Divehi to Yoruba: keep the reported speaker distinct from the person telling the story
Divehi can preserve the original speaker’s viewpoint
Gnanadesikan describes timannā and related Divehi forms in reported speech. Such a pronoun can refer to the original speaker rather than the person currently retelling the words. Her discussion illustrates someone quoting another person’s promise to come. The translation must therefore distinguish who made the promise from who is now reporting it.
The source pronoun can occur in direct quotation or in a report introduced through a complement clause. Gnanadesikan also notes alternatives, including ordinary first-person reference and a personal name used instead of a pronoun. A name inside the quotation is not necessarily an additional person entering the story; it can still identify the person whose words are being reproduced.
For Yoruba translation, first establish the referent of each source expression inside the report. Replacing every first-person-looking form with the current narrator’s pronoun can change responsibility for a promise, complaint or decision. Conversely, a third-person English paraphrase used to understand the Divehi is not proof that the target must abandon the reported person’s perspective.
Yoruba distinguishes perspective reference from an ordinary local self
Ajíbóyè’s primary study discusses Yoruba òun in clauses introduced by speech or thought predicates. In its examples, that form can refer back to the person whose thinking is reported rather than to the immediately preceding person inside the embedded clause. This gives a concrete reason to inspect the reporting structure instead of choosing a pronoun by distance alone.
The study contrasts that behavior with a plain reflexive expression containing ara, the noun for body. In its illustrated ordinary reflexive construction, the reference is local to the embedded clause. The two patterns should not be collapsed into a general word meaning self. A Divehi report about one person’s own action can otherwise become a report about somebody else acting upon themselves.
Ajíbóyè’s broader paper investigates special descriptive reflexive expressions, whose distribution differs again. The practical lesson here is limited: preserve the intended antecedent of the actual construction, without extending one example into a rule for every Yoruba reflexive. An apparently self-related target form needs more interpretation than a literal body-word gloss supplies.
The same written form is not always an interchangeable conjunction
Ilori’s separate primary study examines òun in nominal combinations and distinguishes Standard Yoruba from several regional varieties. It argues against importing a non-referential conjunction analysis from particular dialects into every Standard Yoruba construction. That variety distinction matters when a translation containing names seems to suggest an extra participant.
His attested phrase Èmi àti òun combines a first-person expression with a third-person one: the conjunction is àti, while òun identifies a person. A Divehi message naming the reporter and another participant should preserve both referents. Reading the pronoun itself as an unrestricted replacement for and would obscure their relationship.
Ilori documents restrictions on the combinations under discussion, rather than declaring that every appearance of òun has one function. For this direction, retain the source division between the narrator, the quoted speaker and any additional participant, then interpret the Yoruba pronoun within its own clause or noun phrase. That approach protects who said or did something without inventing another person or merging two people into one.
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