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A suggestion on sutta "translation"

Starter Starter 10 years ago updated by Sujato Bhikkhu 10 years ago 3
Hi may I make a suggestion to form a group of "translators" who have good understanding of the suttas and good mastery of Pali, to "synthesize" different versions of translations, confirmed with the group's own understanding, of the important suttas (especially those lacking good translations). The group can make the best possible "translations", with footnotes, and put them on this site, so that there'll be no copy right issue, and we'll have access to even better versions of the suttas online.

Thanks for all your good work, and mega metta!

Starter
Hi Starter,

We'd love to do something like this, but it's not in our immediate plans. I think that it is a shame that we don't have accessible, accurate translations of all the early Buddhist texts available in every language, free from the encumbrance of copyright. But it is not a small task!

While travelling in Europe I am taking the chance to learn what I can about the various translations that are available, so that we can incorporate the best in to SuttaCentral. We have just added Burmese translations for the Digha and Majjhima, and hope to expand this soon. Once we have a good coverage of available translations, we can start to think about possible ways of developing further.
Hello Bhante,

Thanks for your prompt reply and Merry Christmas!

I'd be helpful to have a collection of all available versions of sutta translations here. I wonder why Bhante Anandajoti's sutta translations are not included here (neither in Access to Insight). I thought his word to word breakdown approach with both Pali and English translation together is quite helpful (http://ancient-buddhist-texts.net/).

I look forward to more wonderful development here. With my gratitude and metta,

Starter
Hi Starter,

We have a number of Bhante Anandajoti's translations here; he's a friend of SuttaCentral, and an excellent scholar, and I have tried to get all of his translations that are relevant. But we haven't included his translations from MN, SN, or AN, for the simple reason that we are still hoping to host the complete translations by Bhikkhu Bodhi. He is very supportive of this, but we have been unable to persuade the publishers, so far at least.

Anandajoti's word by word translations wouldn't work on SuttaCentral, as we only have whole texts. But if we are missing any of his translations, please let us know.

As for having all available translations, we have quite a range, but not all. I know that many people like having various translations available. But in my opinion in almost all cases one or other of the translations is clearly superior. Regardless of one's personal preferences as to style and so on, there's just a basic question of understanding and accurately representing the underlying text. There are a few exceptions to this, notably in the few cases where a specially popular text like the Dhammapada or the Satipatthana Sutta has been ably translated by several hands. I would like to aim to have one good translation of every text hosted on SuttaCentral, and ideally, consistent translations of entire collections, rather than individual suttas.

Currently I'm in Sri Lanka, and having discussions and doing research towards hosting Sinhala translations of the Pali canon, and possibly one or two other texts as well.