Welsh to Belarusian: keep the owner distinct from the noun’s agreement
The same written ei can refer to different people
A Welsh contact description may identify somebody’s name or telephone number through ei. Looking at that word in isolation does not settle whether it means his or her. The Open University’s Welsh course contrasts ei enw e with ei henw hi, explicitly explaining the added h before a vowel when ei means her.
For a contact list, the difference concerns whose information is being given, not whether name itself has changed into another kind of object. Do not treat henw as an unrelated vocabulary item or ignore the surrounding pronoun. Read the complete Welsh phrase before choosing the Belarusian possessive expression.
The Open University also points to the contrast between rhif and rif in the telephone-number expression. Initial changes can therefore carry grammatical information useful for recovering the source reference. A translation process that treats every changed initial as a typo may lose a cue that distinguishes the intended contact.
Belarusian has more than one possessive construction
Chris Marchant’s Belarusian grammar describes adjectival possessives such as ягоны and ейны, and the alternative use of third-person genitive pronouns before the noun. The adjectival forms decline. Their changes belong to the target’s agreement system, rather than reproducing the Welsh initial-mutation pattern.
Marchant separately presents forms of мой, including мой, маё and мая in the nominative. These distinguish the grammatical properties of the noun modified while retaining the same first-person possessor. A change in the possessive ending therefore need not mean a different owner. This is a different question from resolving Welsh ei as his or her.
When a Welsh paragraph gives one person’s name and then mentions that person’s other details, track the owner across the paragraph. If the Belarusian construction changes with the noun, do not automatically interpret that change as a switch to another person. Equally, keeping a familiar-looking form is not enough if the source has actually introduced somebody else.
A contact record needs both identities to remain clear
Separate the person whose details are recorded from the person supplying those details. A colleague can provide another employee’s telephone number. The writer of the message is not automatically the possessor, and the nearest name in the paragraph need not identify the owner of every following item.
This becomes particularly important when a Welsh message alternates between two contacts. Read each possessive phrase with its local context, including a following clarifying pronoun where present. Do not allow a translation-memory match for a short phrase about a name to carry the previous contact’s identity into the new entry.
For the Belarusian result, check the owner first and the agreement second. Does the phrase still refer to the intended person? Does the chosen possessive construction fit the noun and its role in the sentence? These checks address separate sources of error; satisfying one does not establish the other.
The goal is a contact description someone can use without guessing. A correct telephone-number label attached to the wrong person is not rescued by accurate grammar. A correctly identified owner still needs an appropriate target construction. Keeping both layers distinct preserves the practical value of the Welsh information.
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