Dear Bhante,

> The characters are now little problem, as we can use software (Dr
> Eye or Babylon i know of) that will instantly recognize each
> character and give the dictionary definition; Babylon even promises
> to speak each character for you (though this function doesn't seem
> to work for Chinese yet).

You must be very careful here because the meanings of words / characters in
modern Chinese are often way off mark for Buddhist texts. Muller's digital
dictionary is the best readily available resource for this purpose.

> But for one coming from a Pali background,
> such as myself, reading the Agamas is fairly easy. Since the
> material is almost always just a slight variation on the Pali, we
> can readily identify the idioms and vocabulary, and straight away
> can start to make sense of the majority of the material.

My point precisely ! I was just looking at the very first sutra in the
Chinese SA, and was struck by how simple it is once you can read the
characters. The grammar is almost entirely based on word order, with the
addition of a few "grammatical" words.

> Of course, this falls short of a good command of the language,
> which, as with all languages, can only come with many years' study
> and familiarity.

Yes, this is also true but less relevent for the reasons you state -- using
Chinese Buddhist texts in conjunction with Pali or Sanskrit.

> But we do need some more serious, systematic work on
> Buddhist Chinese, especially so we can understand the very different
> idioms used by different Chinese translators.

Yes, this is an issue that makes Chinese Buddhist texts challenging at
times: the absence of a standardized translation vocabulary such as was
developed by the Tibetans. Even the same translator uses different words
according to the circumstances -- which can, of course, be useful to narrow
down the meaning of an Indic word that may have a range of nuanced meanings,
if we can be assured that the translator really understood his material.

So, Bhante, good luck and please persevere !

Best wishes,
Stephen Hodge