Estonian to Cantonese: a not-yet reply leaves completion open
Keep the unfinished event attached to the reply
A brief Estonian reply containing veel can tell a colleague that something has not happened yet. In a Cantonese translation, preserving that unfinished status matters more than producing a generic no. The recipient may be deciding whether to wait, follow up or proceed with another task, and those decisions depend on which event remains incomplete.
Eesti Keele Instituut’s dictionary describes veel in negative sentences as indicating that something has not happened or appeared at the relevant time, with a later occurrence expected. Its example Koosolek pole veel lõppenud concerns a meeting that has not yet ended. It does not say that the meeting has been cancelled or that it never began.
The Cantonese grammar materials hosted by the Chinese University of Hong Kong illustrate a question asking whether all the work has been done, with 未 glossed not-yet. A separate exchange about meeting someone permits a short 未呀 reply. These examples show why a short response should be interpreted with the question it answers, rather than treated as an isolated permanent refusal.
Do not replace a pending reply with a completed failure
Imagine an Estonian designer waiting for a colleague to approve a poster. The colleague replies that the review has not finished yet. This original work scenario leaves the approval pending. A translation that instead says the poster was rejected would create a completed decision that the source never reports.
Keep the review, approval and printing stages separate if the message distinguishes them. The review can be unfinished while printing is booked for later, or the review can be complete while approval remains outstanding. A short not-yet reply needs the correct preceding question to identify which stage has not occurred.
The same university materials illustrate 冇 in a statement that it has not rained today. That example provides a different negative construction, but it is not evidence that every Estonian negative can be translated by copying the rain sentence’s pattern. Check the event, temporal context and reply function instead of treating all negative-looking forms as interchangeable.
An expected later event is not a promised deadline
If the designer needs the poster approved by midday, preserve any actual deadline in the source. The expectation associated with not yet does not by itself establish that approval will arrive before noon. Adding a completion time would turn an incomplete-status update into a promise that the colleague may not have made.
Estonian veel also has an additional-quantity sense, illustrated by a request for another coffee in the dictionary. In a message asking for one more draft, it therefore performs a different job from the negative meeting example. Do not insert not-yet semantics solely because the same Estonian adverb occurs. Read what the word contributes in that clause.
Before forwarding the poster exchange, retain the question with its short answer and check the stage being discussed. The Cantonese examples demonstrate compact replies, while the surrounding conversation supplies their event reference. A usable translation tells the designer what remains pending without inventing a refusal, a rejection or a guaranteed finishing time.
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