English - Yoruba translation

Making English courtesy and tone explicit in Yoruba

A courteous you may have a plural form

English “Thank you” can be “Ẹ ṣé” when addressing someone respectfully or addressing several people. The form does not necessarily mean the English source concerns a group. Yoruba address choices can reflect respect as well as the number of listeners, so establish the relationship before reusing a saved phrase.

For a morning greeting to an older person, “Good morning” can be “Ẹ káàárọ̀”. The courteous address belongs with the expression. A greeting for a peer may be different, even though English uses the same words. Keep that intended audience attached to a saved welcome instead of treating every English “you” as an instruction to use one universal Yoruba pronoun.

The marks belong to the words

Yoruba writing distinguishes e from ẹ, o from ọ, and s from ṣ. It also marks tones. The dots and accents are not decorative additions to an otherwise English alphabet: they help identify the written language’s sounds and meanings. Removing them can make a message harder to interpret and can hide a distinction the source sentence needs.

Copy the whole expression, including its tone marks, when putting the translation into a card or email. If a plain-text system drops the marks, retain an intact version for comparison. Do not attempt to repair the result by adding English stress marks according to intuition. Yoruba tone is not the same thing as choosing which English syllable sounds emphatic.

Want and like should remain different intentions

“I want water” can be “Mo fẹ́ omi”. In a practical request, this expresses wanting water rather than a general statement of enjoyment. English “like” can describe a preference, while “would like” often makes a request. Do not omit “would” from the English source if doing so changes the intended social action.

If you need a courteous request, provide its complete English wording and audience rather than assuming that the vocabulary for “want” automatically provides the whole politeness strategy. Similarly, a preference stored in your phrase collection should not become an order merely because you change the item mentioned. The grammatical construction and the conversational purpose both deserve checking.

English tense and questions need their own complete wording

Yoruba does not reproduce English auxiliary sequences one word at a time. An English question with “do”, or a negative statement with “does not”, needs the appropriate Yoruba question or negative construction. Translate the complete sentence rather than adding independently looked-up equivalents around a verb.

This is useful when adapting a statement into a question for a customer. Saying someone wants an item is different from asking whether they want it. Keep punctuation and the intended question together, and retain any time reference: an arrangement for tomorrow should not be reduced to a general preference. With these details explicit, the Yoruba result can communicate the same request or inquiry without being forced into the order of the original English words.