Buddhist Hybrid English

Discussion
1

Can someone show me an unambiguous and agreed upon English of what is objectively “Buddhist Hybrid English”?

Ideally, I would like it to be from a professionally published translation. But from anywhere is fine as long as it, in your opinion, is definitely Buddhist Hybrid English.

I ask because, and perhaps I should be more embarrassed that I am to admit this, I don’t actually know precisely what is meant by the term. I thought I knew, but it seems I don’t.

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Also, added to the above, is BHE characterized by poor English grammar, or just byzantine English grammar?

By “poor grammar” above, I don’t mean poor stylistically, I mean sentences that are not quite strictly speaking cogent sentences (in “normal English”) when analyzed closely.

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@Coemgenu Well, it’s not really about grammar (perhaps a little in some cases). It’s about vocabularies. Buddhist Hybrid English translations tend to have unnecessarily complicated words, or many Indic terms that are left translated when they can actually be done so.

Try reading this website DharmaNet International

It contains many translations of the Heart Sutra. I believe that they are translated from Sanskrit. For the longer versions, they are probably translated from Tibetan. In any case, try reading them. For me, they represent what one calls Buddhist Hybrid English.

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4

Griffith’s example is from Conze’s translation of the Prajnaparamita.

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5

Could (or should we?) we collect some B.H.E. words, and move on to the grammar…?