Dear Yong Peng,

A few comments on #'s 9 & 10:

> 9. Paapakehi amaccehi rañño ko attho?
> from evil / from ministers / to king / who? / matters
> Out of the evil ministers, who matters to the king?

I would suggest that "attho" means "good, welfare" here rather than
"matter". Thus, one can translate:
from evil / from ministers / for the king / what? / good
From the evil ministers, what good (is there) for the king?
I think this makes a little more sense. Do you agree?

> 10. Amhaaka.m raajaana.m passitu.m puratthimaaya disaaya dve
> raajaano aagataa.
> our / king / to see / to East / from direction / two /
> kings / had come
> The two kings had come from the direction to the East
> to see our king.

"had come" is a tense that in English is called "pluperfect", as
opposed to "have come" whiich is "perfect" tense. As far as I can
tell, Pali doesn't use a pluperfect, and would probably use aorist for
something like "had come". Since Pali does use the past participle
(here "aagataa", with an implied copulative - honti) for the perfect,
I would translate this as "have come".
Also, perhaps "direction to the East" could be more fluently
translated as "Eastern direction". Thus for the whole sentence:
The two kings have come from the Eastern direction
to see our king.

With metta, John

--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, "Ong Yong Peng" <yongpeng.ong@...> wrote:
>
> Dear friends,
>
> An Elementary Pali Course
> Exercise 17-A: Translate into English.
>
> 9. Paapakehi amaccehi rañño ko attho?
> from evil / from ministers / to king / who? / matters
> Out of the evil ministers, who matters to the king?
>
> 10. Amhaaka.m raajaana.m passitu.m puratthimaaya disaaya dve
> raajaano aagataa.
> our / king / to see / to East / from direction / two /
> kings / had come
> The two kings had come from the direction to the East
> to see our king.
>
> Yong Peng.