Lower Sorbian to Tahitian: two people can still require an inclusion decision
The listener’s place inside the pair matters
Lower Sorbian retains an active dual, as the DOBES language description records. A source pair is therefore not merely a small plural group. In a statement involving the speaker and one companion, exactly two participants must remain identifiable in the Tahitian version.
The official Tahitian curriculum distinguishes tāua, the speaker and listener together, from māua, the speaker and another person without the listener. Both refer to two people. Choosing between them requires knowing whether the person being addressed belongs to the source pair, not simply recognizing that the source number is dual.
For an original Lower Sorbian message meaning we two will meet you tomorrow, the addressed person is outside the arriving pair if we means the speaker and a companion. A Tahitian inclusive dual would change that membership. The appointment could remain tomorrow while the translation incorrectly moves the listener into the travelling group.
For a different original instruction meaning you and I will carry the item, the listener belongs inside the pair. Selecting the exclusive dual would introduce an unnamed companion instead. These are practical differences in who is expected to act, not optional stylistic variants of the same two-person message.
The curriculum also distinguishes the inclusive plural tātou from exclusive mātou. If a Lower Sorbian account shifts from a pair to a larger group, preserve that new count while checking inclusion again. The earlier pronoun choice does not settle whether the listener belongs to the newly enlarged group.
A pair of objects does not use a personal pronoun by default
Tahitian personal pronouns distinguish singular, dual and plural, but the curriculum separately discusses nominal determiners. It notes that te itself does not specify grammatical gender or number. Identifying a source pair of things therefore cannot depend on assuming that an ordinary target determiner independently announces two.
For an original Lower Sorbian instruction concerning two selected tools, retain the quantity in the target noun expression. The presence of dual personal pronouns elsewhere in Tahitian does not mean that the tools can simply be represented as if they were two conversation participants.
The curriculum describes nā as generally identifying a pair when not accompanied by an explicit numeral, while a following numeral specifies the quantity. That qualification matters: the form is not an unrestricted guarantee that every expression containing it refers to exactly two.
If an original source account contrasts the two parents with a twenty-day period, the target expressions must preserve the respective quantities through their actual constructions. Do not carry a pair interpretation from one noun phrase into another merely because a familiar-looking determiner appears.
The Lower Sorbian dual tells the translator to preserve a pair. Tahitian then asks additional questions about whether the referents are speech participants, whether the listener is included and how the particular noun expression marks its count. These decisions preserve the source participants more accurately than replacing every dual form with one target word.
Language references