Lower Sorbian to Sesotho sa Leboa: keeping the landmark attached to the location
Find the complete source location before translating it
Lower Sorbian directions can require the reader to connect words that are not adjacent. When a question identifies a roof, a room or another landmark, establish the complete relationship before choosing a Sesotho sa Leboa location expression. A nearby noun is not necessarily the noun governed by the earlier preposition.
Pankau’s study of colloquial Lower Sorbian includes a question about jumping onto a particular roof. The preposition and questioning expression appear before intervening words, while the roof noun appears later. The spatial question remains about the roof despite that separation. The study also gives a shoes question, showing that the same general parsing issue is not limited to geographical landmarks.
For a maintenance message, distinguish a question identifying the roof from a statement identifying the person doing the work. The question may leave the landmark unresolved while already identifying the worker. Reorganizing the target sentence must not turn that unresolved landmark into an asserted destination. Pankau’s evidence concerns colloquial usage; it should not be presented as a universal prescription for every written Lower Sorbian style.
Several short target words may form one spatial expression
De Schryver and Taljard’s corpus-based mini-grammar lists the Sesotho sa Leboa locative particles ka, kua, mo, ga and go. It explains that combinations of these particles can occur. Consequently, a translation with several short location words is not automatically repeating the same instruction.
Their examples of combinations include ka mo ga and ka kua go. The authors treat such groups as units requiring their own explanation, rather than supplying a universal word-by-word replacement rule. A reader should establish the meaning of the whole location expression instead of assigning an independent English-style preposition to each component.
The mini-grammar also notes that ka, kua and mo occur with nouns having locative meaning, often with the suffix -ng. That qualification matters: a visible suffix is one clue, rather than a requirement that every target place name must display the same ending. Do not add a suffix mechanically to each landmark copied from the source.
Check what the recipient would locate
Consider a worker asking which side of a building needs inspection. The building, the side and the requested action serve different purposes. A translation can retain the building’s name while losing the side relationship, leaving a recipient at the right address but unable to identify the intended area.
The practical check is to reconstruct the scene from the result: what is the landmark, which part or relative position matters, and what should happen there? Compare those answers with the complete Lower Sorbian expression, including any separated words. This is more informative than matching the number of source prepositions to the number of target particles.
If the source does not resolve which roof or side is intended, the target should preserve the question. If the source supplies that detail, keep it attached to the correct landmark. Sesotho sa Leboa can distribute spatial information across a particle group and a locative noun; Lower Sorbian can distribute a questioning expression across separated positions. Accurate reading preserves their relationships rather than demanding identical word boundaries.
Language references