General rule for translating a combined word like "fish farm" "car factory" “dog story”

Question

A fish farm is a farm that farms fish. A car factory is a factory that makes cars. A dog story is a story about dogs. Point it, it looks like you can just put noun next to noun in English, and voila!

In Esperanto, sometimes there are suffixes (e.g. -ejo), but otherwise, there seem to be several ways to translate such words:

• A de B (fabriko de auxtoj) (sometimes de la, instead of just de)
• A-a B-o (auta fabriko)
• A-B (autfabriko/autofabriko)

I would like to know, what is the best practice (in general) to translate such noun-noun words in English?

Answer 1

"How do I translate" is the wrong question. The question should be "I have an idea - how do I express it?" or "how does compounding work in Esperanto."

The PMEG article on Vortfarado will be helpful as an introduction.

A garden for growing flowers is a florĝardeno. A factory for making cars is a aŭtofabriko. A story about dogs is a rakonto pri hundoj.

Answer 2

I think you are asking what is the general rule of compounding two nouns in Esperanto. If I am right, Plena Manlibro de Esperanta Gramatiko (or PMEG) gives the best odds of satisfying your curiosity.

As far as I recall, there are two ways to compound two Esperanto nouns: poŝo + mono = poŝomono / poŝmono

Answer 3

There is no best-practice, general way to translate such noun-noun pairs in English into Esperanto.

But my general advice would be to always try to be more specific in Esperanto than the English is. Because the Esperanto translation will lack the English-usage context that can make the English phrase work in English.