Spanish to Serbian Latin: svoj can refer to our possessions as well as someone else’s
Nuestros does not have to become a word beginning with naš-
Spanish realizar nuestros sueños identifies the dreams as belonging to the speaker’s group. A Serbian translation can sometimes express that same relationship with the reflexive possessive svoj rather than a personal possessive based on naš-. Svoj is not inherently a third-person equivalent of Spanish su: its reference depends on the relevant subject relationship.
John Frederick Bailyn’s translation study records both naše snove and svoje snove in a clause about enabling us to realise our dreams. It also records variation between vaše snove and svoje snove for your dreams. These examples show why the appearance of svoj does not, by itself, mean that the translator has changed “our” or “your” into somebody else’s ownership.
Spanish propios can add emphasis that is not always present in svoj
Spanish nuestros propios sueños can contrast our dreams with plans imposed by another person. Plain nuestros sueños need not carry that emphasis. A Serbian reflexive possessive can mark the ordinary relationship between the subject and the possession without necessarily adding the same explicit contrast as Spanish propios.
Consider a workshop invitation asking participants to describe their goals. One Spanish sentence may simply identify the participants’ goals; another may insist that they choose their own goals instead of repeating a supervisor’s. Treating every occurrence of svoj as an emphatic “own” could introduce a disagreement with the supervisor that the neutral invitation never expressed.
The opposite error is to remove the ownership link because the Serbian form no longer visibly resembles nuestros. In a clause where the group pursues its own aims, the reflexive relationship can preserve precisely the connection expressed by the Spanish possessive. The translation must retain who pursues the aims and whose aims they are.
A change of subject can change the interpretation
Compare Spanish Queremos realizar nuestros sueños with Ellos quieren realizar nuestros sueños. The dreams belong to the speaker’s group in both, but the second sentence assigns the pursuing to another group. A target reflexive that links the possession to the new subject could make the second sentence concern their dreams instead of ours.
The study’s first- and second-person examples document available variation, not permission to exchange every personal possessive and svoj in every clause. In particular, a longer sentence can introduce more than one possible participant. The relevant subject relationship needs to be established within the actual construction, rather than inferred from the nearest Spanish possessive alone.
For a Spanish goal-setting message, distinguish three claims: we pursue our aims, they pursue our aims, and we insist on our own aims rather than somebody else’s. The Serbian Latin wording must preserve the appropriate ownership and any genuine emphasis. Recognising the function of svoj helps avoid both inventing a third-person owner and adding an unnecessary insistence on independence.
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