Divehi to Belarusian: a source pronoun may leave the past-tense gender unspecified
Belarusian asks for a distinction the source form may not contain
Fritz describes standard Divehi personal pronouns without a grammatical masculine-versus-feminine contrast. Her Malé paradigm gives ēnā for a third-person singular person. The form can identify someone already established in the conversation without independently supplying the sex distinction encoded by English he versus she.
Marchant’s Belarusian grammar describes past forms inflected for gender and number rather than person. Its reading paradigm contrasts чытаў with чытала and plural чыталі. A Divehi report that the referenced person read something therefore needs the actual participant identified before an appropriate Belarusian past form is chosen.
For an original source report about a woman reading a message, a masculine Belarusian form would misidentify a relevant agreement feature. The error cannot be justified by saying that the Divehi pronoun looked neutral. The target needs evidence about the participant that may come from the surrounding account rather than from that pronoun alone.
The reverse inference is equally unreliable: a target feminine form does not establish that the source pronoun itself was feminine. The distinction can be supplied by a name, an explicitly described person or established context. Read the agreement requirement as a target decision, not as a hidden meaning in every source ending.
If the source genuinely leaves the person unidentified, choosing one gender confidently adds information. A formulation that retains the known participant description can be preferable to an unsupported guess. The important point is to preserve the account’s actual degree of identification while producing a suitable Belarusian construction.
Do not import an exceptional dialect distinction into every source text
Fritz separately records limited gender-related demonstrative traces in Fua Mulaku and notes uncertainties around some reported forms. These observations do not overturn her description of the standard Malé pronoun system. A distinction documented in a particular southern form should not be assumed present in an unrelated standard source passage.
For an original standard Divehi message mentioning two different people in successive sentences, track each referent rather than alternating Belarusian gender forms according to a guessed source paradigm. The target can make the difference explicit when the people are known; the source spelling alone may not provide it.
Marchant’s table also gives the same singular past form for different persons within the relevant gender. Thus the difference between I read and she read is not carried by a different Belarusian past ending alone. The chosen subject expression and the agreement form contribute different information.
This matters if a Divehi narrative shifts between the speaker and another person. A Belarusian past form appropriate for a female speaker can resemble the form for another woman. The translation must still preserve who performs each action instead of treating the shared ending as proof of shared identity.
The exact-direction work is therefore referential as well as morphological: establish the source person, retain any genuine uncertainty and select the Belarusian past form for that participant. Do not manufacture a standard Divehi gender contrast from a target requirement or let target agreement replace clear identification of the actor.
Language references