Greek to Faroese: distinguish a person’s own action from a relation to somebody else
Greek self-reference is more specific than an ordinary possessive
The Centre for the Greek Language distinguishes personal possessives from reflexive expressions. It gives τον εαυτό του as an accusative self-expression linked to the subject, while ordinary possession can be expressed with a weak genitive pronoun after a noun. A Faroese translation should preserve that difference instead of converting every expression containing a possessive element into an ordinary his or her phrase.
This is useful in an account involving two named people. A Greek reflexive can identify the person acting as also the person affected. If the target instead selects a freely referring pronoun, it may direct the action toward the other person. The apparent similarity between self and possession does not justify exchanging their reference.
The Greek reference also shows that reflexive expressions change case according to their role. Do not preserve the source accusative merely by selecting a Faroese word that resembles a dictionary headword: establish whether the expression is an affected participant, a recipient or part of another construction.
Faroese offers different reference patterns within a reported event
Strahan’s primary study contrasts seg sjálvan with hann in embedded Faroese clauses involving Jógvan and Hjalmar. In the illustrated local self-construction, seg sjálvan identifies Hjalmar, the embedded actor. In the contrasting pronoun example, hann can identify Jógvan or another man but not Hjalmar in that local relationship.
For a Greek report about somebody acting toward himself, this shows why the nearest plausible male name is not enough to select a target form. Preserve which person is both actor and affected participant. A grammatical target sentence can still misreport the event if its pronoun refers to the other person.
The same study distinguishes simple reflexives, complex self-expressions and reflexive possessives, and investigates longer-distance reference with speaker variation. Its findings should not be reduced to one rule allowing every self-form to refer across any clause boundary. Where a Greek report contains several clauses, the type of Faroese expression and its local construction remain relevant.
A relationship to a person need not use a genitive ending
When the Greek expression instead denotes ordinary possession or a family relation, another target distinction enters. Sigurðsson’s primary investigation of Faroese possessive constructions documents prepositional alternatives, including báturin hjá mær for a boat belonging to the speaker. This expresses possession rather than locating a boat beside the speaker as a separate physical claim.
His discussion uses different prepositions in kinship expressions and in relationships involving body parts or components. The examples include a mother–child relation, hair belonging to a girl and a roof related to a house. These constructions demonstrate that a Greek genitive can correspond to several Faroese grammatical patterns according to the relation.
Thus identifying the owner or related person does not finish the translation. A Greek expression concerning one’s own action needs the appropriate reference construction; an expression identifying a relative or component needs the appropriate relationship construction. Keep those tasks distinct so the target neither assigns an action to the wrong person nor turns a family or part–whole relation into an unintended physical-location statement.
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