Is it possible to add these pop-up explanations that provide further information on specific terms or phrases to the German translation? It really helps understanding.
To give an example: In MN 131 we find one to explain “the unshakable” but not in the German translation.
No, these are Bhante Sujato’s comments and don’t belong to the interface. They are a separate category of information, and I agree they are really useful.
I have started translating Bhante’s comments to the DN; I think I did DN1-14, but some may have changed since I translated them. As long as Bhante is still in the process of revision, comments are also changing, and unlike for the suttas it is not easy for me to track his changes of comments. For this reason I have stopped translating comments for the time being.
Great question! Not related to this topic, but that’s ok!
These are called notes and they are not part of the interface (as it relates to this topic). I believe Ven. @sabbamitta is working her way through translating the notes into German. The notes are relatively new part of the site, so I’m guessing she had translated that sutta before there were notes.
I think the point that @ thistle is making is that someone who is not monolingual reading a translation in language A may well find the notes in language B useful.
Perhaps there would be a simple way of making those notes easily available, via a tool tips, rather than having to open the whole translation in language B.
Ah okay, thank you Venerables @Snowbird and @sabbamitta! So I’ll just respond to the following comment in this thread and leave it at that, since it’s obviously not about the interface translation and therefore off-topic.
Yeah, I mean it would be great to have this if it is technically possible…
I’m also fine with checking the English translations until the notes-project is finished, though, and the finalized version will be added…whatever the Sutta Central staff deems fit
This is all in a new thread now, so feel free to chat away!
So it sounds like the suggestion would be: On non-English Bilara translations, show the notes for the English translations.
Current User story:
Uva is reading one of Ven. Sabbamitta’s translations and is puzzled by a passage. From experience they know that Bhante Sujato might have made a note in his translation. So they open up his translation of the same sutta in a new tab and then try to find the same passage there. There may or may not be an English note waiting for them.
Suggested User story:
Hans is reading one of Ven. Sabbamitta’s German translations and is puzzled by a passage. Because Bhante Sujato’s note to the English translation has not yet been translated into German and Ven. Sabbamitta has not written one of her own, Bhante Sujato’s English note would be shown on the German translation.
Bhante @Sujato, is this something you would entertain? It could get messy. For example, would your English notes usually make sense outside of the context of your tranlsation? Would your notes be substituted on a segment by segment basis? For example, say someone is doing their own completely original translation into Spanish. They have a note on segment 1 but not on segment 2. You have a note on segment 2. Would it show both the Spanish translator’s note as well as your note? Or would your notes only be shown for texts that have zero notes?
This would be very cool! I don’t know about other users but I’m frequently checking the English translation for the notes, so it would save time and it would be a lot ‘smoother’. But how would one ensure that the note is linked to the correct word or phrase?
I’m really illiterate when it comes to programming, so I don’t know if this can be done like automatically… or by segments as @Snowbird suggested.
I’m just thinking that if somebody had to manually match the notes to the corresponding phrase/word/segment - the time this would take - you could’ve probably translated the entire note by then…
So, the translations done using the Bilara software (aka aligned) all work from a segmented root text. So here is the Pali for 131:
You can see the bits that start with mn131: etc. Thos are segment numbers. They correspond all data for a text. So here is the English translation:
And here is the German:
In almost all non-verse texts, the translation is going to correspond exactly to the Pali. (Verses are a little messier.)
And the notes correspond using the same segment numbers:
So from a technical standpoint it is not hard. It’s just a matter of if it makes sense to code it into the workings of the site. That’s up to Bhante to consider.
If he doesn’t want to code it into the site (which I can imagine could be the case) it should be possible to do it with the browser extension.
Looks very neat and straightforward and the matching would be ensured.
Probably I had a brief look into the thread but it’s all greek to me. I have no idea what browser extensions are and what the thread is about in the first place.
A browser extension is a small piece of software that adds additional functionality to the browser, usually the desktop version.
So if you wanted to try out the extension, you would just click on the link to the extension of whatever browser you were using. So if you are on Chrome, use this one.
The idea behind creating the extension is to offer functionality that most users won’t need, thereby keeping the code of the main site as simple as possible.
This should be the minimum standard, lol. Whether or not something can be incorporated into the site is always more tricky. Have to keep the big picture in mind.
If Bhante isn’t keen on adding this to the main site, then I will welcome help adding it to the plugin.
Yes. It isn’t that hard to accomplish. The trick is that SC is basically a single page web app. So it’s tricky (for me at least!) to efficiently detect page changes and completed changes. When a new api call is made to fetch a bilara translation, then a second call would be needed to fetch Bhante’s translation (which would come with the notes) then the notes need to be added to the page after it is finished building.
SuttaCentral
I had a brief look into the thread but it’s all greek to me. I have no idea what browser extensions are and what the thread is about in the first place.
