Catalan to Hindi: a past event does not guarantee agreement with the actor
Perfective constructions can select object agreement
Catalan past constructions can identify a completed event without requiring the actor to be expressed through an ergative postposition. Hindi can use ne in transitive perfective constructions, and its agreement can then follow an unmarked object. A target feminine ending does not necessarily identify a female actor.
The Hindi Skeleton Grammar illustrates usne cīnī khāī, he ate sugar, with feminine agreement matching sugar. The person remains the eater. A Catalan reader should not infer the person’s gender from that Hindi verb ending independently of the construction.
The IEC describes Catalan cantà and va cantar as alternative past forms. When translating a source past report, first establish the event, actor and object, then select the Hindi construction appropriate to the predicate. The source’s past status alone does not supply the target agreement controller.
In a report involving a man and a feminine-gendered object, a target verb agreeing with that object can be faithful. In another construction, agreement may follow the subject. The same event vocabulary does not justify applying one agreement rule to every Hindi past sentence.
Object marking can change the available agreement
The Skeleton Grammar contrasts its sugar example with an object marked by ko, where the verb takes a default masculine singular form rather than agreeing with that object. Selecting target object marking and selecting agreement are therefore connected decisions.
A Catalan source can identify a specific object through an article or another determiner, but the Hindi construction must determine whether ko is appropriate. It should not be inserted merely to produce a familiar-looking verb ending, nor omitted solely to make agreement resemble the source noun’s gender.
If the source contains an owner as well as an actor, keep those relationships distinct. The IEC explains that Catalan possessive endings agree with the possessed noun. A source feminine possessive and a target feminine verb can consequently concern the item in different ways; neither independently proves that the owner or actor is female.
The translator must preserve who acts, who owns the item and how the item is marked as an object. A grammatically plausible Hindi agreement form can still describe the wrong participants if those source relationships have been merged.
Another verb can mark a result or modality without a second action
The Hindi course distinguishes saknā, be able, pānā, manage to, and cuknā, have already done, in combinations with a preceding verb stem. It specifically notes that these combinations do not use the ne construction described earlier.
A Catalan source saying that somebody managed to write something differs from one saying that they could write it or had already written it. Hindi can express those distinctions through a multiword predicate. A second target verb need not introduce an unrelated physical action.
Conversely, using a result-marking combination where the source states only ability can overstate what happened. The source may affirm capability without confirming completion. For this direction, read the entire Catalan tense or modal expression, then assess Hindi participant marking and agreement within the chosen construction. The target can change agreement behaviour while preserving the event, but it must not change ability into achievement or attribute an object’s gender to its actor.
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