Tibetan to Sesotho sa Leboa: written pieces do not correspond one for one
A space does not define the whole target verb
The North-West University annotation guide treats ke + a + mo + rata as four orthographic units that together form a linguistic verb. A Tibetan translator should therefore not assume that each separately written target piece represents an independent source word or participant.
Jäschke’s historical Tibetan grammar identifies ཚེག་ as the mark separating written syllables. That source punctuation and the spaces in Sesotho sa Leboa organize text differently. Replacing each Tibetan syllable with one spaced target unit would confuse the written segmentation with the grammar being expressed. A complete predicate must be analyzed before deciding how its target components are written.
Subject agreement and object agreement have different jobs
The NWU guide distinguishes subject concords from object concords and separately records person and number for personal forms. A target sequence can therefore contain grammatical information about both the actor and an affected participant. These pieces are not redundant copies of the same pronoun.
Jäschke describes frequent omission of third-person pronouns in the historical material he analyzes. In translating a passage with an understood actor, the absence of an independent Tibetan pronoun does not authorize deletion of whatever target subject agreement the construction requires. Equally, an object reference inside the target predicate must not be interpreted as a second actor. Recover the source roles before assigning those target functions.
Class information belongs to the actual target noun
The NWU examples include bana ba gagwe and diaparo tša bana under possessive concords. Their different linking material reflects noun-class constructions in the target language. A Tibetan possession phrase must be rebuilt with the chosen Sesotho sa Leboa noun, rather than receive a universal equivalent of a source genitive particle.
Jäschke describes written Tibetan genitive variants conditioned by the preceding final letter. This is not the same system as target noun-class concord. A source spelling variation cannot predict which possessive concord the target noun requires. The source relationship identifies what belongs to whom; target grammar determines the form used to connect them.
Aspect material does not replace evidence about the claim
The NWU resource separately identifies aspectual material, including progressive sa and potential ka. Such target distinctions concern the shape or possibility of an event. They should not be assigned automatically to Tibetan source material merely because that material also occurs near a verb.
Garfield and de Villiers’s spoken Tibetan study distinguishes personal knowledge, direct access, and inference. Those distinctions concern the speaker’s evidence, rather than simply whether an action continues or is possible. A translation can correctly assemble a spaced Sesotho sa Leboa predicate while still losing that source meaning. Preserve the actor and object through the target concords, the event interpretation through the appropriate predicate construction, and consequential evidence through wording that actually conveys it. The written count of pieces cannot stand in for any of those decisions.
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