Tibetan to Thai: a question word can also occur in an indefinite expression
Who and anybody are not interchangeable readings
The Thai profile published by Northern Illinois University notes that khray can function in interrogative or indefinite expressions. A Tibetan source question asking who acted should therefore be distinguished from a statement about anybody or nobody acting. Recognising the target word alone does not establish the meaning of the complete construction.
This distinction affects a translated enquiry about responsibility. If the Tibetan passage asks for the identity of an actor, a Thai expression interpreted as an indefinite person can remove the actual question. If the source denies that anybody acted, turning it into a who question changes a report into a request for information. Preserve the source proposition and its question status together.
Where and anywhere depend on their construction too
The same Thai profile describes thi nai as occurring with where, anywhere or nowhere interpretations. A Tibetan statement about whether a person went to any location is therefore different from a question asking which destination they reached. The translator must keep the source information gap distinct from indefinite reference.
In a travel exchange, the Tibetan speaker may first ask for a destination and then deny having gone anywhere. Both turns involve location, but they do not perform the same function. A Thai translation should reconstruct each clause rather than repeat one word sequence because the same location-related target expression appears in both.
The source demonstrative contrast may need a more precise target position
Garrett and Hill identify Tibetan ḥdi and de as this and that in their written-corpus analysis. The Thai profile distinguishes three degrees of proximity through nii, nan and noon. Translating a Tibetan remote reference can therefore require attention to which target distance is appropriate in the setting.
A source passage might point to an item across a room or refer to something much farther away. The Tibetan contrast alone may not provide every spatial detail that Thai can express. Use the described setting to identify the intended referent instead of assuming that any target non-near form preserves the same pointing relationship.
The person expected to know the answer remains the addressee
Zeisler describes information-seeking questions in Standard Spoken Tibetan as centred on the addressee’s perspective. That source relation helps distinguish an enquiry from a speaker’s own inference. Thai question construction and indefinite wording should preserve that difference rather than present the proposed information as an established fact.
In a Tibetan dialogue asking who took an object and where it was taken, there are several independent referents: the actor, the object, the place and the person asked. The Thai version must retain which of them is unknown. A familiar target interrogative can also participate in another construction, so selecting the right word does not finish the translation; the complete clause must still request the same information.
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