Catalan to Divehi: what a short answer means in a different writing system
Resolve the Catalan reference before reading the Thaana
A Catalan reply may contain little visible vocabulary while answering a very specific question. CPNL illustrates this with No, no en tinc after a question about siblings: en carries a reference supplied by the question. Translating the reply into Divehi requires that relationship to survive the change of language. The short Catalan form is not a noun naming a sibling, and a target word chosen simply because it resembles en would have no linguistic justification.
The distinction between a language and its speakers provides a useful second example of reference. Maniku records Dhivehi Bas for the language and Dhivehin for the people. If a Catalan exchange concerns speaking a language, the target expression should not silently become an expression about a population. Conversely, a message concerning the people should retain that human reference. The similarity of these Divehi names helps explain their relationship, but does not make them interchangeable.
Apostrophes and vowel marks do different jobs
Catalan pronouns can be attached to commands, as CPNL shows with Gira’t. The apostrophe belongs to the Catalan word formation and spelling convention. A Divehi translation should convey the instruction rather than preserve that punctuation as a detached character in Thaana. This is especially useful when copying brief instructions: a visually small part of the Catalan original may still identify who is involved in the action.
Thaana, the script used for modern Divehi, has obligatory vowel signs. Unicode specifies that a consonant takes either a vowel sign or the sign indicating no vowel. These marks are therefore not optional accents that can be stripped away to simplify a message for a Catalan reader. Maniku’s fen, written ފެން and meaning water, shows a complete written lexical item. Keep its marks with its letters rather than treating the visible consonant shapes as the whole word.
Reading direction changes without reversing quantities
Catalan runs from left to right; Thaana runs from right to left. Unicode nevertheless explains that commonly used European digit sequences retain left-to-right direction within Thaana text. A Catalan quantity should not have its digits manually reversed to match the surrounding Divehi line. The distinction is between the direction of a written passage and the internal order of the number embedded in it. Mixing a Latin name with a Divehi sentence can similarly produce a change of visual direction within one line.
Language names are not instructions to substitute another script
Maniku distinguishes modern Thaana from earlier Divehi writing systems and notes that the language is also spoken in Minicoy, where it is called Mahal. For a Catalan reader, an unfamiliar label or a reference to an older script does not establish that the translation should be Arabic or Sinhala. Use the Divehi wording appropriate to the message. The practical question is whether the translated expression names the language, its speakers or another referent, rather than which better-known language its letters seem to resemble.
Language references