Greek to Galician: a respectful plural can address just one customer
Count the recipients before interpreting the verb ending
A Greek service message can use plural-looking address forms while speaking to one customer. A Galician translation must preserve both the intended recipient and the level of familiarity. Treating the Greek ending as an automatic headcount can turn an individual booking enquiry into a message apparently directed at a whole party.
Politis’s discussion for the Centre for the Greek Language describes second-person plural verbs and pronouns used in polite address. Its examples distinguish addressing an individual respectfully from ordinary singular address. This supports a practical distinction between grammatical form and the number of people being spoken to; it does not establish that every Greek plural is polite singular.
For an original hotel enquiry, establish whether the source addresses one guest or several guests. A message sent to one person may still discuss a room for two travellers. The room’s occupancy is not the same as the number of addressees. Preserve that separation before judging whether the Galician pronoun and verb match the exchange.
Galician courtesy does not copy the Greek person marking
The Galician teaching notes on the Xunta de Galicia school platform list vostede and vostedes as courtesy forms and explain that they take third-person verbal agreement. A target verb in that grammatical person can consequently still address the reader. It should not be read automatically as a report about somebody absent from the conversation.
The notes also describe a historical courtesy use of vós in their own locality. That observation is explicitly local. It is not a reason to force every translated customer message into that form, nor to assume that a familiar plural-looking Galician address always refers to several recipients.
Consider a Greek request asking one customer to confirm an arrival time. A Galician rendering with the appropriate courtesy construction can preserve direct address while changing the surface person marking. The useful check is who is expected to reply, not whether the source and target verbs occupy identically named positions in a conjugation table.
Conversely, an enquiry to several guests must not become a request to only their representative unless the source establishes that arrangement. Courtesy and plurality are separate decisions. A respectful translation can still have the wrong number of recipients.
Keep service roles stable across the whole message
A longer booking message may address the customer, mention a colleague and then explain what the hotel will do. Read each clause against those roles. Third-person-looking target agreement in the address construction does not authorise merging the customer with the colleague mentioned later.
For an original example, the sender might ask the guest to confirm a time while reporting that a driver will wait outside. If the target transfers the confirmation request to the driver, all the travel vocabulary may remain accurate while the instruction reaches the wrong person. Identify the actor of confirming separately from the actor of waiting.
Also preserve a deliberate change of relationship. A Greek writer can move from a formal introduction to a more familiar exchange when the context supports it. Do not impose that change merely because a short translation sounds friendlier. The source’s relationship with its recipient should guide the choice.
Before sending the result, check the actual recipients, the person expected to answer and the person responsible for each promised action. This keeps a one-customer message distinct from a group announcement while allowing Galician courtesy to use its own agreement pattern.
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