Finnish to Pashto: the past-tense verb may agree with the person seen
The Finnish observer is identified by the verb
Finnish minä näin sinut means “I saw you,” as illustrated in Finnish UD. The first-person observer is the speaker, and sinut identifies the person seen. A Pashto translation must preserve those roles even though its active past transitive construction distributes case and agreement differently from the Finnish sentence.
The Finnish object form does not mean that the addressee performed the seeing. Nor does the first-person ending on the source verb instruct the translator to force first-person agreement on every target verb. Agreement is part of each language’s construction; the participants in the reported encounter must remain the same when that construction changes.
Past active transitives have a different agreement controller
Pashto UD describes active transitive subjects as oblique in the past, with the verb agreeing with the object in person and number, and in relevant third-person past forms also gender. Thus the target verb can reflect the person seen rather than the observer. That is compatible with an ordinary active report of seeing.
A reader comparing the two languages might otherwise mistake target agreement with the addressee for a reversal of the event. The correct question is who sees whom, not whether the two verbs display identical person features. In the Finnish example, the speaker remains the observer even when Pashto grammar makes the seen participant control agreement.
Present object pronouns do not supply a universal past form
The Pashto overview notes a further distinction: first- and second-person singular objects take special oblique forms in non-past active transitives, unlike the general direct-case object pattern. Its examples include mā for “me” and tā for “you.” Those non-past exceptions should not be extended automatically to the past seeing report.
Finnish also changes pronoun forms according to grammatical use, but the categories do not match case for case. Recognising sinut as an object is only the beginning of the analysis. The translator still needs the target predicate’s tense and transitivity before choosing its participant forms; one isolated Finnish object pronoun cannot determine the whole Pashto pattern.
An oblique observer is not evidence of a passive
The Pashto description contrasts these past active transitives with intransitives and passive constructions, whose sole subject is direct. Consequently, an oblique observer and object-controlled agreement in an active past clause do not independently mean “you were seen” or require suppressing the observer. They are features of the active construction under discussion.
If the Finnish source explicitly says that I saw you, retain both the speaker’s involvement and the addressee’s role as the person seen. A passive paraphrase might describe a related event, but it would reorganise what the report presents. Treating Pashto case and agreement on their own terms lets the translation preserve the encounter without reversing its participants or silently removing the explicitly identified witness.
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