Welsh to Portuguese (Portugal): keeping his, her and your information distinct
Welsh marks the owner where Portuguese may mark the possession
A Welsh contact note can distinguish his name from her name through both mutation and a following pronoun. The Open University gives ei enw e and ei henw hi. The changed beginning of enw is meaningful here; it is not an accidental spelling difference to remove before interpreting the phrase.
Portuguese possessives do not reproduce this Welsh pattern. Ciberdúvidas explains that seu and dele can express equivalent possession, but seu can also refer to the person being addressed. Translating a clearly identified Welsh male owner with a Portuguese form that also permits your can introduce an ambiguity absent from the source.
For a Portuguese reader, therefore, the useful question is not whether a Welsh possessive has been replaced by a Portuguese possessive of the same grammatical class. It is whether the owner remains recoverable. A construction with dele can identify a male third-person owner where seu would leave a choice between that person and the listener.
A single exchange may involve two different people
Imagine a Welsh conversation asking someone for another person’s name. The addressee and the person whose name is requested are different participants. If the Portuguese translation makes the possessive point to the addressee, it changes the requested information. Courteous wording cannot repair that change of reference.
The same risk exists in a written handover: one person supplies another person’s details. An explicit Welsh following pronoun can keep the owner visible even across several sentences. Portuguese wording should preserve that distinction when a reader could otherwise understand a reference to their own information. Choose a noun phrase or the appropriate third-person construction according to the intended owner.
The Ciberdúvidas answer permits seu and dele in the same text when their reference is clear. Consequently, consistency does not require replacing every occurrence with one form. A clear narrative sentence and a direct question to a reader can require different solutions because the available interpretations differ, even when both refer to the same individual.
Ownership does not turn a name question into an identity question
The Welsh course separately teaches Beth yw ei henw hi?, a request for her name, and Pwy yw hi?, a question about who she is. This distinction survives the possessive problem. Identifying the female person correctly is only one part of translating the first question; the Portuguese reader must also understand that a name is wanted.
A biography, a reception desk exchange and a conversation about an unfamiliar visitor can all mention the same woman while asking different things. The Welsh noun enw narrows the information requested. Keep that narrowing in Portuguese instead of treating every question containing hi as a broad identity request.
These contrasts are useful when a short Welsh fragment arrives without the previous message. An isolated possessive cannot establish both who is speaking and who owns the information. Recover the participants from the available exchange; then express the requested detail explicitly. This is a reference problem created by the different Welsh and Portuguese constructions, rather than a need to invent extra biographical information.
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