Catalan to Lower Sorbian: past events, pairs and motion
Do not turn a Catalan past auxiliary into a journey
The Catalan sequence vaig comprar reports a purchase in the past. Although vaig also belongs to anar, the construction does not say that the speaker is going somewhere to buy something. CPNL explicitly separates the periphrastic past from independent movement. This distinction becomes especially consequential in Lower Sorbian: the DOBES documentation describes a special supine used after motion verbs. Misreading the Catalan auxiliary could therefore introduce both an invented journey and an inappropriate construction in the target.
Compare the source forms vam comprar and anem. The first belongs to the past construction; the second is a present form of going. Their shared historical connection is less useful to translation than their different functions in the actual sentence. When a Catalan account lists purchases and subsequent actions, retain that chronological account instead of interpreting each auxiliary as a separate movement. Lower Sorbian motion should correspond to motion in the message, not to the surface appearance of vaig.
Finished past time and verbal aspect are separate decisions
CPNL presents vaig estudiar with a bounded period of four years as an example of an entirely finished past situation. Lower Sorbian also has the Slavic category of verbal aspect, according to the documentation team. This creates two questions rather than one: when did the studying take place, and how is the activity presented? A completed period of study need not imply that a particular course or qualification was successfully completed. The surrounding Catalan statement must establish that further meaning.
The same caution applies when translating a narrative of repeated activity. A date or a past auxiliary identifies temporal placement, but it cannot by itself determine every Lower Sorbian aspect choice. Distinguish a report of one achieved result from a description of what someone habitually did during that period. This is a source-to-target interpretive task; it is not a mechanical instruction to choose one Lower Sorbian aspect whenever the Catalan past appears.
Two participants are more than an unspecified plural
Catalan plural agreement does not provide a dedicated dual category. Lower Sorbian retains an actively used dual, as the DOBES project emphasizes. If a Catalan invitation concerns exactly two people, that information is therefore grammatically useful rather than incidental. Resolve whether a plural reference means a pair or a larger group before treating all plural wording alike. A message about two participants and one about a whole class need not receive identical number marking in Lower Sorbian.
Shared Latin letters do not make a shared reading system
Catalan readers may recognize the written ó in Lower Sorbian without recognizing its sound. The Sorbian Institute gives kóńc and bósy among examples with alternative unrounded pronunciations, and explains a separate environment before j, illustrated by mój. It recommends consistency within a text. These are pronunciation examples, not Catalan equivalents or suggested vocabulary substitutions. Preserve the Lower Sorbian spelling rather than modifying the accent to imitate Catalan pronunciation; familiar typography does not establish a common vowel value.
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