Czech to Mongolian: asking for confirmation or missing information
First identify what an answer must supply
Czech interrogatives distinguish co, what, from jaký, what kind of, and který, which, as the Czech Universal Dependencies documentation illustrates. These are requests for information, whereas a question such as whether an object is a pencil invites confirmation or rejection of an offered identification.
Tokyo University of Foreign Studies teaches different Mongolian sentence-final particles for questions containing an interrogative expression and questions without one. This affects translation even when the Czech punctuation looks identical. Before choosing the target ending, decide whether the source supplies an identification to confirm or leaves the identification open. A Czech question asking which document someone means should not become a question asking whether the item is a document.
The same spelling can have two jobs
The TUFS examples contrast Тэр харандаа юу?, asking whether that is a pencil, with Тэр юу вэ?, asking what that is. In the first example, the final particle forms a confirmation question. In the second, the matching spelling occurs as the word requesting the unknown identification.
This distinction matters when comparing a translation against Czech co. Finding the same Mongolian letters in two results does not establish that both questions ask what. Their position and the rest of the construction establish their function. If a Czech speaker already proposes a pencil, the translated question must retain that proposal; if the speaker wants to learn what the object is, inserting a specific identification would answer part of the question without evidence.
Question endings have spelling conditions
TUFS describes уу and its harmonizing variant үү, with юу or юү following relevant vowel endings, for questions without an interrogative word. For questions with one, it teaches вэ, written бэ after specified final consonants. The particles are written separately from the preceding word.
A Czech writer should therefore not make every Mongolian question end with one visually familiar form. The target spelling depends on its own preceding word and question construction, rather than on the Czech question mark or the grammatical ending of the source noun. If an identification changes from one object to another during editing, the associated target ending may also need to change. The particle is part of the translated sentence, not detachable decorative punctuation.
A negative identification can still be a question
The same TUFS lesson explains a negative copular question with биш үү. Its negative element does not remove the question function.
For an original Czech scenario, compare a speaker denying that the person in a photograph is a particular acquaintance with a speaker asking whether it is not that acquaintance. Both involve a negative identification, but only the second requests an answer. A Mongolian result that preserves the rejection while losing the interrogative structure changes the conversation. Read the complete target ending together with the proposed identity: the translation must preserve both the negative content and whether that content is asserted or put to the listener for confirmation.
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