Welsh to Hungarian: object reference can affect the verb itself
Welsh dependent pronouns can identify the object
Welsh Universal Dependencies gives fy ngweld as an object-related construction meaning seeing me, in contrast with a possessive use such as fy nhŷ, my house. The dependent pronoun’s role depends on whether the following expression is a verbnoun or an ordinary noun.
Júlia Keresztes’s Hungarian study distinguishes verbal patterns selected with different kinds of objects. A Welsh-to-Hungarian translation must therefore recover the object before selecting the target verbal construction. An expression about seeing the speaker should not be treated as ownership of an unnamed object. The information carried by the Welsh dependent pronoun can affect how the Hungarian predicate is formed even if no separate target pronoun appears.
Definite objects and first-person objects are not one uniform category
Keresztes illustrates Látok egy fiút, I see a boy, against Látom a fiút, I see the boy. She also explains that first- and second-person pronominal objects use the subjective pattern in the constructions discussed, whereas third-person pronouns use the objective pattern.
An original Welsh account can move from noticing an unfamiliar visitor to recognizing a particular visitor already mentioned. The Hungarian verb may change with that object distinction while the observer remains the same. A changed target ending should therefore not automatically be read as a different subject. Conversely, identifying the Welsh object as the speaker does not mean it should behave exactly like a third-person definite object merely because the speaker is a known person.
This matters when checking a paragraph whose first sentence introduces an item and whose next sentence refers back to it. The translation should preserve that continuity without demanding that every target verb have an identical ending. The source’s participant reference, rather than the visual uniformity of the target paragraph, establishes the intended connection.
A compact form may identify both I and you
The Hungarian study describes látlak as combining a first-person singular subject with a second-person object. Its explanation permits singular or plural second-person object reference, so the form alone is not a complete count of listeners.
For an original Welsh message saying that the writer sees the addressee, a Hungarian verb containing that relationship may make a separate object expression unnecessary in a suitable construction. It should not be expanded with an invented third person merely because the Welsh expresses its reference differently. If the Welsh passage explicitly identifies several people as the addressee, that group interpretation must remain available even where one compact verb does not distinguish its number.
Keresztes’s experiment further investigates differences in omitting plural objects, with acceptability varying by person and speaker. The result is not a blanket instruction to delete every repeated Hungarian pronoun. A Welsh sentence that identifies one person unambiguously should retain that clarity in the target, while a genuinely unresolved source reference should not acquire an invented identity. Interpret the Hungarian verbal form together with any overt object and the preceding Welsh participants before deciding that a short translation has omitted someone.
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