Finnish to Korean: a courteous command does not establish that the listener is older
Finnish plural-shaped commands can address one person respectfully
The Finnish Language Office illustrates Jättäkää laukkunne in guidance on polite singular address. The command and possessive suffix use second-person plural forms even when only one person is addressed. A Korean translation must therefore identify the real listener count rather than infer several people from the Finnish endings alone.
The source can also omit te while retaining courteous wording. That omission does not make the command impersonal or remove its addressee. The reader still needs to perform the action, and the target should preserve whom the instruction addresses without adding a group merely to account for the source’s polite morphology.
Korean command forms also encode the interaction
Using Korean distinguishes highly formal commands in -(으)십시오 from formal but more personal commands in -(으)세요. Its examples include keeping a receipt and waiting briefly. The examples include 영수증을 보관하십시오 for keeping a receipt and 잠시만 기다리세요 for waiting briefly. The endings help express different degrees and kinds of formality. These are target illustrations of command style, not translations that replace the Finnish bag instruction with unrelated actions.
The book explains that command honorific -시 can express deference even when the listener would not normally receive subject honorification in an ordinary statement. A courteous Korean command to a younger customer therefore does not itself assert that the customer is older than the speaker or has higher occupational rank.
That is relevant to the Finnish example because plural-shaped courtesy likewise does not supply the recipient’s biography. A target form can be chosen for the service interaction or psychological distance while the actual listener remains one person. Translating the polite morphology into an imagined age difference would add information absent from the instruction.
An instruction’s setting differs from its action
The Korean guide notes the special use of some command endings in written signs, formal documents and service encounters. A Finnish instruction printed for visitors and the same action requested in a personal conversation can therefore call for different target presentation. The bags do not change; the relationship between speaker and reader changes.
The Finnish Language Office separately distinguishes polite singular address from addressing several people through other agreement clues, including participles and descriptions. Those clues can help establish the audience when the command itself permits both readings. Target style should follow that interpretation rather than manufacture a number distinction from Finnish politeness alone.
For Finnish into Korean, identify the requested action, the actual addressee count and the interaction’s degree of formality separately. Preserve the instruction while allowing Korean to choose a suitable command ending. A respectful suffix can soften the request without identifying an older listener, and a Finnish plural-shaped command can concern one visitor without implying that several people must respond.
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