Tibetan to Tatar: a case name does not identify one fixed relationship
A vehicle can appear in a locative form without being the destination
The Tatarstan Academy of Sciences morphology account gives автобуста килдем for arriving by bus. Although the noun has a locative ending, its role in this example is the means of travel. A Tibetan source describing transport should not automatically become a statement about arriving at the bus as a destination.
Jäschke’s historical Tibetan grammar separately describes agent or instrument marking and several spatial relations. A translator must identify what the marked phrase contributes to the event before selecting the Tatar construction. Matching a source case label to a target case label would miss the documented instrumental use of the Tatar locative here.
A direction form can measure the intended stay
The same Academy account gives ике көнгә кайттым with a two-day duration meaning. The directional form does not simply introduce a geographical endpoint. A Tibetan passage about returning for two days must retain that duration rather than turn two days into the time needed to travel.
Jäschke’s historical examples distinguish expressions for a duration from expressions relating one event to a later point. This source distinction remains consequential even if both target phrases contain a time noun and a case ending. Establish whether the interval describes the stay, the journey, or a delay before the next event. The target form follows that event relationship.
A from-type form need not name a place of departure
The Tatar morphology account also records ablative uses for cause and comparison, including миннән зур for bigger than me. The noun phrase is a comparison standard in that example, not a point from which a person physically travels.
A Tibetan comparison must therefore preserve which entity is being compared and which supplies the standard. Jäschke discusses comparison constructions separately from ordinary local relations. Translating every source or target from-type expression as movement would change a size comparison into a journey. The semantic relationship is more informative than the broad English preposition used to explain the case.
Case spelling and information source are different layers
Garfield and de Villiers analyze spoken Tibetan evidence marking in terms of personal knowledge, direct access, and inference. None of those distinctions establishes whether a Tatar noun phrase should express transport, duration, or a comparison standard. They concern how the claim is known rather than the participant’s spatial or temporal role.
A Tibetan speaker may infer a person’s means of travel or directly know the planned length of a stay. The Tatar noun construction must express the actual relationship, while any important source evidence needs preservation separately. In this direction, retain the bus as transport, the two-day interval in its intended function, and the person as a comparison standard where applicable. A formally correct case ending can otherwise attach the right noun to the wrong meaning.
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