Tibetan to Arabic: identifying the pair, the owner and the person behind an auxiliary
Two participants need more than an ordinary plural
Tibetan explicitly distinguishes pairs in pronoun expressions such as ང་གཉིས་, we two. Arabic also has a dual, but its presence should be evaluated within the target construction rather than treated as a universal replacement for Tibetan གཉིས་. A reference to two travellers and a first-person statement made by two travellers do not necessarily require the same Arabic grammatical machinery.
The Arabic teaching reference illustrates أَكَلَ الرَّجُلانِ, the two men ate. Its dual noun has the nominative ending; accusative and genitive environments instead use the dual ending in -ayn. Tibetan pair reference establishes the quantity, while the Arabic sentence determines the noun’s case. Copying one memorized dual spelling into every role can therefore produce an incorrect result even when exactly two people remain involved.
Arabic نحن, we, is the first-person plural pronoun presented in the ASCCC introductory table. When Tibetan specifically says we two, an Arabic version may need an accompanying expression that preserves the pair instead of assuming that the pronoun alone identifies exactly two. This matters in a promise made by two colleagues: expanding the participants into an unspecified group changes who has accepted the obligation.
A respectful Tibetan reference may leave Arabic gender unresolved
Tournadre records ཁོང་ as honorific he or she. Arabic distinguishes هو, he, from هي, she. Respect in the Tibetan form is consequently insufficient evidence for choosing one Arabic gender. A preceding personal name or explicit identification can supply that information; the fact that the Tibetan writer speaks deferentially cannot.
The distinction is especially relevant when a pair is subsequently described through individual references. First identify which person each Tibetan mention denotes, then make the Arabic references consistent with that identification. A dual expression establishes two participants, but it does not independently establish the gender of each later singular referent.
Ownership and personal involvement are different relationships
In Tournadre’s example ལྡེ་མིག་འདི་ངའི་ཡིན།, this key is mine, the egophoric copula accompanies the speaker’s ownership. Elsewhere an egophoric auxiliary can mark involvement through receiving something or through personal intention. Arabic possession should preserve the actual ownership relation, rather than automatically converting every Tibetan egophoric predicate into a first-person subject.
Arabic noun-to-noun possession or affiliation commonly uses an idafa. The teaching example مُديرُ الشَّرِكَةِ means the company manager: the related nouns form a connected expression, and the second noun is genitive. This offers a concrete contrast with reading Tibetan participant information from a final copula. The Arabic noun phrase identifies an affiliation internally; it does not by itself reproduce the Tibetan speaker’s evidential relationship to the statement.
When the Tibetan passage concerns an institution’s manager and then the speaker’s own key, keep those relations separate. The institution belongs inside the manager’s identifying noun phrase; the first-person ownership belongs with the key. Preserving both relations produces a more faithful Arabic account than allowing one source auxiliary to determine all the target participants.
Language references