Welsh to Kannada: name requests, identity checks and negative replies
A Welsh name question is different from an identity question
The Open University’s Welsh course distinguishes Beth yw ei henw hi?, asking for her name, from Pwy yw hi?, asking who she is. The first requests a particular piece of information; the second asks for an identity. A translation should not merge them merely because both concern the same person.
The JNU Kannada Language Chair’s lesson distinguishes interrogative expressions including ಏನು, what, and ಯಾರು, who. It also gives ಅವಳು ಯಾರು? as an identity question about a female person. Choose the target question according to the information missing from the Welsh exchange, rather than replacing a source question word without its noun phrase.
For a Welsh contact-information request, preserve whether the writer needs a name, a telephone number or identification of an unfamiliar person. Supplying a natural Kannada question that requests the wrong fact would not solve the source communication problem.
Do not turn a confirmation question into a request for missing information
The Welsh course separately presents a question beginning with a person’s name that asks whether the person is the named individual. Its ie and nage responses are scoped to that kind of name- or occupation-initial question. Those response choices should not be generalized to every question in Welsh.
JNU’s Kannada lesson presents sentence-final interrogative ā or ē in its confirmation-question patterns. These are distinct from an information question that uses an expression such as where or when. The target construction must retain whether the source seeks confirmation or requires a new identifying detail.
If a Welsh message already proposes a person’s identity, retain that proposal in Kannada. If the speaker does not know who the person is, retain the open enquiry. The distinction changes what counts as a useful answer: a confirmation can settle one question while leaving the other unanswered.
A refusal, an absent object and a prohibition need different readings
The Kannada lesson distinguishes ordinary negative statements from prohibitive forms involving bēḍa or plural bēḍi. It also illustrates negative knowledge with ನನಗೆ ಗೊತ್ತಿಲ್ಲ. These constructions do not all mean that somebody is refusing a request; they negate different propositions or direct somebody not to act.
The Welsh Foundation guide similarly treats future negative answers separately from questions about ability or obligation. A negative reply concerning whether someone can help is not automatically an instruction forbidding help. Read the question and response together before selecting the target negative construction.
This direction therefore needs the intended answer type as well as the sentence’s polarity. A Welsh writer may ask who someone is, check an identity already suggested, state that information is unknown or tell somebody not to come. Kannada has different resources for those functions. Preserve the actual conversational task before deciding which question or negative pattern produces the right target sentence.
Language references