• A translation which closely follows the original and is chiefly meant as an aid to understand the Sanskrit text (as in Kataoka 2011)
• A translation which smooths the text, so that it sounds as if it had been originally written in the target language

It seems that the choice of approaching more the one than the other partly depends also on one’s target language and on the cultural expectations linked to a certain literary civilisation, since readers of, e.g., English or German appear to have very different expectations concerning what counts as a good translation, with the former being much more positively impressed by texts which sound as if they had been composed in their own language, whereas the latter tend to expect from the translation that it transmits part of the flair of the original language, as if it could be partly transparent and let one glimpse the original through it (see Venuti 1995). The other element of the choice is the reader one has in mind. The first model presupposes a reader who knows Sanskrit fairly well and uses the translation only as an auxiliary, the second one assumes the reverse.

A third element worth considering regards the translator themselves. They need an extremely good command of English in order to translate in the second way (which is not my case). Moreover, they need to think of the duration of one’s translation. Each language rapidly evolves so that translating in a very idiomatic way runs the risk of rendering the text less understandable for non-native speakers or speakers who will live in a not so distant future. As a non-native speaker of English, I have, for instance, had problems deciphering the English idioms used in a translation by Anand Venkatkrishnan (in Venkatkrishnan 2015, see the discussion here: http://wp.me/p3YaBu-jz) and many readers of mine had asked me what “ones” in Edgerton 1929 or “ain’t” in other authors could mean. In other words, a strongly idiomatic translation is restricted —in at least some aspects— to native speakers of the present
and immediately following decade.

My translation of the SM aims at being close enough to the text to make it conceptually understandable to a public of Sanskritists as well as to scholars of the history of philosophy and theology. It does not reproduce the complexity of Vedānta Deśika’s prose, nor does it attempt at capturing the beauty of his verses. I tried to make the translation readable also to non-Sanskritists, while being at the same time extremely cautious in not over translating the Sanskrit text. As a rule of thumb, I used the concept of functional equivalence, which was used, e.g., by Raimon Panikkar in discussing comparative theology. Accordingly, I changed passive forms (which are the rule in scholarly Sanskrit) into active ones, since the latter are the rule in scholarly English. I also made pronouns and copulae explicit and avoided causative clauses when possible, since this is the rule in scholarly English. I also broke long sentences into shorter ones, since the length of an acceptable sentence varies massively between scholarly Sanskrit and scholarly English. Nonetheless, the resulting text will not be smooth, because the source text is extremely complex and causes real head-aches to its readers. Smoothing it completely would have meant unpacking all the points it presupposes and hints at.

Whichever type of translation one favours, translating a Sanskrit text always remains a difficult task. In my opinion, this is due especially to the fact that contemporary readers lack almost completely the background assumptions which are required in order to understand each instance of communication, including philosophical texts. While reading a text by Plato, a contemporary reader educated in Europe will automatically be able to identify most of the trees, places (e.g., the Piraeus, at the beginning of the Republic), social institutions (e.g., the role of theater, the names of gods and goddesses, the presence of slaves) and the other realia he mentions. Readers will not be scared by reading geographic or ethnic names (e.g., hoi Thrâkes, in Republic A 327), nor by proper names (e.g. Socrates or Glaucon, ibid.). This familiarity is also reflected in the fact that there are English (as well as French, German, Italian, Spanish…) versions of these terms. Even more, readers will likely be at least slightly familiar with many of Plato’s ideas, such as the maieutic method or the realm of ideas.

The situation is completely different in the case of Sanskrit texts, where Euro-American readers often need to deal with unfamiliar terms, contexts and ideas. Let me call the lack of familiarity with names, works, contexts, customs, etc., circumstantial unfamiliarity and the lack of familiarity with philosophical ideas philosophical unfamiliarity. The unfamiliarity with ideas might be something readers are willing to live with —after all, they started reading a book about an unfamiliar philosopher. What they are probably not prepared to have to overcome, is the additional effort required to just overcome the circumstantial unfamiliarity.

For this reason, one might decide to strongly alter the text, in order to substitute the background assumptions with ones more familiar to the contemporary reader. This substitution may regard minor details, e.g., the substitution of “Devadatta” with “John Smith” as the placeholder for whoever a person, or the inclusion of pronouns, copulae, punctuation and other elements which can be deduced out of the context or of the literary usage of scholastic Sanskrit. I have been generous in making implicit linguistic units explicit, but I did not dare translating proper names and terms referring to realia and to culturally specific elements into more familiar ones. This is because I want to create a reliable translation of the SM that is readable for at least some decades —also given the fact that I do not foresee new translations
of the SM being prepared in the short- and mid-term. Furthermore, I did not want to limit my assumed readership to European readers, and I am not sure that “John Smith” will remain the standard way of expressing the same thing as the Sanskrit Devadatta for all future and remote readers.

Coming to philosophical unfamiliarity, there are again two kinds of it. On the one hand, there is the unfamiliarity of the main thesis one is reading about, in the present case, the idea of aikaśāstrya. On the other hand, there is the unfamiliarity of other philosophical ideas being mentioned only in passing. In the former case I believe I can expect the reader to be patient enough to tolerate some Sanskrit words and some translations sounding alien,
and give themselves enough time to understand what is being discussed. In the latter case, by contrast, I would like to provide the reader with enough information to go forward with the text without having to engage deeply with each of the ideas and theories being mentioned in it without extensive explanations. This means, that in a chapter focusing on the instrument of knowledge called śabda, I might expect the reader to bear with my complicated translation of it as `linguistic communication as an instrument of knowledge’, whereas I will not hesitate to translate anumāna just as `inference’ and adding a word of caution in, e.g., a footnote only. Vice versa, I would translate śabda just as `testimony’ (with a word of caution in, e.g., a footnote) while translating the chapter on anumāna by a thinker of the Nyāya school.

If this principle is followed, a reader will receive a lot information about some key terms and only minimal information about less relevant ones. How can one organise this information so that a reader can find all the information they need to go forward with the main thesis while understanding enough of the other philosophical ideas mentioned?

For this purpose, one needs more than just a reader-friendly translation. One might decide among at least three options:

1. Adding extensive comments in footnotes or endnotes (as it has been done in Preisendanz 1994)
2. Adding the same comments within the text in separate paragraphs, perhaps in smaller font size (as it has been done in Taber 2005)
3. Adding the same comments in an extended introduction (as it has been done in Bilimoria 1988)

The choice partly depends on one’s target readers. Philologists are more likely to appreciate the first solution, whereas the latter two are more likely to appeal to a public of more general readers, who might be more interested in the philosophical content than in the text itself. In this book, I adopt the third model (as I did already in Freschi 2012), although I will recur to the first one whenever the text demands a punctual explanation of a specific point having little bearing with its major concerns.

A specific paragraph needs to be dedicated to the use of parentheses and brackets. I used parentheses:

1. to indicate which Sanskrit word I am translating in specific cases (i.e., while introducing for the first time the translation of a technical term, or whenever a term has to be understood in an unexpected way).
2. to insert short explanations which are needed to understand a specific point of the text and cannot therefore be postponed in an explanatory footnote nor advanced in an introductory study.

As for square-brackets, I used them to insert words which were not present in the Sanskrit original and which could not be directly inferred on its basis. In other words, I would not put “I” in “I am going” within brackets if this translated gacchāmi, since the first-person subject is obviously present in the verb form. I also did not put within brackets obvious complements, such as “sacrifice” while translating sacrifice’s names such as darśapūrṇamāsau or citrā as `the full- and new-moon sacrifices’ and `the citrā sacrifice’. By contrast, I used brackets to highlight for the reader that a certain concept is not actually found in the text, so as to make them aware of the fact that I am suggesting an interpretation of it. For instance, God’s attribute vimuktipriya (within the opening verses of the SĀṬ) literally means `who is fond of liberation’. I rendered it as `He who wants [people to achieve] liberation’.
I also use brackets to introduce identifications of speakers.

Comments from fellow translators and/or readers of philosophical texts from afar welcome!

(Cross posted on the Indian Philosophy Blog. Read there some very interesting comments).

For instance, Kumārila, discusses the prohibition to perform violence and its seeming conflict with the ritual prescription to perform ritual killing within a given sacrifice.
See his Commentary in verses (Ślokavārttika), chapter on Injunction (codanā), vv. 223—224:

तेन सामान्यतः प्राप्तो विधिना न निवारितः ||
फलांशोपनिपातिन्या हिंसायाः प्रतिेषेधकः |
“Therefore the prohibition to killing, obtained in general applied and not stopped by another injunction, prohibits the killing when it pertains to the fruit-portion |

Is this a case of a general rule overturned by a specific one (as claimed in Kei Kataoka 2012, Is Killing Bad?)?

If it were so, we would have the general prohibition to perform violence (F(violence)/T) being overruled by the more specific obligation to perform ritual killing in a specific setting:
F(violence)/T
O(violence)/sacrifice for Agni and Soma

However, this is not the solution adopted by Kumārila. Rather, Kumārila’s point is that the original prohibition to perform violence should be reconfigured as a prohibition regarding only violence as the result of the action, and not regarding instrumental violence.

That is, according to Kumārila, the Vedic prohibition to perform violence should not be read as
F(violence)/T
but as
F(violence as a result)/T
which does not conflict with (instrumental violence)

Comments, as usual, welcome!

I am again pleasantly stuck in a passage of Uttamur T. Vīrarāghavācārya’s learned commentary on the Pūrva Mīmāṃsā Sūtra. This time he is discussing PMS 1.1.26, which is an important sūtra for philosophy of language, but one whose wordings was unclear even within Mīmāṃsā:

loke sanniyamāt prayogasannikarṣaḥ syāt

In an article (forthcoming on The Memoirs of the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, 177, 2020) Kei Kataoka suggests therefore an emendation to the PMS itself.

Within the history of Mīmāṃsā, Sucarita also suggested an emendation and read the sūtra as follows:

loke sanniyamāt prayogaḥ sannikarṣaḥ syāt

Moreover, Sucarita explains the sūtra as follows:

This aphorism aims at showing the difference of the Vedas [from worldly texts], since some people think that the Vedas consist of a collection of words, and the collections of words are commonly seen to have been made by people, for instance, the ones regarding objects (artha) such as groups of blue lotuses, and that therefore also these (Vedic collection of words) have been authored.

padasaṅghātātmāno vedāḥ. padasaṅghātāś ca puruṣakṛtā dṛṣṭāḥ, yathā nīlotpalavanādyarthaviṣayāḥ. ata ete ’pi kṛtrimā iti. tadviśeṣapradarśanārthaṃ cedaṃ sūtram. (Kāśikā ad ŚV pratijñā 55 ad PMS 1.1.1).

Veṅkaṭanātha and Uttamur T. Vīrarāghavācārya agree that this is not a suitable explanation, since it would be out of place. Moreover, says, Veṅkaṭanātha

And the insertion (niveśa) [of the aphorism] within that finality (i.e., showing the difference between ordinary and Vedic language) is not clear.

tādarthye niveśaś ca na spaṣṭaḥ. (SM ad PMS 1.1.26, 1971 p. 116)

The sentence is so short that it demands some explanation, and here follows Uttamur T. Vīrarāghavācārya’s one:

And the insertion [of the aphorism] within that finality means ‘And [the aphorism would] be included in the reflection on that purpose (i.e., showing the difference between ordinary and Vedic language)’, through the postulation that they (general purpose and aphorism) are linked as result and thing leading to the result (phalin) [respectively] insofar as it (aphorism) supplements the principal purpose.

tādarthye niveśaś ceti. pradhānārthaśeṣatayā phalaphalibhāvakalpanayā tadarthavicārāntarbhāvaś cetyarthaḥ.
(SĀṬ ad SM ad PMS 1.1.26, 1971 p. 116)

(I am not completely sure about my understanding of the commentary. Suggestions are welcome!)

In short, Veṅkaṭanātha and Uttamur T. Vīrarāghavācārya enter the debate with Mīmāṃsā authors on their very arena. The disagreement here does not regard a topic which would have a relevance for Vedānta, they just think Sucarita has not respected the sambandha requirement while interpreting the aphorism.

At a certain point in the history of Mīmāṃsā (and, consequently, of Vedānta), the discussion of the reasons for undertaking the study of Mīmāṃsā becomes a primary topic of investigation. When did this exactly happen? The space dedicated to the topic increases gradually in the centuries, but Jaimini and Śabara don’t seem to be directly interested in it.

Nonetheless, Śabara needs to explain a related topic, namely when studying the Mīmāṃsā —before or after one’s study of the Veda. Kumārila and Prabhākara introduce the prescription to learn the Veda (svādhyāyo ‘dhyetavyaḥ, see Kataoka 2001b) and the one to teach the Veda, respectively, as the prescriptions prompting the study of the Veda and, indirectly, of its meaning. Kumārila explains that the prescription to study the Veda does not include a result which can be independently desired and that one therefore needs to insert the knowledge of its meaning as the result. Prabhākara explains that a teacher needs to know the meaning of the Veda in order to teach the Veda and that the dignity of being a teacher is something independently desirable.

The space to the topic of why studying Mīmāṃsā and which prescription promotes it increases drastically —I would say— after Śālikanātha (8th c.?). Why did this question become relevant? Perhaps because its answer was less obvious and one needed to persuade a different kind of public. A public who knew of the importance of studying the Veda, but was not immediately convinced of the importance of undertaking also a detailed study of the Mīmāṃsā exegesis. I wonder whether part of the problem is due to also to a) Śaṅkara’s statement that the Vedāntins do not need to study Mīmāṃsā and b) the fact that the Mīmāṃsā presents itself as a Vedic exegesis, but in fact looks at the Vedas from the vantage point of the Brāhmaṇas, so that an audience more interested in other parts of the Vedas might be less convinced of the usefulness of Mīmāṃsā.

Veṅkaṭanātha, though primarily a Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedāntin, dedicates the first 28 pages of his commentary on the Pūrva Mīmāṃsā Sūtra to this topic. He refutes both the Bhāṭṭa and the Prābhākara points of view. The Bhāṭṭas are wrong because the knowledge of the meaning of the Veda is not something independently desirable. The Prābhākaras are wrong because the prescription to teach is not sufficiently established and, even if it were, it would not include the knowledge of the meaning of the Veda.
Veṅkaṭanātha analyses at length all position and then concludes briskly that the study of Mīmāṃsā needs to be undertaken out of one’s desire (hence the desiderative ending in PMS 1.1.1). In order to legitimate this desire, Veṅkaṭanātha is able to show that PMS 1.1.1 (through the linguistic expression atha) shows that taking time to undertake the study of Mīmāṃsā does not violate other prescriptions and that there is a suitable time for it.

European readers may feel some sympathy with Mīmāṃsā authors, who were possibly just intellectually interested in Mīmāṃsā exegesis, but had to face external challenges and to structure their intuitions about the Mīmāṃsā being “interesting” into a consistent research project.

*These dates are based on Potter’s online bibliography, previously printed as Potter 1995.

Hugo David’s review is (to my knowledge) the only one in French. It is encouraging that great work is still done in languages other than English, but I will allow myself some longer summaries of it, for the sake of readers who may not know French. (I beg the reader’s pardon for my translations, which do not convey the elegance of David’s original French).

First of all, the review is part of a longer essay on “new developments in the study of Mīmāṃsā”, which discusses also James Benson’s edition and translation of the Mīmāṃsānyāyasaṅgraha and Kei Kataoka’s edition, translation and study of the codanā portion of the Ślokavārttika. I cannot but be pleased to be among these brilliant colleagues (whose works I listed in my annotated bibliography of Mīmāṃsā in 15 titles and I have myself reviewed, see here for Kataoka’s, and here for Benson’s).

David states almost at the outset that

No effort has been avoided in order to facilitate to the reader the access to philosophical and linguistic theories which are often very complex and to which almost no previous study had been dedicated. (p. 406)

This points to one of my leading ideas, namely the attempt to communicate what I understand. I am sure that some readers might be annoyed by my attempts to make the life of the reader easier and to demystify Sanskrit Philosophy: they are warned!

This concern is also the reason for my choice, rightly noted by David, “to generally priviledge systematicity over chronology” (which is very true, given that I use also the late Mīmāṃsānyāyaprakāśa to explain this or that concept). David is further right in noting that the only part of the book in which the history of ideas becomes predominant is the chapter regarding the evolution in the classification of prescriptions.

More importantly, David disagrees with my interpretation of the role of desire in Mīmāṃsā. Interested readers can read his alternative explanation in a recent article on the Journal of Value Inquiry, the beginning of which can be read here.

Being a learned reader and scholar of Mīmāṃsā and of Sanskrit theories of language in general, David engages also with the details of the Tantrarahasya‘s translation. He suggests (p. 405, n. 21) to understand tantradvaya, ‘the two tantras’ Rāmānujācārya announces to be his topic, as the Mīmāṃsāsūtra and the Vedāntasūtra, on the basis of the fact that the alternative understanding I suggested (the two schools of Pūrva Mīmāṃsā) is not usually attested for tantra. This may well be true, and this suggestion is intriguing, since elsewhere in his work Rāmānujācārya reveals to be a Viśiṣṭādvaitavedāntin. However, the Vedāntasūtras are never mentioned in the Tantrarahasya, so that their mention as the topic of the whole text would be at least misleading.

1. Because he is a philosopher
2. Because he deals with texts of other schools and thus aims at being understandable
3. Because he is a talented writer

But what should you read in order to better understand Jayanta?

• Graheli 2012 (OA on JIPh) gives you a comprehensive overview of the manuscript sources. Graheli 2011 (RSO) and his forthcoming book further elaborate on which manuscripts and editions you can rely upon.
• Kei Kataoka has published (mostly alone, but in a few cases together with other scholars, such as Alex Watson and myself) an impressive list of editions, (English and Japanese) translations and studies on various parts of the Nyāyamañjarī. You can find them all listed on his blog. Most of them can also be downloaded from there.
• Jonardon Ganeri has dedicated various articles (see, e.g., Ganeri 1996 on JIPh) on the issue of meaning in the Nyāyamañjarī.*
• Similarly, P.K. Sen dedicated several interesting essays to the philosophy of language of Jayanta, see especially Sen 2005 and, if you can read Bengali, his 2008 translation of the fifth book.
• For a historical overview on Jayanta, you can read Slaje 1986 and the introduction of Dezső 2005 (Clay Sanskrit Library), which is an enjoyable translation of a philosophical drama by Jayanta.
• Should you be able to read Gujaratī, Nagin Shah’s translation of the Nyāyamañjarī is the best one, so far (in my opinion) (Shah 1975–1992). English readers can get some sense of it through Shah’s book-long study (1992–1997).

*By the way, should you need some foundations on Indian theories of language, you can think of reading Chakrabarti’s short Introduction to this topic (JIPh 1989) and then Matilal and Sen 1988.

]]> https://elisafreschi.com/2015/09/28/basic-bibliography-for-bha%e1%b9%ad%e1%b9%ada-jayanta/feed/ 0 1962 https://elisafreschi.com/2015/07/13/expert-knowledge-in-sanskrit-texts-additional-sources/ https://elisafreschi.com/2015/07/13/expert-knowledge-in-sanskrit-texts-additional-sources/#comments Mon, 13 Jul 2015 08:02:41 +0000 elisa freschi http://elisafreschi.com/?p=1833 In my previous post on this topic, I had neglected an important source and I am grateful for a reader who pointed this out. The relevant text is a verse of Kumārila’s (one of the main authors of the Mīmāṃsā school, possibly 7th c.) lost Bṛhaṭṭīkā preserved in the Tattvasaṅgraha:

The one who jumps 10 hastas in the sky,
s/he will never be able to jump one yojana, even after one hundred exercises! (TS 3167)

daśahastāntaraṃ vyomno yo nāmotplutya gacchati |
na yojanam asau gantuṃ śakto ’bhyāsaśatair api ||

This argument is referred to by Dharmakīrti (one of the main authors of the Buddhist epistemologic school, a younger contemporary of Kumārila) as an opponent’s claim in his Pramāṇavārttika:

[Obj.:] [Each faculty] cannot transgress its own nature, even if, through exercise, there is some specific [improvement], like in the case of jumping, and of water and heating (water —even if very much heated— will never start burning, because it is outside its nature). (PS 122a–c in Ram Chandra Pandey’s edition)

abhyāsena viśeṣe ’pi laṅghanodakatāpavat svabhāvātikramo mā bhūd iti ced.

Dharmakīrti’s commentator Manorathanandin makes the connection explicit:

For it is not the case that a person, having exceedingly exercised in jumping, jumps one or half a yojana, nor does water extremely heated start burning.

na hi puruṣo ’tyarthaṃ laṅghane kṛtābhyāso yojanam ardhayojanaṃ vā laṅghayati, nāpy udakam ekāntaṃ tāpyamānaṃ dahanībhavati.

The verses by Kumārila and Dharmakīrti are translated in a 1986 article by M. Inami. Readers who do not know Japanese will find the TS verse mentioned in Kataoka 2011, Part 2, p. 44:

[A] human being cannot reach the state of omniscience because of the limits of human abilities.

McClintock 2010 translates both verses and she adds a useful explanation concerning the example of water:

[W]ater can be heated only to a certain poin. No matter how much fuel one adds to the fire, water will never be induced to burst into flames. (p. 209)

Her translation of the second is especially noteworthy, since it evokes a slightly different scenario:

Even if cultivation (abhyāsa may bring about excellence (viśeṣa), the transcendence of [a thing’s] nature does not occur, as [is observed in the cases of] jumping and heating of water. (p. 208)

To this objection Dharmakīrti reacts by saying that mental qualities can develop more than physical ones, like jumping and heating, because (see again McClintock 2010, pp. 210–212):

1. In the case of jumping, one always comes back to the ground and does not retain the previous result, unlike in the case of wisdom.
2. In the case of heating, water turns into something else, which does not occur in the case of accumulating wisdom.

An empiricist like Kumārila would have probably replied that there is no evidence for these claims and the discussion went on, since Śāntarakṣita (the author of the TS, in which Kumārila’s BṬ is partly preserved) rebutted that one cannot express one’s disbelief in something just because one has not seen it and so on.

In case you are curious: one hasta seems to be about 18 inches (i.e., 46 cm). Thus, jumping 10 hastas “in the sky” seems already a lot, unless “in the sky” does not refer to high jump (which is a recent insertion in the Olympic games) and rather refers to long jump. A yojana seems to have been differently interpreted, but is surely more than one mile. (The MW dictionary oscillates between 2,5 and 9 miles).

This post is a prosecution and emendation of this one.

]]> https://elisafreschi.com/2015/07/13/expert-knowledge-in-sanskrit-texts-additional-sources/feed/ 1 1833 https://elisafreschi.com/2015/04/30/translating-from-sanskrit-methodological-issues/ https://elisafreschi.com/2015/04/30/translating-from-sanskrit-methodological-issues/#comments Thu, 30 Apr 2015 08:38:58 +0000 elisa freschi http://elisafreschi.com/?p=1643 Scholars of Sanskrit philosophy are familiar with translations oscillating between the following two extremes:
• A translation which closely follows the original and is chiefly meant as an aid to understand the Sanskrit text (as in Kataoka 2011)
• A translation which smooths the text, so that it sounds as if it had been originally written in the target language (Dominik Wujastyk’s and Ch. Ram-Prasad’s ones)

It seems that the choice of approaching more the one than the other partly depends also on one’s target language, since readers of, e.g., English or German have very different expectations concerning what counts as a good translation, with the former being much more positively impressed by texts which sound as if they had been composed in their own language, whereas the latter expect from the translation that it transmits part of the flair of the original language, as if it could be partly transparent. These differences are discussed in Venuti 1995 (I am grateful to Dominik Wujastyk who pointed out the book). The other element of the choice is the reader one has in mind. The first model presupposes a reader who knows Sanskrit fairly well and uses the translation only as an auxiliary, the second one vice versa.

A third element worth considering regards the translator themselves. They need an extreme command of English in order to translate in the second way. Moreover, they need to think of the duration of one’s translation. Each language rapidly evolves and translating in a very idiomatic way runs the risk of rendering the text non understandable for non-native speakers or speakers who will live in a not so distant future. As a non-native speaker of English, I have for instance had problems deciphering the English idioms at stake in a translation by Anand Venkatkrishnan (in Venkatkrishnan 2014, see the discussion here) and many readers of mine had asked me what “ones” in Edgerton 1929 could mean.

Anyway, even if one favours the latter type of translation, translating a Sanskrit text remains always a difficult task. In my opinion, this is due especially to the fact that contemporary readers lack almost completely the background assumptions which are needed in order to understand each instance of communication, including philosophical texts. For this reason, one might decide to strongly alter the text, in order to substitute the background assumptions with ones more familiar to the contemporary reader. This substitution may regard minor details, e.g., the substitution of “Devadatta” with “John Smith” as the placeholder for whoever a person, or the inclusion of pronouns, punctuation and other elements which can be deduced out of the context or of the śāstric usage. But these minor details are not likely to be enough, when it comes to philosophical positions which are not shared, such as the one about siddha and sādhya.

Thus, one needs more than a more reader-friendly translation. One might decide among at least three options:

1. Adding extensive comments in footnotes or endnotes (as it has been done in Preisendanz 1994)
2. Adding the same comments within the text in separate paragraphs, perhaps in smaller font size (as it has been done in Taber 2005)
3. Adding the same comments in an extended introduction (as it has been done in Bilimoria 1988)

The choice partly depends on one’s target readers. Philologists are more likely to appreciate the first solution, whereas the latter two are more likely to appeal to a public of more general readers, who might be more interested in the problem than in the text itself.

How do you traslate?
For another post on Sanskrit translations from a methodological point of view, see here.
Matthew Dasti raised a related point in this post, where he asks whether we should masculine pronouns to Sanskrit texts whenever they lack a subject and we are translating them in a language like English, which requires a subject.

]]> https://elisafreschi.com/2015/04/30/translating-from-sanskrit-methodological-issues/feed/ 4 1643 https://elisafreschi.com/2015/03/17/translating-a-sanskrit-philosophical-text-as-a-group-work/ https://elisafreschi.com/2015/03/17/translating-a-sanskrit-philosophical-text-as-a-group-work/#comments Tue, 17 Mar 2015 08:40:43 +0000 elisa freschi http://elisafreschi.com/?p=1519 I am fond of group work —I am just too ambitious to be satisfied with what I can achieve alone and I am therefore always keen to work with other people on bigger projects. I have discussed in several other posts my experience as an editor and as a co-editor. But is it possible to publish a unitary book if different people translate different parts of it?

Some preliminary work is surely needed. The following points immediately come to my mind:

1. Keep a list (to be constantly updated) of all technical terms and be sure that you discuss a unitary translation before completing your part.
2. Be sure you agree about the style of your translation. I, to begin with, use (round) parentheses for explanations and Sanskrit terms and [square] brackets for additions of words which are not found in the Sanskrit although they could have been there. E.g. nagaraṃ gacchāmi “I go to the city” (No need to put “I” in brackets, since it is already included in gacchāmi, same applies to “to the”). But kaiścid bhedo uktaḥ viṣayāntarāt “Some said that the difference [between Linguistic Communication and inference] is due to the fact that they have a different object” (since the author could have spelt out the elements which are different, but decided not to do so).
3. Be sure you agree about the purpose of your translation. As far as philosophical texts are concerned, for instance, I aim at being understandable while not camouflaging the style of the author. In other words, I would add several explanations in brackets if the text just presuposses things unknown to Western readers (e.g., that “Śyena” is the name of a malefic sacrifice), but I would not make the text sound as if it had been written yesterday in Austin (this is also one of the reasons, IMHO, for avoiding translations such as “inference to the best explanation” for arthāpatti).
4. Closely connected to the above is an agreement concerning one’s target reader. Kataoka 2011, for instance, clearly envisions a targer reader who knows Sanskrit and uses the translation as a guide through the text.
5. All translations of Sanskrit texts need an accurate introduction and/or footnotes and/or glosses and/or…. Be sure that you agree about how to use each of these tools (Should the introductory study explain all and make the following Sanskrit text understandable as in Freschi 2012? Should the introductory text show the philosophical relevance of the topic, while a close commentary follows each paragraph and explains it as in Taber 2005? and so on).
6. Just as a personal aside, I would also recommend to agree about a realistic timing. I find it very frustrating to keep a dead line, notwithstanding all, and then have to wait for moths for the others to be ready with their part.

What am I forgetting? Is there something else one should agree about before starting a joint project?

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