Welsh to Cantonese: distinguish an event’s beginning from its direction
A directional-looking expression can describe a change of state
The Welsh Foundation guide distinguishes bod with yn and a verb noun from constructions with wedi. Those patterns help establish the relationship between a state, an activity, and an event already completed; they do not specify a universal target particle.
The Chinese University of Hong Kong Cantonese course illustrates 起上嚟 in a sentence about somebody suddenly starting to cry. Its component glosses involve rising, up, and coming, but the complete construction concerns the onset of crying. The subject is not necessarily physically rising or approaching the speaker.
For an original Welsh account of somebody beginning to cry during a conversation, a Cantonese translation should preserve the onset. Reading every directional-looking component literally could add movement that the Welsh source never reported. Conversely, a bare crying-related translation can lose the important distinction between an already ongoing activity and its sudden beginning.
Continuation need not describe travelling away
The same Cantonese chapter illustrates 落去 with a company continuing to lose money. That example establishes a continuing development, rather than a geographical journey away from a place.
A Welsh report can describe an activity continuing through a period, while a separate sentence describes somebody leaving the location. The Cantonese result must not merge those relationships simply because a construction contains a component ordinarily associated with going. The whole predicate determines whether the sentence concerns ongoing circumstances or actual motion.
For an original Welsh work update, compare a discussion that continues after a visitor leaves with a discussion that starts when the visitor arrives. The continuation and onset belong to the discussion; arrival and departure belong to the visitor. A target construction should not transfer the motion to the discussion or make the visitor’s leaving the grammatical completion of every activity mentioned nearby.
Completion, experience and an ongoing activity remain different
The CUHK chapter separately illustrates progressive 緊, perfective 咗, and experiential 過. Its progressive example includes a past reference point, showing that an activity’s ongoing character is not identical to present time.
This matters for Welsh because an auxiliary can locate a bod-plus-verb-noun construction in the past while yn marks its verbal relationship. A Cantonese progressive expression should not automatically relocate the event to now. Likewise, Welsh wedi in a particular report does not independently mean that the sentence asks whether the event has ever happened in the person’s life.
For an original Welsh account, distinguish work that was still underway when a colleague arrived, work already completed by that arrival, and a question about whether someone has performed that kind of work before. The target aspect construction should retain the particular relationship, including any stated time anchor.
The Welsh source’s auxiliary, temporal phrase, and event description jointly establish what the Cantonese particles must convey. A familiar character or directional component alone cannot establish whether the translation preserves an onset, a continuation, a completed event, or prior experience.
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