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Internet Sacred Text Archive

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Re: Internet Sacred Text Archive

#31

Post by Strilanc »

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…

You're committing the fallacy of gray ( https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dLJv2CoRCgeC2mPgj/the-fallac... ).

> The Sophisticate: “The world isn’t black and white. No one does pure good or pure bad. It’s all gray. Therefore, no one is better than anyone else.”

> The Zetet: “Knowing only gray, you conclude that all grays are the same shade. You mock the simplicity of the two-color view, yet you replace it with a one-color view ...”

> —Marc Stiegler, David’s Sling

Re: Internet Sacred Text Archive

#33

Post by bobthechef »

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…

No post body was provided.

Re: Internet Sacred Text Archive

#34

Post by labster »

Strilanc wrote: post #31
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…

You're committing the fallacy of gray ( https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dLJv2CoRCgeC2mPgj/the-fallac... ). > The Sophisticate: “The world isn’t black and white. No one does pure good or pure bad. It’s all gray. Therefore, no one is better than anyone else.” > The Zetet: “Knowing only gray, you conclude that all grays are the same shade. You mock the simplicity of the two-color view, yet you replace it with a one-colo…

You have two colors. You say, “I know, I’ll make a color that covers everyone’s use case with regular expressions.” Now you have three problems.

Re: Internet Sacred Text Archive

#35

Post by indigochill »

wolverine876 wrote: post #29
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 meaning. Literal words aren't the point of communication.

There was a good blog the translators wrote about translating Pathologic, a metaphor-heavy Russian video game. It takes place in a town where the districts are named after body parts of a bull, but the names have double meanings related to the town's power structure as well and the dialogue is heavy with this kind of wordplay. They wrote a bit about the process of translating not just the words, but also the wordplay into English.

Ultimately I don't believe this implied meaning can be perfectly conveyed (which is maybe why scholarly study of texts remains important?), but at least in sacred texts like the Bible you can insert footnotes to expand on what can't be directly conveyed in direct translation.

Re: Internet Sacred Text Archive

#37

Post by TimTheTinker »

wolverine876 wrote: post #28
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; 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…

Postmodernism goes further than that:

> Postmodernists deny that there are aspects of reality that are objective; that there are statements about reality that are objectively true or false; that it is possible to have knowledge of such statements (objective knowledge); that it is possible for human beings to know some things with certainty[0]

So in essence, postmodernism teaches that critical thinking is all about tearing down what it calls the illusion of objective reality, statements that are objectively true or false, objective knowledge, and certainty -- and finding (or at least positing) the subjective sources behind such illusions.

I object to such assertions and flatly deny that reality is subjective. Only perception is subjective -- and critical thinking ought to be used to get through to the objective truth. In the case of ancient texts, critical reading helps us establish what the original text most likely said.

[0] https://www.britannica.com/topic/postmodernism-philosophy

Re: Internet Sacred Text Archive

#38

Post by hackingthelema »

To speak to its English contents, not the translations it hosts, as most are speaking of --

'Thelema' is a decent section, but sometimes the versions on https://hermetic.com/ are better (footnotes linked, proper unicode symbols), and https://lib.oto-usa.org/libri/ are probably the most up-to-date (i.e. the fill->kill correction to be accurate to the Stele in AL[1]).

The Theosophy, Grimoires, and Wicca sections are very worthwhile. Where else are you going to get AE Waite's Goetia (etc.)[1] right next to Mathers/Aleister Crowley's Goetia [2]?

Edit to add: scans of original editions of Crowley's works are @ https://keepsilence.org/the-equinox/ , too

[1] https://www.oto.org/legis1.pdf

[2] https://sacred-texts.com/grim/bcm/index.htm

[3] https://sacred-texts.com/grim/lks/index.htm

Re: Internet Sacred Text Archive

#39

Post by hackingthelema »

vram22 wrote: post #19
hackingthelema wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you read Eknath Easwaran's translation of the Bhagavad Gita? Its structure is Chapter-Introduction, Gita Chapter. If I remember correctly, the authenticated background information is mostly what goes on in the introduction to each chapter (i.e. 'Drona was born a brahmin, a member of the priestly caste, but in search of wealth he took up the way of the warrior and excelled in the knowledge of arms,' since the bac…

Partly related: I found Eknath Easwaran's book on meditation interesting. Cannot comment more since I read it many years ago and don't remember details.

I've not read that one, but I also found his Dhammapada and Upanishads to be quite nice. His name on a work is a good sign, to me!
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