Greek to Malagasy: an unchanged predicate does not make a group singular
Recover the people before comparing verb endings
A Greek account can identify a group through plural nouns, pronouns and finite verbal marking. Malagasy does not have to reproduce each of those visible signals in the same place. When reviewing a translation, distinguish a real change in the participants from a grammatical difference in how the predicate expresses the event.
The Greek UD documentation records person and number on finite verbs and gender, number and case agreement on adjectives. These source distinctions help interpret who is involved and what is being described. They are not a requirement that a Malagasy predicate acquire a separate matching ending for every Greek feature.
Keenan, Ralalaoherivony and Fils Ranaivoson explicitly state that Malagasy predicates do not agree with arguments in person, number or gender. Their observation is useful when the lexical predicate looks unchanged after a source message switches from one participant to several. The absence of a corresponding agreement ending does not independently prove that the group has become singular.
Keep grammatical gender separate from identifying a person
For an original Greek account of several women preparing an event, retain the women and their plural reference where the source establishes them. Do not add a new action meaning to the Malagasy predicate merely to compensate for a missing-looking Greek agreement ending. The participants’ identity and the event are separate information to preserve.
Conversely, a target that omits an important noun phrase cannot be accepted simply because Malagasy lacks that predicate agreement. If the source distinguishes a visiting group from one organiser, the reader still needs to recover which people perform each action. Language-specific grammar does not remove the need for clear reference.
The Greek documentation cautions that grammatical gender is a lexical feature, although human reference often corresponds to sex. A description containing a feminine Greek noun therefore needs interpretation before adding an explicit woman meaning. Copying gender labels from a paradigm can introduce personal information the source never asserted.
Imagine a Greek description of a team and a separate description of its female coordinator. The target must preserve the coordinator’s identity when it is explicit, but it should not infer that every member shares that identity from agreement associated with a collective expression. Keep the actual membership and the grammatical construction apart.
A missing repeated participant may be understood from the main clause
The Malagasy voice study also presents an account in which Rabe did not attend a celebration because he was ill. The subordinate predicate lacks a repeated subject, understood through the main participant. This demonstrates a specific context where an omitted repetition can preserve reference, rather than making illness an event without an experiencer.
For a Greek explanation that a group missed a meeting because its members were delayed, check whether the Malagasy result keeps the same group behind both events. If another person intervenes in the passage, do not assume automatically that every later omitted participant refers back to the first name.
A practical review follows each event separately: who prepares, who attends and who experiences a delay? Compare those participants with the source before looking for matching predicate endings. This reveals a real reference error without treating legitimate absence of agreement as a missing translation.
The cited example supports contextual reference, not unrestricted deletion of every repeated noun or pronoun. Retain enough information for a reader to distinguish the group, its coordinator and any other people in the exchange. A faithful Malagasy account can use different agreement resources while keeping all those roles clear.
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