Not an easy transistion, but the closest I can think of. Hopefully one of our colleagues will do better.

hi eric,

I would prefer to translate again by context. in this instance, a possible translation would be:

EN: "Can you check on the availability of that book?"

TL:
"Maaari mo bang tiyakin kung (paano) mabibili ang librong iyan?"
"Maaari mo bang tiyakin kung (paano) makukuha ang librong iyan?"

The inclusion of paano will depend on the context by which the question was answered.

indeed there is no single translation that is always applicable for all contexts in which the word "availability" is used, primarily due to the use of double suffixes (-able) and (-ity) for which we do not have a direct counterpart in tagalog. a common approach is to translate the root word and add the applicable noun modifiers e.g. "kakayahang" for "able" and "pagiging" for "-ity". but again, the result varies from case to case.

best bet as always is to translate the gist of the text to come up with a translation that is as close to normal speech as possible.

hth

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Note added at 5 hrs (2006-12-14 07:18:20 GMT)
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Rather:

The inclusion of paano will depend on the context by which the question was *asked*.