative expression to serve as the natural short answer to every question.
A Catalan sí confirming that somebody is a teacher and another sí confirming that somebody ate refer to different predicates. Their target replies need not be identical. Include the preceding question when translating a detached confirmation, particularly in a conversation switching from professional identity to a meal arrangement. Otherwise the output may confirm a classification when the source confirms that an action occurred.
A description beginning with que may identify a person instead of questioning them
CPNL explains relative clauses as modifiers of an antecedent. Its example about the girl who was hired uses que to identify the girl. An interrogative about which person was hired instead requests identification of someone not yet established.
In a Catalan exchange arranging a meeting with the hired person, mistaking that description for a question can make the Chinese recipient think they are being asked to select or name someone. Conversely, translating a genuine identification question as a descriptive phrase can leave the recipient without a clear request. Preserve the clause’s function before choosing a target question particle or affirmative-negative pattern. Traditional character selection matters for the written result, but it cannot resolve a source question that was misread as a relative clause.
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