Tibetan to Hungarian: ability and future intention are separate choices
A plan to go does not merely assert possibility
The Hungarian language documentation gives Fogok menni for I am going to go. Its future-intention construction differs from the potential forms used for being able or permitted to go. A Tibetan statement about an intended journey should therefore not be translated through a generic target modal merely because it concerns an event that has not happened.
The contrast with Mehetek, I can or may go, matters practically. A Tibetan speaker announcing an intention makes a different commitment from a speaker stating that departure is possible. The Hungarian version should preserve whether the journey is planned, permitted or simply within somebody’s ability.
Impersonal possibility does not identify the traveller
The Hungarian documentation illustrates Oda lehet menni, one can go there, as an impersonal possibility construction. That target sentence does not automatically identify the Tibetan speaker as the person who will go. A source passage about general access to a location differs from a personal travel arrangement.
Zeisler associates egophoric marking in Standard Spoken Tibetan with personal authority, involvement or responsibility. Such source information can help interpret the utterance, but it cannot be converted mechanically into a Hungarian first-person traveller. A speaker can know a route well while describing its general accessibility rather than announcing their own departure.
Will be is not the same as is
The Hungarian documentation distinguishes van, present be, from lesz, future be, and lett, became. A Tibetan passage describing a location or condition should be read for its temporal relationship before the target form is selected. A present description of an accessible place is not the same as predicting that it will become accessible.
This distinction is useful in a travel notice about a route that is currently closed but expected to open. The target needs to keep the current state separate from the anticipated one. Reporting the possibility of a future journey as a present unrestricted opportunity could lead the reader to misunderstand when the route can actually be used.
Who travels and whose belongings travel are different relations
The Hungarian documentation notes that nouns can carry information about the person and number of the owner as well as the number of possessions. In a Tibetan travel account, the person supplying reliable information, the traveller and the owner of equipment may therefore need to be identified separately.
Garrett and Hill’s written Tibetan noun-phrase analysis helps recover phrase boundaries before target ownership marking is built. A Tibetan speaker can plan to carry another person’s belongings; personal involvement in the journey does not make those belongings the speaker’s property. The Hungarian translation must retain that ownership distinction while also choosing the right modal or future construction for the journey. The three questions are independent: who goes, whether they intend or are able to go, and whose items accompany them.
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