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Internet Sacred Text Archive

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Re: Internet Sacred Text Archive

#21

Post by jaldhar »

qart wrote: post #12

Be careful with this. I am an atheist, and by no means am I adamantly defending Hinduism. But the translated Hindu scriptures are mostly over a hundred years old. Most such translations carry heavy biases. Quite a lot of of the time, the translation says what the translator wants it to say. If you have a personal affinity for some of the translators at sacred-texts.com, or if you want a historical perspective of tran…

"to transparently convey what the original scriptures say"

All translations are lossy. So why not read the original? Granted, Sanskrit is not easy. But it's not insurmountably difficult either especially for a person of Indian origin. And the language of the epics (of which the Gita is a part) is generally a lot simpler than in e.g. kavyas or technical shastras. A few months is long enough to pick up enough understanding of grammar and along with a dictionary you should be able to work through the relatively short Gita quite quickly. Yes, this is still much slower than reading a translation but if you're goal is avoiding commentorial bias this is the only rational way to go.

Re: Internet Sacred Text Archive

#22

Post by betterunix2 »

qart wrote: post #12

Be careful with this. I am an atheist, and by no means am I adamantly defending Hinduism. But the translated Hindu scriptures are mostly over a hundred years old. Most such translations carry heavy biases. Quite a lot of of the time, the translation says what the translator wants it to say. If you have a personal affinity for some of the translators at sacred-texts.com, or if you want a historical perspective of tran…

All translations are biased by the translator; there is no such thing as a translation that "transparently" conveys the meaning of the original. Even moreso when you are dealing with writings from an ancient culture, where much of the cultural context is likely missing.

For example, Genesis 1:1 is often translated as "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth..." but that itself reflects a particular translator bias. The medieval Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki (Rashi) said it should instead read, "When God began creating..." by comparing how a particular word is used in other contexts. There is a subtle but important difference in meaning between the two translations: the first implies creation ex nihilo (as it says creation occurred "In the beginning"), while the second allows for an eternal universe within which our current world was created (and which may have gone through many acts of creation -- such a belief has been common in the more recent past). Of the two it is not at all clear which more "transparently" conveys the original meaning of the text -- because that meaning would only have been obvious to someone living 2500 years ago in ancient Israel (or possibly in the diaspora in Babylon).

Re: Internet Sacred Text Archive

#23

Post by dragonwriter »

betterunix2 wrote: post #22
qart wrote: post #12

Be careful with this. I am an atheist, and by no means am I adamantly defending Hinduism. But the translated Hindu scriptures are mostly over a hundred years old. Most such translations carry heavy biases. Quite a lot of of the time, the translation says what the translator wants it to say. If you have a personal affinity for some of the translators at sacred-texts.com, or if you want a historical perspective of tran…

All translations are biased by the translator; there is no such thing as a translation that "transparently" conveys the meaning of the original. Even moreso when you are dealing with writings from an ancient culture, where much of the cultural context is likely missing. For example, Genesis 1:1 is often translated as "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth..." but that itself reflects a particular tr…

> All translations are biased by the translator

All understanding of a communication is biased by the recipient (reader/listener), and translation necessarily compounds this by filtering the message the translator understands again though the translator’s own understanding, preferences, and style with regard to the target language.

EDIT: Of course, with a religious work where you’ve waved off human fallibility in authorship and compilation by simply denying that those were human acts, but instead adopting doctrine that they were divine acts through human instruments, you can just do the same for your preferred translation and the problem is neatly solved, at least within your doctrinal framework.

Re: Internet Sacred Text Archive

#25

Post by noizejoy »

dragonwriter wrote: post #23
betterunix2 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All translations are biased by the translator; there is no such thing as a translation that "transparently" conveys the meaning of the original. Even moreso when you are dealing with writings from an ancient culture, where much of the cultural context is likely missing. For example, Genesis 1:1 is often translated as "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth..." but that itself reflects a particular tr…

> All translations are biased by the translator All understanding of a communication is biased by the recipient (reader/listener), and translation necessarily compounds this by filtering the message the translator understands again though the translator’s own understanding, preferences, and style with regard to the target language. EDIT: Of course, with a religious work where you’ve waved off human fallibility in aut…

Even the sender of a communication may be a source of error by phrasing something different from what they meant to convey.

From not communicating in one’s native tongue or not learning one’s native language well enough to simple brain-farts - there are numerous things that can lead to miscommunication on the sender side, too.

Communication of complicated concepts is just incredibly lossy every step of the way.

Re: Internet Sacred Text Archive

#26

Post by WalterBright »

slyall wrote: post #20
macintux wrote: post #8

Interesting that Scientology doesn’t show up in the list of topics.

See the FAQ. All of it is copyright and Scientology are a aggressive at defending that. https://sacred-texts.com/faq.htm " Funny story actually.... I was actually contacted by a very testy lawyer from the Scientologists at one point. She was more than a bit bothered that I refused to post anything about them, until I pointed out that they had sued everyone aggressively for posting proprietary material about them for…

In the days of yore, people would get burned at the stake for making illicit copies. These days, one gets sued to oblivion.

I have to say, it's an improvement!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Tyndale#Betrayal_and_d...

Re: Internet Sacred Text Archive

#28

Post by wolverine876 »

betterunix2 wrote: post #22
qart wrote: post #12

Be careful with this. I am an atheist, and by no means am I adamantly defending Hinduism. But the translated Hindu scriptures are mostly over a hundred years old. Most such translations carry heavy biases. Quite a lot of of the time, the translation says what the translator wants it to say. If you have a personal affinity for some of the translators at sacred-texts.com, or if you want a historical perspective of tran…

All translations are biased by the translator; there is no such thing as a translation that "transparently" conveys the meaning of the original. Even moreso when you are dealing with writings from an ancient culture, where much of the cultural context is likely missing. For example, Genesis 1:1 is often translated as "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth..." but that itself reflects a particular tr…

> All translations are biased by the translator; there is no such thing as a translation that "transparently" conveys the meaning of the original

All software has bugs, but not all software is equally buggy. The same goes for translations and bias, humans and honesty, etc.

This is a (common) misinunderstanding of post-modernism. The idea isn't that you should take off your critical thinking cap and dismiss everything but that you should put it on - you don't get to take it off, ever - and make judgements about the varying qualities of (the translation), while being aware of your own bias. Like software developers, we are flawed beings using flawed tools to make flawed code, but that doesn't make us powerless to do better - we still can do incredible things.

Re: Internet Sacred Text Archive

#29

Post by wolverine876 »

qart wrote: post #12

Be careful with this. I am an atheist, and by no means am I adamantly defending Hinduism. But the translated Hindu scriptures are mostly over a hundred years old. Most such translations carry heavy biases. Quite a lot of of the time, the translation says what the translator wants it to say. If you have a personal affinity for some of the translators at sacred-texts.com, or if you want a historical perspective of tran…

Another challenge with translations is the trade-off between conveying literal words or meaning. As a simple example, a literal translation of an idiom from a 5,000 year old culture in a far-off place will not be understood, or be misunderstood, by a person living in NYC today reading it on the Internet. Does the translator convey the literal words or convey the meaning using modern words (maybe idioms) that contain the same nuances?

Re: Internet Sacred Text Archive

#30

Post by wolverine876 »

jaldhar wrote: post #21
qart wrote: post #12

Be careful with this. I am an atheist, and by no means am I adamantly defending Hinduism. But the translated Hindu scriptures are mostly over a hundred years old. Most such translations carry heavy biases. Quite a lot of of the time, the translation says what the translator wants it to say. If you have a personal affinity for some of the translators at sacred-texts.com, or if you want a historical perspective of tran…

"to transparently convey what the original scriptures say" All translations are lossy. So why not read the original? Granted, Sanskrit is not easy. But it's not insurmountably difficult either especially for a person of Indian origin. And the language of the epics (of which the Gita is a part) is generally a lot simpler than in e.g. kavyas or technical shastras. A few months is long enough to pick up enough understan…

> if you're goal is avoiding commentorial bias this is the only rational way to go.

I don't mean to discourage anyone - it would be rewarding to learn the Sanskrit - but I wonder if the beginning reader understands more or less. Beginning readers in any language are arguably translating into their native language. An expert translator likely will do far better, understanding nuances, meanings, idioms, constructions, etc. that the noob is oblivious to.

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