German to Bodo: formal Sie does not reveal how many people are addressed
A plural German verb can address just one person
German formal Sie can address one person or several people. The German treebank documentation emphasizes that it takes third-person plural verb agreement despite its second-person meaning. A Bodo translation should consequently not infer a group merely from the German verb ending. The actual addressee count may remain unspecified in a short formal message.
Bridul Basumatary’s study distinguishes honorific from non-honorific forms in Bodo second- and third-person pronouns, alongside singular and plural. The source German sentence therefore leaves two related but separate target decisions: the respectful reference and the number of people. A letter to one customer and a notice addressing several customers can both use German Sie while requiring different personal reference in Bodo.
Capitalization separates address from third-person reference
German Sie and third-person plural sie sound alike, but the formal form is capitalized. That distinction matters when translating a message in which the writer alternates between addressing customers and discussing another group. A Bodo plural form should not be chosen on the assumption that every appearance of the same German sound means “they.” Written capitalization can identify a different communicative role.
Compare the meanings “You have received the letter” in a formal address and “They have received the letter” in a report. Both can have plural-looking German agreement. The first asks the translation to speak to the recipient or recipients; the second asks it to refer to people outside that address. The Bodo study separately describes second- and third-person paradigms. Preserving the German agreement ending without preserving that person distinction would give the letter to the wrong participant group.
Number and gender provide different kinds of evidence
Basumatary records non-honorific plural marking with -sɯr and honorific plural marking with -mɯn in the second- and third-person forms discussed. His examples bi and bisɯr contrast a third-person singular reference with its plural. Those recorded forms are linguistic transcription, not a recommendation to replace the site’s Bodo writing system with Latin symbols. Their value here is to show that plurality is a target grammatical distinction in its own right.
The study also states that Bodo personal pronouns do not have gender agreement. German er and sie can identify male and female singular referents, while formal Sie identifies an addressee without specifying that person’s sex. A translation must not use the absence of a target pronoun gender distinction to guess that an addressee is plural. In a formal message meaning “Please tell her that you will attend,” the addressed person and the woman being discussed are different references. Establish their roles and actual numbers before selecting Bodo personal forms. German capitalization, German verb agreement, and Bodo honorific or plural marking each contribute evidence, but none can replace the other two.
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