English Translation - New required - A Thought

Discussions on various aspects of Sikhi
swarn bains
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Re: English Translation - New required - A Thought

Post by swarn bains »

my translation is available on http://swarnbains.tripod.com. read and advise your comments. it will give me the guidance whther good or bad. whether it need more improvelemt./
deepharn
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Re: English Translation - New required - A Thought

Post by deepharn »

This is in response to Bains Ji. As desired by you and as promised, I visited your website and was hurt.

Illustratively , here is a reproduction, in inverted commas, from your website of starting of SGGS JI -
" God is one. It is true. He is the Creator. He has no concern with
anything. He has no enemy. He is immortal. He does not take
birth. He came into existence on His own. He is realized by guru’s
(divine teacher) grace reciting God’s name."
1.My Comments, given my limited experience.
Since when did you discover in Mool Mantra the word "he". I dont even agree with your definition of Nirbhau - you define bhau as concern, many scholars define it as fear. One alternative translation of mool mantra could probably be -
God is one.
Name of God is True.
God is the creator.
God is fearless.
God is without enmity.
God is timeles or God is beyond time.
God is beyond the cycle of life and death or God is immortal
God is self-existent
God is achievable by blessing of Guru

2. “Recite”
My comment
You define title of bani "Jap" as recite - viable alternatives could be chant, meditate, contemplate, read, speak

3."MENTIONED ABOVE IS true from the beginning, for a long time. It is true now. Nanak says it will always be true. "

My Comments
a) Where did that word "mentioned above is" come from?
b) Alternative translation of above passage could be
True since beginning, True in all ages, is even True now , Nanak says, will even be True (1.)

Dear Bains ji, i reiterate, my recently reached conclusion, after reading many translations and now after sampling even yours, translating SGGS Ji by one person is impossible. We need to have a Group, finance it and seek output within a stipulated time in English. And then share with everyone to benefit the whole human race.

Thanks
swarn bains
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Re: English Translation - New required - A Thought

Post by swarn bains »

i wanted the honest openion. you did. thank you . you brought me to earth. The previous translations were lakeer de fakeer. by doing so they have interpreted the translation so bad in certain places that i do not even want to mention. look at page 1410 waaran te wadheek by all the scholars before me and make your mind. it is very difficult to translate sggs. i have also made some mistakes. but to make it understood. i mentioned as mentioned above.
fearless. the fear is the observation of the eye, interpreted by the brain and accepted by mind. God does not have eyes like u and me, although he is everywhere. so i do not agree with nirbhau as fear. i used concern it means he does not interfere with your and mine day to day activities. It cannot be exaggerated in the translation, but to be thought over. secondly there is no equivalent of God. What makes him to be fearful. you have your opinion i have mine. i respect your opinion. i do have one opinion. e.i. no professor should attempt to translate sggs. because they copy from the previous one and further mess it up.
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Theodorus
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Re: English Translation - New required - A Thought

Post by Theodorus »

Deepharn ji,

WJKK, WJKF

You wrote:
Theodorus Ji, It is a herculan task to try to translate any Bani from original to another language. My suggestion to you would be - a) to seek help from Guruka Singh and Ek Ong Kaar Kaur, both of whom are available on sikhnet website, and easy to contact. b) Whate evr you translate put it on the discussion forum so that we can all give our two-bits of comments to enrich your effort.
I think you oversaw that fact that I'm trying to translate to Dutch not to English. As far as I know neither Guruka Singh nor Ek Ong Kaar Kaur know Dutch. While Dutch might be close to English when you try to translate from one to the other you'll notice that there is quite some difference between the two.
Posting my Dutch version on this forum will not help much either I think.
deepharn
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Re: English Translation - New required - A Thought

Post by deepharn »

My response to Bains Ji and Theodorus Ji.

A. Thanks to both of you, who made me think so hard on Mool Mantra. After reflecting for so many times, How would you react to this English translation -

"1 God, True Name, Creating Entity, Fearless, without hostility, Timeless form, without birth, self created, Gurus Grace"


B. Theodorus ji, even before you translate into Danish, it will be important to know what english base level translation you picked to translate from - That version of english translation and your danish version, you could easily place on the discussion forum for all of us to comment upon. We will try to contribute.

C. Here is one question - Should we try an english translation of Japji here, pauri by pauri, on weekly basis and we all start commenting. Hope fully, with Guru's grace, we may get a better translation of japji in English which could be then used as base by interested scholars to translate into any other language.

If you two agree, then Bains Ji (if you also agree) can post every week one pauri on sikhnet discussion forum, and we can proceed further, slowly and steadily, after pondering for a week.

Thanks
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Theodorus
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Re: English Translation - New required - A Thought

Post by Theodorus »

Deepharn ji,

WJKK, WJKF

I do not want to offend you but you make me laugh as you react as a stereotypical American that 'does' Europe in one week and who thinks that Holland is the capital of Danmark. So let me explain:
The Netherlands (also known as Holland) is a rather small country west of Germany and norht of Belgium (which is even smaller then the Netherlands). The capital of the Netherlands is Amsterdam. The language spoken in the Netherlands is called Dutch
Danmark is a small country north of Germany and south of Norway and Sweden. The capital of Danmark is Copenhagen. In Danmark the language spoken is Danish.
I won't bother you further with the rest of the European countries.

As for my translation of Japji Sahib from English to Dutch I 'collected' about 10 different english versions of Japji Sahib in order to try to understand what is said there. To even get a better understanding I also try to find out (with the help of a punjabi speaking friend) what each punjabi word in Japji means (in english and/or Dutch). So I found out that many english translations contain a lot of explenation which makes texts readable (understandable) but much much longer and not very much recitable. I also found out that this explenations is not there in the 'original' version.
This means that people that recite the Japji Sahib and also understand it need a lot of knowledge in advance. And that is exactly what I want to do too; to make a dutch version that is recitable but that needs a lot of knowledge in advance. The knowledge (or explenation of the text) I want to put into footnotes so that people with no knowledge in advance can still read the text and with help of the footnotes also understand it.

Every time I work on it I seem to change thinks I thought I already decided on.

What I miss though is your comment on the idea of the website I posted before: http://www.sikher.com/
Here you'll find SGGS in 54 languages (most of them computer translations I think), you can enlist as a volunteer translator etc.

fateh
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