Tibetan to Irish: the word after a helps identify the possessor
The same written possessive can point to different owners
An Irish possessive a can mean his, her or their, with different effects on the following word. A Tibetan phrase that clearly identifies an owner should not become ambiguous merely because the target determiner has one visible shape. The translation must build the full Irish possessive construction, including its initial changes.
The dictionary contrast a athair and a hathair identifies his father and her father. These are not optional variants of one phrase. When a Tibetan family account changes from one person’s father to another person’s father, the target may need to reflect that reference change in the word following the possessive rather than by changing a itself.
Plural ownership differs from plural relatives
The same dictionary illustrates a dtithe for their houses. The construction points to plural owners; the possessed noun in this example is plural as well. A Tibetan translation needs to determine both counts rather than letting any nearby plural marker settle the whole relation.
Garrett and Hill’s study treats Tibetan rnams and dag as plural material inside noun phrases. A phrase describing one person’s several relatives and a phrase describing several people’s relative are not equivalent just because both contain plurality. Trace which source expression the plural material modifies before constructing the Irish possession. Otherwise the translation may assign a family relationship to a group when the source anchored it to one individual.
Possession and the object of a verbal noun can resemble one another
The Irish dictionary also documents a before verbal nouns to express a pronominal object, with the same relevant initial effects. Thus an Irish construction involving a need not be ordinary ownership of an object. A Tibetan statement about sending somebody to school should preserve that person as the affected participant, not describe a school belonging to them.
This becomes important when a Tibetan passage first names somebody’s relative and then describes an action involving that relative. The Irish target may use similar-looking pronominal material in both parts while expressing different syntactic relations. Decide whether the source person is an owner, an actor or an affected participant before selecting the target construction.
The boundary of the Tibetan phrase prevents a false owner
Garrett and Hill locate case markers at the ends of phrases in their written Tibetan corpus analysis. Recognising that boundary helps determine whether a following expression continues the description of a relative or begins the account of what happened. A translation that runs the two together can create an unintended ownership relation.
In a family narrative, the speaker may mention a father, then describe somebody else helping him. The Irish version must keep the father’s identity stable while changing from possessive reference to the relevant verbal relation. The small target word a cannot do that interpretive work on its own. Its effect on the following form and its role in the complete construction both matter to preserving the Tibetan account.
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