Catalan to Rundi: decide whether people act on themselves or on each other
A Catalan es does not settle the relationship by itself
Catalan es and its related forms can have reflexive or reciprocal value. CPNL lists these uses together, but they describe different events: an action returning to its own actor is not the same as participants acting on one another. Before translating a plural sentence into Rundi, establish which relationship the Catalan passage intends.
For example, two people looking at themselves in separate mirrors are doing something different from two people looking at one another across a room. A plural subject occurs in both scenes. Counting participants alone therefore does not distinguish the reflexive reading from the reciprocal one.
The surrounding action can supply the difference. Mirrors, separate preparations, a shared conversation, or a response from the other participant may make the intended relationship clear. Preserve such information when it resolves the Catalan construction. Do not select a reciprocal interpretation merely because the message mentions more than one person.
Rundi can mark reciprocity within the verb
The learner’s synopsis of Kirundi structure in Adapting and Writing Language Lessons contrasts babona, they see, with babonana, they see each other. It identifies the added non-final suffix as -an-. Its table separately lists a reflexive object marker. Those are different grammatical resources, rather than interchangeable spellings of Catalan es.
The contrast is useful for a Catalan account about recognition between two visitors. A Rundi form that simply says they see need not preserve their seeing one another. Conversely, a reciprocal form would add a relationship if the source only says that both visitors see an object elsewhere in the room.
The attested seeing example demonstrates a construction; it does not authorize adding the same suffix mechanically to every translated verb. Choose the Rundi expression appropriate to the action being described. A dictionary match for a verb’s basic meaning is not enough to establish how its reciprocal or reflexive construction behaves.
Keep a personal object separate from a reciprocal action
The same synopsis distinguishes subject prefixes from object prefixes and shows that the latter can refer back to a noun object. Catalan also has object pronouns that refer to another person or thing. Such reference is not automatically reflexive: the object can be different from the subject.
In a Catalan exchange, they see her identifies an object outside the plural subject, unless the context establishes a different structure. They see each other instead distributes the relationship among the participants. Replacing the first with the second can remove the third person from the account entirely. That would matter in arranging an introduction or describing who recognized whom.
Work through the event before choosing Rundi marking: identify the actor or actors, identify who receives the action, and determine whether the relationship runs back to each actor or between them. Catalan’s short pronouns compress these distinctions; the Rundi verb may express them in another place. Accuracy depends on preserving the relationship, not on making every source pronoun visibly correspond to a separate target word.
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