Estonian to Catalan: pole veel lõppenud means the meeting is not over yet
An unfinished meeting is different from a meeting that has not started
Eesti Keele Instituut illustrates negative veel with Koosolek pole veel lõppenud: the meeting has not ended yet. The negative applies to ending. A Catalan translation saying that the meeting has not started would reverse its practical status, even though both messages contain an equivalent of not yet.
The Consorci per a la Normalització Lingüística contrasts encara assagen, for continuing rehearsal, with encara no assagen, for rehearsal not yet begun. Its examples show that the whole predicate determines what has or has not occurred. Retaining encara no while replacing an ending event with a starting event would not preserve the Estonian message.
For an original room-booking example, a second group waits outside while a meeting continues inside. The waiting group needs to know that the room remains occupied. A target notice implying that the first meeting has not begun could lead them to enter, interrupting an event that is already underway.
Not yet is not the same change of state as no longer
The Catalan teaching reference also contrasts ja assagen, where rehearsal has begun, with ja no assagen, where it has finished or stopped. These small expressions identify different transitions. A translated update must retain whether the source concerns a continuing event, an expected event still pending or an activity that has ceased.
The Estonian dictionary explains negative veel through something not having happened at the relevant moment, with a later occurrence expected. In the meeting example, what remains pending is its ending. This does not itself give an exact finishing time or guarantee that the room will be available in five minutes.
If a coordinator adds a separate estimate, keep it distinct from the current status. The meeting may still be in progress while the estimated end time changes. A translation should not turn an expectation into a confirmed completion, or replace a revised estimate with a new claim that the meeting has never started.
An additional item is another meaning of veel
EKI separately records veel for addition, illustrating it with Palun veel üks kohv, a request for another coffee. That occurrence does not mean the existing coffee is still continuing. A translator needs to identify whether veel concerns an extra item or the persistence of a situation before selecting Catalan wording.
Imagine the people waiting for the room ordering another coffee. Their coffee request and their question about the unfinished meeting could appear in consecutive messages. Reusing one fixed target expression for veel across both would confuse a quantity change with an event’s progress. A single source word does not make those functions identical.
Before sending the Catalan result, identify the event named by the verb and any quantity named by the noun phrase. Has a meeting started, continued or ended? Is another drink being requested? Keep those answers separate. The documented Catalan contrasts help preserve the timeline, while the Estonian entry shows why an additional coffee must not be forced into the same temporal interpretation.
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