Czech to Slovenian: two participants can require a separate grammatical number
Two is not simply a smaller plural in the target
Czech uses plural noun forms with the basic nominative or accusative constructions containing two, three or four, as Naughton explains. Slovenian additionally distinguishes dual number. Marušič and Žaucer illustrate this with stol, one chair, stola, two chairs, and stoli, plural chairs. A Czech phrase containing two objects can therefore require a target form different from the ordinary plural even though the source does not show a separate dual category.
The distinction reaches beyond the numeral itself. The Slovenian research discusses dual marking across nouns and other inflected categories. A source statement about two people doing something together needs to preserve that group through the target construction, rather than translating the number and leaving the rest of the clause in an unrelated plural pattern. Treat the numeral, noun phrase and verbal agreement as a connected statement about the same participants.
Case and conventional pairs can complicate the visible evidence
The dual study notes syncretism, including shared dual and plural genitive and locative forms in the noun paradigms. Thus a target form that resembles a plural is not necessarily wrong in a dual context. Its case matters. Czech also changes numeral forms with case, so a translation should compare the roles and number of the complete phrases rather than demand a unique visible dual ending everywhere.
Naughton distinguishes ordinary Czech cardinal phrases from special counting expressions for plural-only nouns, including pairs of spectacles. This provides a useful caution when the source counts conventional pairs: identify whether it means two individual objects, two sets or a lexicalized paired item. A Slovenian dual choice must preserve that actual quantity. Similar-looking Slavic number systems do not remove the need to establish what unit is being counted.
Reflexive wording can still leave reciprocity unresolved
Greenberg’s Slovenian grammar explains that a reflexive construction with plural participants can be ambiguous between action directed at oneself and action directed at one another. It gives med seboj as an additional expression that can clarify reciprocity. A Czech source describing a mutual action should retain that relationship, rather than leave the target suggesting that each person acts only on themselves.
This issue is independent of whether the participants are marked as dual or plural. Number identifies the group’s size, while reciprocity identifies the relationship among its actions. Greenberg also shows that a short third-person pronoun can refer to a masculine person or a grammatically masculine object, illustrating Videl sem ga. In Czech-to-Slovenian translation, recover the source antecedent before interpreting that short target form. Familiar pronouns and endings can remain grammatically correct while requiring context to show who did what to whom.
Language references