Greetings to those who have a power to make corrections in the translations.
I have happened to open the Russian translation of Mahāparinibbāna Sutta. The very first sentence reads:
Так я слышал: Однажды Благословенный замыслил напасть на Ваджжиян; говоря так: «Я искореню их, хотя они сильны и могущественны, я разрушу, я полностью уничтожу их».
That means that
Thus have I heard. Once Bhagava had a desire to attack the Vajjians; saying, “I will annihilate these Vajjians, who are so successful, so powerful, I will destroy the Vajjians, I will bring about the downfall and destruction of the Vajjians.”
Obviously a line of the text has gone missing. It would be good if it’d be restored.
Yikes, that’s a bad mistake, thanks for pointing it out. Normally we avoid making corrections to third-party translations, but in this case it seems justified. @Aminah would you be so kind as to reach out to one of our Russian friends and getting this fixed?
Ahh, that’s what I like, a bit of text-critical snark!
(I know you’re joking but for anyone who doesn’t get it: the two principles Ven cites are used in text-critical studies to decide on a correct reading: “the shorter passage is preferred”, “the more difficult passage is preferred”. Taken as literal absolutes, it would imply we should accept the mistake in the Russian translation as more authentic. But they are, of course, not meant to be used in this way. They are simply rules of thumb, axioms drawn from the experience of many scholars, which can help in cases where more definitive evidence is lacking.)
Well, actually, I took one step before this and discovered the error was in the coding so fixed it that way.
I looked up the original source and compared it with the SC version and my best guess is that the line in question was accidentally cut when regex-ing out footnote numbers:
Так я слышал: Однажды Благословенный [1] обитал в Раджагахе, на холме, называемом Вершиной Коршуна. В это самое время царь Магадхи, Аджатасатту, сын царицы из рода Видехи, [2] замыслил напасть на Ваджжиян; говоря так: “Я искореню их, хотя они сильны и могущественны, я разрушу, я полностью уничтожу их”.
Rather than,
Так я слышал: Однажды Благословенный замыслил напасть на Ваджжиян; говоря так: «Я искореню их, хотя они сильны и могущественны, я разрушу, я полностью уничтожу их».
quoted above as it is currently on SC.
I’ve already pushed a correction for this specific line which will show when the site is next updated, but will check to see if there are any further such errors in this text.
Also, one other thing I noticed, going by Google Translate, this text seems to begin with an author’s/editor’s introduction (under the " Введение" heading) which, as far as I understand deviates from SC’s presentational preference… so… y’know
Oh and by the way, many thanks again @Piyadassi and a very warm welcome to the forum!
Great!
Thank you all!
The human power took over the logic of machines .
Also, one other thing I noticed, going by Google Translate, this text seems to begin with an author’s/editor’s introduction (under the " Введение" heading) which, as far as I understand deviates from SC’s presentational preference… so… y’know
Indeed, it was strange to see it there…
Oh and by the way, many thanks again @Piyadassi and a very warm welcome to the forum!
Thank you for your mettā
I am not good in markdown etc., so please, forgive me if I make little mistakes editing the posts.
Um… Sorry I don’t quite follow, you mean what was the troublesome regex? As I happened to write in a PM earlier on, on a tangential matter, my belief is that .* was used with out a ?
No, in this instance I don’t believe it was a script, but rather that it was coded by hand (and from prep for SC point of view the original markup is pretty horrible—when inspecting further it took me ‘contextually ages’ to extract just the Russian text for comparison to what is currently on SC) but of course, batch processes will have been performed with a text editor.
Beautiful! I was earlier going to joke that if you’re stepping forward as a quality control volunteer I’d be delighted to add you to the volunteer list, but if you really would like to contribute your skills in any way at some point, please do feel warmly welcome to drop me a line at any time.
ok