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Post by fiorafemere on Jan 12, 2011 17:15:02 GMT -6
And yet, in the book "Krishna: The Beautiful Legend of God...", which I am reading these days, in the Note on Translation Method, Bryant writes: "I have retained the Sanskrit for a very few words for which there exists no adequate or convenient English word or phrase (e.g. guna, sattva, rajas, tamas)." (he gives explanations in introduction and notes)
That is of course true for any other language when it has to be translated into another one.
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subala
Junior Member
Posts: 67
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Post by subala on Jan 13, 2011 3:10:52 GMT -6
I've been thinking about buying that book. What do you think of it? Would you recommend it?
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Post by Nitaidas on Jan 13, 2011 11:33:27 GMT -6
I've been thinking about buying that book. What do you think of it? Would you recommend it? Which book do you mean, subalaji? Krsna or the Yoga-sutras? I recommend the Sri Krsna book. Edwin does a fine job of translating the Ten Skandha of the Bhagavata and the introduction is informative. There are some things I would do differently, but that is always the case. Which translation is perfect? As for the Yoga-sutras, I have not read it. We discussed it a little when he was working on it, but that was long ago. I am glad to hear that it is out and available. [Oops! I just read the tread better. You clearly mean Krsna because you are already reading the Yoga-sutras. Sorry about that, subalaji.]
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Post by Nitaidas on Jan 13, 2011 12:10:49 GMT -6
I'm currently reading Edwin Bryants's tanslation and commentaries to the Yoga Sutras, and in his introduction he writes: "....are the three gunas, literally, strands or qualities, that are inherent in prakriti." This should keep both sides happy. ;D Two lines later: "These gunas are sometimes compared to threads of a rope; just as a rope is a combination of threads, so all manifest reality consists of a combination of the gunas" This should make Nitai happy... ;D What? Me happy? You should know better by now. I am pleased that Edwin recognizes "strands" as a possible translation for guNa. I think though that "quality" is really wrong. Qualities in Hindu philosophy belong to other things. They do not stand by themselves. If we take "quality" as the translation of guNa we have to ask what they are qualities of. There must be some underlying substance called a dravya that they "inher" to (samavAya). It may be that the guNa are like the example of "swords." Sometimes the word "swords" and other words like them are used to stand for the men or women who carry the swords. So in the sentence "the swords marched down the street." We understand that it was the soldiers carrying the swords that did the marching. Anyway, guNas as qualities can't be free-floating. They need something to inher in. One might say that they inher in Prakrti, but that doesn't help us very much. Prakrti is already a metaphor and a pretty vague one at that. Whatever the original intent in picking the word guNa to describe these components of the manifest world, it is unclear to us now. The word guNa has gone on and developed different meanings and reverberations. We shouldn't apply these backwards to earlier phases of the evolution of the word. GuNa also means to multiply or strengthen. It has these meanings in mathematics and grammar. Perhaps those early disciplines retain the ancient meanings of the word.
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Post by Nitaidas on Jan 13, 2011 12:18:12 GMT -6
And yet, in the book "Krishna: The Beautiful Legend of God...", which I am reading these days, in the Note on Translation Method, Bryant writes: "I have retained the Sanskrit for a very few words for which there exists no adequate or convenient English word or phrase (e.g. guna, sattva, rajas, tamas)." (he gives explanations in introduction and notes) That is of course true for any other language when it has to be translated into another one. This is of course true, but I still think a translator must try to reduce the number of words from the original to the barest minimum. I myself do not generally translate the word bhakti, because there is nothing in English that even comes close to working. Devotion is way off. Dharma is another hard one to translate. Its use as "religion" is very late and things like duty, law, innate character all seem to miss the mark. There are only a few words that present this kind of difficulty. The fewer we leave in our translations the better. You should see one translation that Jagat pointed out to me done by Advaita das. I think it was from his translation of the Madhurya-kadambini which Jagat was redoing. Advaita had left so many words from the original in it that unless you knew Sanskrit you could not get the meaning. Every essential word was left in the original Sanskrit and no meaning issued from the "translation" unless you knew the original. This is translation? Unfortuantely, many Bengali translations are like that. They are just reorganizations of the original Sanskrit text into Bengali word order and coupling with a Bengali verb. This is translation? A machine could do that. Not a dash of insight anywhere to be found in such translations. Advaita, I think, does a lot of his translations from these kind of Bengali translations.
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Post by fiorafemere on Jan 13, 2011 19:09:50 GMT -6
That is true. But imagine us who grew up reading BBTs translations, which I assume are not all wrong. We come with the understanding which has to be changed through lots of research and practice in the end. If we do not live and breathe the CV, I am not sure that any amount of adequate translations will bring us closer to the understanding of scirptures. Even if I read the Madhurya-kadambini where there are many words left in Sanskrit, I would still relate them to the previous understanding which I carry over from the days of reading BBTs work. Unfortunately, I was late at discovering beauty of Goswamis' and babajis' literature and lives.
And Subala, Yes, I would recommend this book to everyone. It is a Bhagavatam's tenth canto plus a few chapters from the eleventh. It flows realy nice and as Nitaidas mentioned, Introduction and Forward are very informative.
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Post by Nitaidas on Jan 15, 2011 13:27:07 GMT -6
That is true. But imagine us who grew up reading BBTs translations, which I assume are not all wrong. We come with the understanding which has to be changed through lots of research and practice in the end. If we do not live and breathe the CV, I am not sure that any amount of adequate translations will bring us closer to the understanding of scirptures. Even if I read the Madhurya-kadambini where there are many words left in Sanskrit, I would still relate them to the previous understanding which I carry over from the days of reading BBTs work. Unfortunately, I was late at discovering beauty of Goswamis' and babajis' literature and lives. And Subala, Yes, I would recommend this book to everyone. It is a Bhagavatam's tenth canto plus a few chapters from the eleventh. It flows realy nice and as Nitaidas mentioned, Introduction and Forward are very informative. I don't need to imagine that. I also grew up reading BBT books. Not all is wrong in them, but they are mixed with a kind of poison that makes them dangerous. They slip easily into Vaisnava aparadha and there is enough apasiddhanta and just plain mistranslation that I cannot in good conscience recommend them to anyone. Not Bhaktivedanta's, not Sridhara's not Narayan Maharaja's. Even Bhaktivinode's are suspicious because of their handing by IGM and because of his rejection by his gurudev. Deprogramming ourselves after exposure to those books is very hard. I have been struggling with it for years and I am far from deprogrammed. Plus, where is the counter-literature? I can read Bengali and Sanskrit so I have access to much but for those who don't it is really tough. I had hopes of reproducing much of that literature in English myself, but I think that was just wishful thinking. For one reason or another I am incapable and I am growing old. I have produced (and will continue trying to produce) some, but what I have done and can do is just a smidgen of what is available and maybe not even the most important smidgen. Anyway there are other avenues to real CV works. Satyanarayan Dasji is tireless and produces mostly good works too (I hate his trans. of the Tattva-sandarbha, but he was still in IGM then). He has the same problem of overcoming his IGM samskaras. Hopefully, he has done that well. I have not read all his later works. Pandita Anantadas Baba's works are also available, thanks to Advaita das and Jagat and others. Though his original works are free of IGM distortion his translators are also IGM robots who need some serious deprogramming. Plus with Advaita there is the problem of his questionable ability to give a good translation in the first place. So, the situation looks pretty bleak for those of us who want the real thing and don't know the languages.
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Post by malati on Jan 16, 2011 0:22:40 GMT -6
Nitaidas said: So, the situation looks pretty bleak for those of us who want the real thing and don't know the languages.I don't think the future is that bad. Please don't forget the disciples of Sri Haridas Shastri Maharaj's doing some good translations. When I was in Vrindaban early last year I got a few books from Sri Haridas's ashram. At least to me, the translations are reasonable. For example , The Padyavali by Sri Rupa Goswami, as translated by Gaurav Raina. He translated the verses leaving as is, intact, the sanskrit terms which have no direct english translations. However, he explained what the sanskrit terms mean on the footer. .... so there is still hope. (Nitaidas, maybe you have noticed that I'm back after a long break since we had a "stoush" about your imputing atheism on GV teachings. Anyway, I hope you don't mind my coming back. I just miss Krishna/GV talk so much. I'll refrain from getting involved in controversial topics though, if I were to find benefits, for my own sake, from my involvement here).
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Post by Nitaidas on Jan 16, 2011 11:06:09 GMT -6
Hi Malati,
Welcome back. I am glad to see you here again. What have you been up to? I hope you know that you are always welcome here. This is your home as much as it is mine. No one can throw you out of your own home. I may run the site technically, but it really belongs to the members. No one is censored; no one is rejected. Anyway, i look forward to your postings again.
We have some new members. Openmind is one of them. We all remember him from the GD days. He is curious about CV meditation techniques, having studied Vajrayana in the past. Any suggestions from our members would be great. Malatimanjari is another. She has just left ISKCON Europe and is about to visit Sri Satyanarayana Dasji and Haridas Sastriji in Vrndavana. She has written an interesting little essay on Caitanyite theology that I will be posting soon. Sita is another newer member. She is interested in the subtradition related to Prabhu Jagadbandhu Sundara. And there are many others who have not been as active of late. The forum has its cycles.
Poke around and see what else we have been up to in your absence.
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Post by Nitaidas on Jan 16, 2011 11:17:20 GMT -6
Nitaidas said: So, the situation looks pretty bleak for those of us who want the real thing and don't know the languages.I don't think the future is that bad. Please don't forget the disciples of Sri Haridas Shastri Maharaj's doing some good translations. When I was in Vrindaban early last year I got a few books from Sri Haridas's ashram. At least to me, the translations are reasonable. For example , The Padyavali by Sri Rupa Goswami, as translated by Gaurav Raina. He translated the verses leaving as is, intact, the sanskrit terms which have no direct english translations. However, he explained what the sanskrit terms mean on the footer. .... so there is still hope. I mentioned Satyanarayan Dasji. Yes, and I have heard good things about Raina's translation of the Padyavali. But who else is there among Haridas Sastriji's disciples who is doing good work? I am asking sincerely. I would like to know. Come to think of it, Edwin Bryant (Advaita Das) I suppose also fits into that category. He was spending time with Satyanarayan and may have by now taken diksa from Haridas Sastri. So he is another example. Another hope for the future. There is no doubt that the young turk Chandan Goswami is trying to get things going. He approached me once upon a time to do some translation for him. I suppose he has found someone else. Anyway, I did not mean to be too bleak. My main point was that we have to put IGM behind us, physically, psychologically, theologically, linguistically, and in many other ways too.
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subala
Junior Member
Posts: 67
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Post by subala on Jan 17, 2011 7:40:34 GMT -6
Navadvip dasa (Bruce Martin) is going great translation work. He was involved in the tanslation of Bhakti Sandarbha.
Satanarayana's people were ready to publish another of the Sandarbha's until Navadvip pointed out that it read too much like the Iskcon style. He's now currently going through the material to de-iskconised the language, so we'll have to wait abit longer.
I was was speaking to him via Skype just before Christmas. He explained to me that he doesn't like translating tatastha-sakti as marginal potency as the word marginal has negative connotations. In the Bhakti Sandarbha he translated it closer to it's actual meaning.
Navadvip is a remarkable man...
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Post by gerard on Jan 17, 2011 9:41:34 GMT -6
I'm still computer-hopping, so I have to keep it disconnected.
I don't think the translator we know as Advaita Das is E. Bryant. Advaita Das is a Dutch High School drop-out who tried to translate for a while, I don't think he is still active as translator, mainly as a blogger (madangopal).
About translating Sanskrit terms; obviously much can be said about translating all terms into the target language. The Bible translators are trying that now for about 1600 years. But I think a lot of faulty Christian theology has sprung up on the basis of mistranslating, starting with the Vulgate. Mistranslation has two causes, no terms in the target language and misunderstanding the source text. Both causes are also available to the Sanskrit translator. Who really understands the texts? In people like Bhaktivinode Thakur and Srila Sridhara Maharaja you may notice that they are not satified with a Prabhupadian literalism (reading shastra like you're reading fairy-tales) and they tried to get a bit further than that. But I don't think with much success.
**
Rejecting a lot of translations because they might not fully cover the cloud of meaning the Sanskrit has, or because the root of the word does not correspond to the root of the translation might be going too far. For instance, if we use the world "world" who will be aware of the Germanic root meaning "old"? In short I think the word bhakti can be translated with "devotion" but a lot of words might remain untranslated (yoga, mantra, karma, guna etc).
I'll hop along now.
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sita
Full Member
Posts: 106
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Post by sita on Jan 17, 2011 11:38:41 GMT -6
I would of thought that Krsna book was the original fairy tale, and may be the only one where all really do live happily ever after. I have always found Svami Prabhupada, Srila Sridhara Maharaja and Bhaktivinod Thakaur's books beautifully written, but I am no expert and empathise with Niti prabhu's sentiments of freeing ourselves from the cold calculated regime of IGM.
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sita
Full Member
Posts: 106
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Post by sita on Jan 17, 2011 12:03:39 GMT -6
I started reading Svami Prabhupada's books when I was 16 and studying in college, they made a lot of sense to me and I do wonder where would I be today if he had not taken that great leap of faith and travelled to America. I picked up my first Back to Godhead on my way home from school when I was 11, the pictures had such a strong effect on me, the cover was the Visnu duttas fighting with the Yama duttas for the soul of Ajameil.
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Post by Nitaidas on Jan 17, 2011 13:41:46 GMT -6
I'm still computer-hopping, so I have to keep it disconnected. I don't think the translator we know as Advaita Das is E. Bryant. Advaita Das is a Dutch High School drop-out who tried to translate for a while, I don't think he is still active as translator, mainly as a blogger (madangopal). About translating Sanskrit terms; obviously much can be said about translating all terms into the target language. The Bible translators are trying that now for about 1600 years. But I think a lot of faulty Christian theology has sprung up on the basis of mistranslating, starting with the Vulgate. Mistranslation has two causes, no terms in the target language and misunderstanding the source text. Both causes are also available to the Sanskrit translator. Who really understands the texts? In people like Bhaktivinode Thakur and Srila Sridhara Maharaja you may notice that they are not satified with a Prabhupadian literalism (reading shastra like you're reading fairy-tales) and they tried to get a bit further than that. But I don't think with much success. ** Rejecting a lot of translations because they might not fully cover the cloud of meaning the Sanskrit has, or because the root of the word does not correspond to the root of the translation might be going too far. For instance, if we use the world "world" who will be aware of the Germanic root meaning "old"? In short I think the word bhakti can be translated with "devotion" but a lot of words might remain untranslated (yoga, mantra, karma, guna etc). I'll hop along now. Sorry to hear that you have not been able to replace or fix your computer. I hope it gets resolved soon. Anything we can do to help? I've got some extra parts. Yes, Edwin Bryant is different from the Dutch Advaita Das. EB is a very talented scholar who teaches at Rutgers U. and lives in Princeton. He is part British and Italian. I assume his diksa name, Advaita Das, was given to him by someone in IGM. Since then he may have received another (although my gurudev did not change my name when he re-initiated me. How can one object to a name like Nitai Das?!) Yes, the history of the mistranslation of the Bible is an interesting example. Most early translations into English were done from the Vulgate Latin version done by St Jerome in the 4th century (?). The mistakes he made were incorporated into the King James Version (and no doubt were increased to boot). The famous mistake of Jerome is in translating "young woman" in the Old Testament as "virgin." This may have been intentional because it supported the view that that OT prophesized the coming of Jesus. If one actually looks at the passages that are rounded up to prove that the OT predicted the birth and life of Jesus one quickly discovers that the verb tense is wrong. The verb tense used in those passages is the past tense, not the future tense. Thus, the passages relating to the "suffering servant" in Isaiah are really about someone in the past. Just a few of the little tidbits one picks up when one teaches World Religions. As for translating bhakti as devotion I strongly disagree. While devotion does capture the feeling aspect (or does it really? can one include strong erotic attraction to God in devotion?) it misses altogether the power side of bhakti. Bhakti is a power that draws Krsna like a magnetic force. It is, theologically speaking, an essential aspect of the hladini sakti. How is that conveyed by the word "devotion?" And the idea of "being a part of" that is implied in the word bhakta is also missed by the word devotee. Bhakti is a deep well of meanings that cannot be conveyed in any English equivalent. Its connection with the root bhaj is also lost when we take it out of the original. Yoga too is often misunderstood. We've talked about it before. It does not mean "union" or "integration" as so many popularizers want to claim. It means "application" or "putting one's shoulder to the cart." In other words "taking up or applying oneself to a task," yoking oneself to the cart so that one can pull it. So when one applies oneself to a specific method of training or set of practices it is called yoga. That is why Edgerton translates it as "discipline" (See his discussion on p 165 and following of his Gita translation). There are similar problems with mantra, karman, and guNa. If one has the correct ideas associated with these words then leaving them in the translation might not be so bad. The problem is that too often we take for granted that we know what they mean when all we really have is a popular misunderstanding.
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