Persian to Northern Sotho: the object of reading can stand inside an infinitive phrase
The Persian dictionary form can name an activity
The Texas Persian infinitive lesson lists xāndan, to read, and illustrates it as an activity noun in reading is good. Northern Sotho translation should first determine whether the source names an activity, reports a finite reading event, or embeds reading under another predicate. Those functions can require different grammatical structures even though they share the same lexical action.
An activity expression does not automatically tell us who is reading now. Nor does mentioning books inside that expression create a second independent sentence. When Persian describes a preference for reading particular material, the target must keep the reader, the embedded action and its object connected in the intended way.
Northern Sotho go does not have to touch the verb stem
Gertrud Faaß’s grammar describes class15 infinitives with go written separately from the following verbal stem. It gives go sepela, to walk or walking. This differs visibly from a Persian infinitive whose nonfinite form is presented as one word. Splitting the target expression into tokens does not make it several unrelated actions.
More importantly, the grammar illustrates ba rata go bala dipuku, they like to read books, and ba rata go di bala, they like to read them. In the second expression, the object concord di comes between go and bala. The inserted material identifies the embedded object; it does not supply a second group of people who like something.
This provides a useful diagnostic for Persian translation. If the source establishes books and then refers back to reading them, the target’s object reference can belong within the infinitive phrase. Repeating an ordinary subject pronoun in that slot would confuse who likes reading with what is being read.
Keep the outer preference separate from the inner object
The Northern Sotho examples preserve the same outer they-like relationship when the explicit book noun is replaced by object-concord reference. The reader group does not become singular or change identity just because the embedded action’s object is now represented differently. A shorter target object expression can still preserve the full relationship.
Persian also needs its infinitive interpreted with the surrounding clause rather than as a detachable dictionary label. Reading as the thing assessed and reading under a liking predicate have different clause-level jobs. Northern Sotho go constructions should be selected for that actual function, not inserted mechanically wherever a Persian verb happens to end in an infinitival form.
For this direction, identify the main predicate first and then determine what the reading expression contributes within it. If reading has an object, preserve that object and any established reference to it. Northern Sotho can express the embedded relationship through separately written go and an intervening object concord without losing the unity of the action named by the Persian infinitive.
Language references