Dogri to Canadian French: polite plural forms can describe one person
Respectful address and actual number must be separated
Dogri tuss can address one person respectfully, according to Sawhney’s pronoun description. Canadian French vous can likewise be a politeness form for one listener. However, the Office québécois de la langue française explains that an adjective or relevant past participle referring to that singular listener remains singular. The plural-looking address form does not require every word describing the listener to become plural.
For a Dogri welcome directed to one guest, first retain the one-person reference. A French sentence with vous can remain respectful while its descriptive agreement concerns one individual. Conversely, if the source welcomes a whole group, treating the same pronoun as a polite singular would lose the group reference. Determine the audience before interpreting the number of the French adjective.
Gender belongs to the person described in this construction
OQLF’s examples distinguish a male addressee from a female addressee in the agreement of forms associated with polite vous. The Dogri source may reveal that information elsewhere, but tuss itself is not a male-versus-female pair. Moreover, Dogri genitive marking can agree with a head noun, so its feminine form need not identify a female listener.
Imagine a Dogri conversation addressing a customer about a grammatically feminine item they brought back. A feminine source possessive expression belongs to that item’s noun phrase. It does not settle the agreement of a French description saying that the customer has returned. Follow the participant described by each expression rather than carrying the nearest visible feminine marking into the next clause.
Vous-même and vous-mêmes preserve a distinction hidden by the pronoun
The OQLF guidance also distinguishes singular vous-même for a polite individual from plural vous-mêmes for multiple people. In both cases the task can be performed personally; the added s concerns how many addressees are involved. A Dogri instruction to one respected person to complete a procedure personally should not become an instruction to several people just because French uses vous.
For an original scenario involving a form, distinguish a clerk telling one applicant to sign personally from a coordinator asking several applicants to sign for themselves. Both need to retain personal responsibility, but their addressee counts differ. A French reflexive expression should preserve that difference rather than obscure it behind the shared vous. This is a place where the target can make singular-versus-plural reference visible even when a Dogri polite form looks similar to its plural use. The translation should carry the source’s respect through the address form and its participant count through the appropriate descriptive or reflexive agreement. Neither layer can safely be inferred from the pronoun’s appearance alone.
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