Czech to Danish: their own does not always translate with sin
A plural owner changes the standard Danish choice
The Czech Academy dictionary describes svůj as assigning possession to the subject or actor, with inflected forms agreeing in the noun phrase. Its examples include plural actors referring to their own property. The basic reflexive relationship does not disappear simply because several people are acting.
The Danish Language Council gives a more restricted standard pattern. Sin refers back to a singular subject, whereas a third-person plural subject normally takes deres rather than sin, sit, or sine. A Czech sentence about colleagues collecting their own belongings therefore cannot be translated by using the Danish reflexive form mechanically for every occurrence of svůj.
The number of belongings is different from the number of owners
The council illustrates a singular person with sin hund and two named people with deres hund. A singular possessed dog does not make the two owners singular. Its account explicitly distinguishes the subject’s number from a plural object that may attract a nonstandard reflexive choice.
Consider an original Czech account saying that one colleague brought several books, then that two colleagues brought their shared book. The first has one owner and several objects; the second has several owners and one object. A translation that selects the possessive only from the number of books could confuse these relationships. First establish the owner through the source subject, then account for the target possessed noun within the appropriate Danish construction.
Each person’s own item is not necessarily a jointly owned item
The Danish guidance separately discusses hver constructions, where additional variation is possible. It recommends hver sin or sit with a following singular noun as a safe pattern, while noting variation and differing speaker preferences. That qualification should not be collapsed into a claim that plural subjects never permit a reflexive expression.
A Czech instruction for participants to bring their own individual device differs from asking them to bring one device belonging to the group. The translation should preserve distribution over people. Simply changing a reflexive to deres without retaining an explicit each meaning may leave the ownership arrangement unclear. Conversely, adding each when the source describes a shared item would invent separate obligations.
A subject inside another clause can establish a different owner
Czech UD marks svůj as reflexive and distinguishes its agreement with the possessed noun from possessor-related information. The owner must therefore be established from the actual construction rather than from a nearby noun’s gender alone.
An original Czech report may say that a manager asked a colleague to take the colleague’s own folder. The person giving the instruction and the person acting inside the embedded instruction differ. Before selecting a Danish possessive, resolve whose folder the source identifies and whether the relevant target construction has a singular or plural subject. Retaining the same word for folder will not repair a possessive that transfers the property from the colleague to the manager.
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