Fijian to Galician: retain the direction of carrying, not just the destination
A short directional can change the movement
Schütz and Komaitai’s Fijian course contrasts kauta mai with kauta yani in its directional exercises, alongside forms of going and coming. Its vocabulary describes yani as movement away from the speaker. In a Galician translation, omitting this directional information can leave the item and destination recognizable while reversing whether it is being brought toward the speaker or taken elsewhere. The small word after the Fijian carrying verb is part of the movement description.
The Real Academia Galega defines the relevant transport sense of traer through movement to the place where the speaker is. Its example Se vas á casa, tráeme o abrigo asks for the coat to be brought to the speaker. By contrast, the transport senses of levar describe taking somebody or something to a place, illustrated by Levou os fillos ao teatro. These are independent Galician examples, not parallel translations of the Fijian drills.
The comparison is useful because Fijian can express a directional contrast after a carrying verb, whereas Galician can build an important part of it into the choice between lexical verbs. Do not translate kauta once and then discard mai or yani as an optional flourish. Determine where the source speaker is positioned relative to the movement before choosing the Galician expression that describes the same transfer.
The recipient and the speaker need not be the same person
A direction toward somebody mentioned in the passage is not automatically a direction toward the speaker. The Fijian exercises combine directional forms with expressions referring to other participants, so translating every transfer to a person with traer could relocate the speaker unintentionally. Distinguish the destination participant from the viewpoint used to describe the movement. A coat taken to a third person can be the same physical object as one later brought back to the speaker.
The Fijian course also places directionals beside expressions for inside and outside. These describe a different spatial relationship from movement toward or away from the speaker. A package can be brought inside toward somebody already indoors, or carried outside toward somebody waiting there. Galician wording should retain the relevant boundary and viewpoint together rather than assume that coming always means entering or that taking always means leaving a building.
Finally, choose the transport sense of the Galician verb rather than importing every meaning in its dictionary entry. Traer also has uses involving clothing, contents and causing something; levar likewise has several meanings beyond carrying. Those additional senses are not automatically present in a Fijian transfer instruction. The useful translation follows the item’s movement, who receives it and the speaker-relative direction expressed in the source, without adding a cause, an ownership change or an arrival that has not yet happened.
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