German to Catalan: an auxiliary followed by an infinitive can describe a past event
The target infinitive does not automatically signal a future plan
German werden with an infinitive can form a future construction, while haben and sein with participles form perfect constructions. A Catalan translation does not have to retain those divisions between auxiliary and verb form. In particular, Catalan has a periphrastic past built from a form such as va followed by an infinitive. Its appearance can describe an event that already happened rather than something someone is about to do.
The Catalan treebank documentation illustrates va regalar in a sentence meaning that Pere gave a book to Maria. The lexical verb is an infinitive, but the whole predicate reports a past gift. A German reader should therefore not replace a correct target past construction just because the action word resembles the dictionary form used after a German future auxiliary.
A past action need not become physical movement
The auxiliary is associated with anar, whose ordinary lexical meaning is going. In the periphrastic past, however, the translated gift example does not assert that Pere travelled somewhere. Adding a journey to the German meaning “He gave her the book” would invent an event. The relevant target unit is the auxiliary-plus-infinitive construction, not two separate lexical meanings assembled independently.
Compare “He gave her the book yesterday” with “He will give her the book tomorrow.” The participants and object can stay constant while the temporal claim changes. The Catalan rendering must preserve that claim through the appropriate whole predicate. The German presence of a past participle is one source clue, while the temporal expression reinforces it; neither requires the Catalan main verb to be a participle in every past construction.
A short pronoun before va can still belong to the main action
The same documentation contrasts a sentence naming Maria as recipient with one using li before va regalar. The compact pronoun still identifies the recipient of the giving. It is not an extra traveller associated with a literal go verb. In translating a German sentence with a dative pronoun, the Catalan placement can therefore differ while preserving the same person’s role.
The German documentation also warns that werden has more than one function: it can form a future, form a passive, or act lexically as become. A source meaning “The book was given to her” is a past passive, not a future gift merely because a form of werden occurs. Likewise, a Catalan sequence containing a past auxiliary and another infinitive can belong to a larger passive construction. Identify whether the German subject gives something or receives the action before aligning the target auxiliary words. The useful comparison is between complete event structures: who acted, what was transferred, who received it, when it occurred, and whether the clause foregrounds the actor or the affected item. Auxiliary shape alone cannot settle those questions across German and Catalan.
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