Welsh to Sesotho sa Leboa: identify which object “that one” points to
A pointing expression depends on a shared scene
A Welsh instruction can be perfectly clear while its speaker points at a book, a doorway or a pile of equipment. Once the words are copied into a message, that gesture disappears. Before translating, establish which object the demonstrative identifies and whether the reader can recover the same reference.
Geiriadur yr Academi lists dyma and dyna among Welsh demonstrative adverbs and gives dacw as a presenting expression. These are useful signals that a sentence may be directing somebody’s attention. Their presence does not supply a photograph of the scene, so the target cannot recover an unstated location merely by selecting a dictionary equivalent.
For Sesotho sa Leboa, consider the speaker’s position and the recipient’s position separately. An object beside the reader can be distant from the person speaking. A description of something away from both people expresses another spatial relationship.
Demonstrative forms combine reference with noun-class agreement
Mampaka Lydia Mojapelo’s Northern Sotho study describes demonstratives whose prefixes agree with the head noun. Its table distinguishes forms associated with people, trees, hands and other noun classes. A change in demonstrative form can therefore reflect the noun being identified rather than a different degree of distance.
The study’s Mphe puku yeo asks for a book positioned nearer the hearer than the speaker. It distinguishes this position from one remote from both participants. Consequently, an English gloss such as that is not enough to choose among all the target forms documented in the study.
Mojapelo also discusses demonstratives that retrieve a referent from earlier discourse. An expression need not point at a physically visible object. In a written Welsh account, check whether that one refers back to a previously mentioned item before treating it as a fresh direction across a room.
Make a written instruction usable after the gesture is gone
Imagine a Welsh volunteer asking somebody to bring a particular programme from a table. In person, the volunteer points to the copy nearest the other person. In a text message sent later, the same wording could leave several copies equally plausible. Adding an identifying detail supplied by the writer may be more useful than forcing a distance distinction without knowing the scene.
Do not invent that identifying detail. Ask which copy is intended, or use information already present in the source, such as the programme’s date or an existing label. A translation that confidently selects the wrong edition is less useful than an explicit clarification of the original reference.
When the paragraph switches from a programme to several volunteers, review the agreement with each new head noun. The target’s changing demonstrative forms should follow those references. Do not mechanically repeat the form associated with the first object simply because the Welsh passage repeats a familiar pointing expression.
Finally, distinguish an object’s location now from its location when the speaker originally mentioned it. Equipment may have moved between the conversation and the written instruction. Preserve the source’s intended reference without making an unsupported claim about its current position. Read the result from the recipient’s viewpoint: can they identify the requested item, or would they still need the missing gesture?
Language references