Divehi to Danish: choose the relative construction from the participant’s role
A source description can move behind the noun
Gnanadesikan explains that Divehi uses participial clauses before a noun to express relationships that Danish commonly presents through a following relative clause. The source description can be long, and its final noun supplies the referent being identified. A Danish translation may therefore need to introduce that noun earlier rather than reproduce the source sequence.
The Danish Language Council distinguishes relative constructions according to the shared participant’s role. Its example her er den reol som vi vil købe identifies a shelf as the thing to be bought, not as the buyer. In that object relationship, the guidance selects som rather than der. The choice does not depend on whether the described noun is a person or an inanimate object.
For Divehi descriptions, first establish whether the final noun performs the action or receives it. If a source passage identifies a teacher whom somebody consulted, using a construction suited to a consulting teacher could reverse the participants. Correctly moving the noun earlier is insufficient if the internal role changes.
Der and som are not a person-versus-thing contrast
The Council’s answer permits either som or der when the shared element is the relative clause’s subject. It explicitly rejects animacy as the deciding distinction. Its advice also notes stylistic differences and a constraint after a coordinating conjunction, where som is used in the illustrated continuation.
A Divehi description of someone who arrives and a description of something that falls therefore do not require different Danish linkers merely because one referent is human. The important parallel is that the described referent performs the relative clause’s action. This differs from an object description, where the same referent is affected by an independently identified actor.
Gnanadesikan also documents Divehi future participles. A source description can thus identify an event or task by what will happen, rather than only what happened earlier. Preserve that time relationship when reshaping the clause into Danish; selecting an appropriate linker does not itself preserve the source participle’s temporal information.
Two neighbouring Danish linking elements are not always redundant
In a separate answer, the Council explains that som der is often unacceptable but has legitimate contexts. In an existential relative, der may supply a subject that the clause still requires, while som introduces the connection to a noun with another role. The answer cautions against removing an element simply because the pair looks repetitive.
For a Divehi location description, determine whether the Danish clause describes the location as an actor or states that something exists there. Those structures do not require the same analysis of der. A source participial description can conceal this distinction from a word-by-word comparison because Divehi organizes the noun phrase differently.
The practical task is to preserve the described referent, its role inside the description and the description’s own time reference. Danish relative constructions can express those relationships with different word order and different connecting material. Neither matching source order nor deleting every apparent repeated connector guarantees that the intended relationship survives.
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