Dimitry,

Good for you, Russian is an East Slavic language, part of the Indo-European family to
which Sanskrit and Pali belongs. This helps in Dharma propagation in your country.

As regards translation style many scholars know the problem: faithfulness to the text
or clarity for the reader. That is the reason I suggest both styles be attempted in
our Pali exercise.

Personally, I feel that we should translate it for the benefit of clarity and beauty
of language for the general reader, who after all wants to know Dharma and feel happy
from reading it.

Literal translations are generally useful only for scholars, and have little appeal
outside that. Most people who give literal translations already know Pali anyway, so
it's a Catch-22 situation.

I would not suggest being too free in translation thought (like Chalmers's dated
translation of the Sutta Nipata).

I will be posting my 26-page reflection on the problems of "Translating Buddhist
Sutras" (1989) in my website www.dharma.per.sg in due course.

P.

"äÍÉÔÒÉÊ é×ÁÈÎÅÎËÏ (Dimitry Ivakhnenko)" wrote:

> Dear friends,
>
> PT> This is the basic structure, please feel free to suggest additions or
> PT> changes but we must have a consensus on this. That is, if we (some of us
> PT> at least) agree to my idea. Let me start with an example and model answers.
>
> After all we can be not too formal.
> Something similar has been going on already, we've been discussing the
> passages for some time.
>
> PT> attaa hi attano naatho
> PT> ko hi naatho paro siyaa
> PT> (Dh 160)
>
> There is amazing commentary and useful sound file at
> http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/PALI/reading/gatha160.htm
>
> Russian translation (Russian is quite similar to Pali):
>
> Sam sebe zhe opora,
> kto zhe drugoj mozhet byt' oporoj?
>
> attaa is reflexive pronoun, and to my opinion does not serve as
> subject here. The subject is implied from previous gathas,
> 157-159, and can be both 'you' or 'he'. In Russian I can preserve the
> original ambiguity, however in English I have to choose either 'you'
> or 'he'.
>
> It seems that closest English equivalent to 'attaa' is '-self', i.e.
> 'yourself', 'himself', etc.
>
> The sense of 'naatho' is clarified in the second half of the gatha
> 160, and seems to mean 'support, mainstay'.
>
> Thus equally valid English translations:
>
> Yourself indeed as your own mainstay,
> for who else could be your mainstay?
>
> Himself indeed as his own mainstay,
> for who else could be his mainstay?
>
> Herself indeed as her own mainstay,
> for who else could be her mainstay?
>
> PT> The translation will be done in two ways
>
> For now I would prefer Pali-English translation.
>
> Metta,
> Dimitry
>
>
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