English Translation of Chinese Agamas

I’ve added an issue for this:

However, I need a pointer on where it can be sourced to update the ticket details. Also, despite this being a discussion about segmentation, I’m guessing we just want to add it as a legacy text in the first instance? Lastly, Ayya @Vimala I don’t know if you want another (dependent) issue added in terms of adding parallels…?

Added: oh and one other thing, I can’t 100% work out from the dates is if this would go as lzh or ltc (or something eles).

Oh and oh,

2020.

5 Likes

Yes, it wil lbe legacy html. And it can be sourced on the CBETA website here: T17n0765 本事經 | CBETA 漢文大藏經 (@cdpatton, please correct me if I’m wrong).

Up to you. You can do it on the same issue or keep the two separate. At the moment we do not have a list of parallels yet so maybe keep them separate but referring to each other ?

4 Likes

And it’s lzh, like all our ancient Chinese.

3 Likes

Here are the segmentation files for MA.2.

{
“ma2:0.1” : “Middle-Length Discourses 2”,
“ma2:0.2” : “1. The Sevens”,
“ma2:0.3” : “2. The Pārijāta Tree”,
“ma2:1.1” : “I have heard thus:”,
“ma2:1.2” : “One time, the Buddha traveled to Śrāvastī and stayed at Anāthapiṇḍada Park in Jeta Grove.”,
“ma2:2.1” : “At that time, the Bhagavān addressed the bhikṣus:”,
“ma2:2.2” : "“If the leaves of the Heaven of the Thirty-Three’s 'jāta tree wither and yellow, then the devas of the Thirty-Three are delighted and rejoice.”,
“ma2:2.3” : “It won’t be long before the 'jāta tree’s leaves fall.”,
“ma2:3.1” : "“Furthermore, once the leaves of the Heaven of the Thirty-Three’s 'jāta tree have fallen, then the devas of the Thirty-Three are delighted and rejoice.”,
“ma2:3.2” : “It won’t be long before the 'jāta tree’s leaves will grow back again.”,
“ma2:4.1” : "“Furthermore, once the leaves of the Heaven of the Thirty-Three’s 'jāta tree have grown back again, then the devas of the Thirty-Three are delighted and rejoice.”,
“ma2:4.2” : “It won’t be long before the 'jāta tree grows webs [of buds].”,
“ma2:5.1” : "“Furthermore, once the Heaven of the Thirty-Three’s 'jāta tree has grown webs, then the devas of the Thirty-Three are delighted and rejoice.”,
“ma2:5.2” : “It won’t be long before the 'jāta tree’s [buds] grow like bird beaks.”,
“ma2:6.1” : "“Furthermore, once the Heaven of the Thirty-Three’s 'jāta tree has grown [buds] like bird beaks, then the devas of the Thirty-Three are delighted and rejoice.”,
“ma2:6.2” : “It won’t be long before the 'jāta tree’s [buds] will open like bowls.”,
“ma2:7.1” : "“Furthermore, once the [buds] of Heaven of the Thirty-Three’s 'jāta tree have opened like bowls, then the devas of the Thirty-Three are delighted and rejoice.”,
“ma2:7.2” : “It won’t be long before the 'jāta tree will be in full bloom.”,
“ma2:8.1” : "“Once the 'jāta tree has fully bloomed, the light that it shines, the colors that it reflects, and the fragrance that it produces have a range of a hundred yojanas.”,
“ma2:8.2” : “During the four months of summer, the devas of the Thirty-Three then entertain themselves with the five heavenly pleasures and the virtues with which they are endowed.”,
“ma2:8.3” : “This is called the festival under the Heaven of the Thirty-Three’s 'jāta tree.”,
“ma2:9.1” : "“The meaning of the noble disciple is also so.”,
“ma2:9.2” : “When he considers leaving home, then the disciple is called ‘leaves turning yellow’ like the withering and yellowing leaves of the Heaven of the Thirty-Three’s 'jāta tree.”,
“ma2:10.1” : "“Furthermore, the noble disciple shaves off his beard and hair, puts on the kāṣāya robes, becomes faithful, leaves home, goes homeless, and trains on the path.”,
“ma2:10.2” : “The noble disciple then is called ‘falling leaves’ like the leaves falling from the Heaven of the Thirty-Three’s 'jāta tree.”,
“ma2:11.1” : "“Furthermore, the noble disciple parts with desire and parts with evil or unwholesome states.”,
“ma2:11.2” : “With reasoning and investigation, this seclusion produces joy and happiness, and he attains the accomplishment of the first dhyāna.”,
“ma2:11.3” : “The noble disciple then is called ‘leaves growing back again’ like the leaves growing back on the Heaven of the Thirty-Three’s 'jāta tree.”,
“ma2:12.1” : "“Furthermore, once the noble disciple’s reasoning and investigation have stopped, with inner clarity and unified mind, he is without reasoning or investigation.”,
“ma2:12.2” : “This concentration produces joy and happiness, and he attains the accomplishment of the second dhyāna.”,
“ma2:12.3” : “The noble disciple then is called ‘growing webs [of buds]’ like the Heaven of the Thirty-Three’s 'jāta tree growing webs [of buds].”,
“ma2:13.1” : "“Furthermore, the noble disciple parts with joy and desire, and he is equanimous without pursuing it further.”,
“ma2:13.2” : “Rightly mindful and with right knowledge, he personally feels the happiness that’s described by the nobles as the noble’s equanimity, mindfulness, and happy abode, and he attains the accomplishment of the third dhyāna.”,
“ma2:13.3” : “The noble disciple then is called ‘growing [buds] like bird beaks’ like the Heaven of the Thirty-Three’s 'jāta tree growing [buds] like bird beaks.”,
“ma2:14.1” : "“Furthermore, the noble disciple’s pleasure ceases and his pain ceases.”,
“ma2:14.2” : “The basis of joy and sorrow having ceased, and he is neither discomforted nor delighted.”,
“ma2:14.3” : “Equanimous, mindful, and pure, he attains the accomplishment of the fourth dhyāna.”,
“ma2:14.4” : “The noble disciple then is called ‘becoming like a bowl’ like the Heaven of the Thirty-Three’s 'jāta tree [buds] becoming like bowls.”,
“ma2:15.1” : "“Furthermore, once the noble disciple’s contaminants have ended, his mind is liberated, and his wisdom is liberated.”,
“ma2:15.2” : “In the present, he knows and recognizes for himself the accomplishment of self-realization:”,
“ma2:15.3” : “‘Birth has been ended, the religious practice has been established, and the task has been accomplished.’”,
“ma2:15.4” : “He is no longer subject to existence and knows it as it really is.”,
“ma2:15.5” : “The noble disciple then is called ‘in full bloom’ like the Heaven of the Thirty-Three’s 'jāta tree in full bloom.”,
“ma2:16.1” : "“He is an arhat bhikṣu whose contaminants have ended.”,
“ma2:16.2” : “The devas of the Thirty-Three assemble in the Correct Hall of the Good Dharma, sigh admiringly, and praise him,”,
“ma2:16.3” : “'Some worthy disciple at some town shaved off his beard and hair, put on the kāṣāya robes, become faithful, left home, gone homeless, and trained on the path.”,
“ma2:16.4” : “Once his contaminants had ended, his mind was liberated, and his wisdom was liberated.”,
“ma2:16.5” : “In the present, he knew and recognized for himself the accomplishment of self-realization:”,
“ma2:16.6” : ““Birth has been ended, the religious practice has been established, and the task has been accomplished.””,
“ma2:16.7” : “He is no longer subject to existence and knows is as it really is.’”,
“ma2:17.1” : ““This is called the assembly that coincides with the end of an arhat’s contaminants, which is like the festival held under the Heaven of the Thirty-Three’s 'jāta tree.””,
“ma2:18.1” : “The Buddha spoke thus.”,
“ma2:18.2” : “Those bhikṣus who heard what the Buddha said rejoiced and handed it down.”
}

{
“ma2:0.1” : “中阿含 2”,
“ma2:0.2” : “1. 七法品”,
“ma2:0.3” : “2. 晝度樹經”,
“ma2:1.1” : “我聞如是:”,
“ma2:1.2” : “一時,佛遊舍衛國,在勝林給孤獨園。”,
“ma2:2.1” : “爾時,世尊告諸比丘:”,
“ma2:2.2” : “「若三十三天晝度樹葉萎黃,是時,三十三天悅樂歡喜,”,
“ma2:2.3” : “晝度樹葉不久當落。”,
“ma2:3.1” : “復次,三十三天晝度樹葉已落,是時,三十三天悅樂歡喜,”,
“ma2:3.2” : “晝度樹葉不久當還生。”,
“ma2:4.1” : “復次,三十三天晝度樹葉已還生,是時,三十三天悅樂歡喜,”,
“ma2:4.2” : “晝度樹不久當生網。”,
“ma2:5.1” : “復次,三十三天晝度樹已生網,是時,三十三天悅樂歡喜,”,
“ma2:5.2” : “晝度樹不久當生如鳥喙。”,
“ma2:6.1” : “復次,三十三天晝度樹已生如鳥喙,是時,三十三天悅樂歡喜,”,
“ma2:6.2” : “晝度樹不久當開如鉢。”,
“ma2:7.1” : “復次,三十三天晝度樹已開如鉢,是時,三十三天悅樂歡喜,”,
“ma2:7.2” : “晝度樹不久當盡敷開。”,
“ma2:8.1” : “若晝度樹已盡敷開,光所照、色所映、香所熏,周百由延,”,
“ma2:8.2” : “是時,三十三天於中夏四月,以天五欲功德具足而自娛樂,”,
“ma2:8.3” : “是謂三十三天於晝度樹下集會娛樂也。”,
“ma2:9.1” : “「如是義,聖弟子亦復爾,”,
“ma2:9.2” : “思念出家,是時聖弟子名為葉黃,猶三十三天晝度樹葉萎黃也。”,
“ma2:10.1” : “復次,聖弟子剃除鬚髮,著袈裟衣,至信、捨家、無家、學道,”,
“ma2:10.2” : “是時聖弟子名為葉落,猶三十三天晝度樹葉落也。”,
“ma2:11.1” : “復次,聖弟子離欲、離惡不善之法,”,
“ma2:11.2” : “有覺、有觀,離生喜樂,得初禪成就遊,”,
“ma2:11.3” : “是時,聖弟子名葉還生,猶三十三天晝度樹葉還生也。”,
“ma2:12.1” : “復次,聖弟子覺觀已息,內靜、一心,無覺無觀,”,
“ma2:12.2” : “定生喜樂,得第二禪成就遊,”,
“ma2:12.3” : “是時,聖弟子名為生網,猶三十三天晝度樹生網也。”,
“ma2:13.1” : “復次,聖弟子離於喜欲,捨無求遊,”,
“ma2:13.2” : “正念正智而身覺樂,謂聖所說、聖所捨、念、樂住、空,得第三禪成就遊,”,
“ma2:13.3” : “是時,聖弟子名生如鳥喙,猶三十三天晝度樹如鳥喙也。”,
“ma2:14.1” : “復次,聖弟子樂滅、苦滅,”,
“ma2:14.2” : “喜憂本已滅,不苦不樂、”,
“ma2:14.3” : “捨、念、清淨,得第四禪成就遊,”,
“ma2:14.4” : “是時,聖弟子名生如鉢,猶三十三天晝度樹如鉢也。”,
“ma2:15.1” : “「復次,聖弟子諸漏已盡,心解脫、慧解脫,”,
“ma2:15.2” : “於現法中自知自覺,自作證成就遊,”,
“ma2:15.3” : “生已盡,梵行已立,所作已辦,”,
“ma2:15.4” : “不更受有,知如真,”,
“ma2:15.5” : “是時,聖弟子名盡敷開,猶三十三天晝度樹盡敷開也。”,
“ma2:16.1” : “彼為漏盡阿羅訶比丘,”,
“ma2:16.2” : “三十三天集在善法正殿,咨嗟稱歎:”,
“ma2:16.3” : “『某尊弟子於某村邑剃除鬚髮,著袈裟衣,至信、捨家、無家、學道,”,
“ma2:16.4” : “諸漏已盡,心解脫、慧解脫,”,
“ma2:16.5” : “於現法中自知自覺,自作證成就遊,”,
“ma2:16.6” : “生已盡,梵行已立,所作已辦,”,
“ma2:16.7” : “不更受有,知如真。』”,
“ma2:17.1” : “是謂漏盡阿羅訶共集會也,如三十三天晝度樹下共集會也。」”,
“ma2:18.1” : “佛說如是。”,
“ma2:18.1” : “彼諸比丘聞佛所說,歡喜奉行。”
}

5 Likes

Dear @cdpatton,

Thanks so much for this. That looks great!
I just want to add a note regarding quotemarks and typography.
I merged your pull request but will at some point go over the typography used there too.

In the above you also us "“ in some places, while only one double quotemark is needed. But please don’t use the straight quotemarks " but the is better. Also the end-quotemarks should not be straight quotemarks but . Also the single quotemarks are not the straight ones. (See here for examples: Quotation mark - Wikipedia)
I will be happy to change that in MA2 in the files you just pushed but just wanted to make you aware.

4 Likes

Hmm … I was actually pasting in plain text that used only straight quotes with the quotes that were inside the strings escaped with a backslash. It’s necessary to add a second quote because the outer and inner quotes are defining a string in JSON, and normally it would be escaped so software doesn’t confuse actual quotes with the end of a string.

I guess the forum wants to convert them to curly quotes and does a strange thing when it hits the backslashes. And it doesn’t convert the single quotes sometimes. I’ll just use curly quotes going forwards.

Charlie

3 Likes

Indeed.

We’d be much better off adding these straight to Github, can we arrange that? Discourse is for chatting, not sharing data.

But just to repeat Ayya’s point, we always use proper curly quotes in our texts, for typographical niceness, but it also means there is no need to escape them for JSON.

4 Likes

Would you want to replicate the pattern of the pli-en files in po_text? I can do this manually now if there’s not a more clever automated way…? And Charles can continue in his work adding to the lzh-en folder I create in the process?

3 Likes

I have pushed some changes to MA2 in this respect yesterday so @cdpatton, please pull in those changes on your local work branch.

3 Likes

Okay, except we’d better not use po-text, as this is not po. Ultimately it should be in bliara-data, but that folder is just dummy data for now, so best to create a new repo for lzh-data or something, we can merge it later.

Okay, here’s a draft version of the jsons I made, I’m sure they’ll need some cleaning up and the info file defo does:

4 Likes

Those JSON files are in Pootle format? Did you want to assign them .po extensions or did you want them converted to real JSON?

1 Like

@Aminah this is looking great, can you tell me how it works? Charles is giving text and translation in segments, how does this get put together with the markup and stuff?

Yes, but they should be JSON. From here on out, we aren’t adding any new things to Pootle, hence there is no reason to use PO. All JSON, all the time. Having said which, converting PO files to our JSON is trivial. It can be easier working with PO files when creating things, as all the data for each segment is together.

3 Likes

Yeah, in this case I just did it manually, taking the mark up from Charles’ existing legacy files and following the example of the .po files. Should figure out a way to automate it, but I don’t quite know how things will be done in Bilara, so…?

If it’s too complicated to get into for Charles’ ongoing work at the moment I could maybe just make a simple template?

What Bhante said. :grin: … My understanding was that Bilara would use json files.

3 Likes

This is a new format to me but not too complicated. As Sujato pointed out, it is a little easier to place the Chinese and English together in a single bilingual file, which is what I do for my own “master” copies of the translations using XML.

It looks like #. is syntax for comments? Should I include the headers in each file like they are done in other pootle files? Otherwise, it looks self-explanatory.

Charlie

2 Likes

So sorry, my poor expression; what I meant was if it was too much trouble for Bhante, or Blake or someone else to explain what would be a sensible way to do things with respect to Bilara (the translation engine that’s being worked on at the moment), then some other interim method of generating these json files could be devised for you to use.

The simplest I can think of is perhaps a starter templates for your remaining ma translations (and new ones as needed), with the some of the html pre-populated which can be adjusted/duplicated as needed; but perhaps the clever kids know of a better way.

I haven’t been working with the .po files, but so far as I have seen from the Nikaya po files this is used for HTML and marking up variations between root text editions (I know in the segmented Vinaya texts this is also used for comments, but these texts are a work in progress and I don’t know how they will ultimately be handled).

In the two files in the new temporary repo, this is just used for the text’s HTML.

1 Like

The image I provided was copied directly from SAT’s image inserted at that point in the passage that we were discussing (T99.26c05). You can find it here.

Before Unicode, we had deal with texts littered with this type of notation. It is indeed a kind of algebra, indicating a base character, subtracting an element from it, and then adding an element where the subtracted one was found. For the more complex characters, elements are sometimes separated with / to indicate which is on top and which is on the bottom; there’s even expressions in () in some cases.

Charlie

3 Likes

No worries. I’m happy to provide data in whatever format would work best, and I have some coding knowledge so I can pick up a format easily enough. A single file format definitely would simplify things for myself, but I can also separate the two languages like I’ve been doing with the JSON hashes. I’ll let everyone on the developer side work out what they prefer before I continue segmenting the translations.

Charlie

1 Like

I’ll discuss this with the team, and we’ll work out a best approach. if it’s done just sutta by sutta, I think it’s okay to do it by hand for a while.

Blake just launched the pre-alpha version of Bilara today, so I’m very excited!

So far we have only really considered the texts that are already segmented as PO files. We will have to work out a strategy for making new segmented JSON texts from raw HTML/XML, without an interim PO stage.

5 Likes

I’ve started to do a little preliminary work with Xuanzang’s Itivrttaka. I’m wondering a couple things:

  1. Will SuttaCentral be including his text and be interested in English translations in the future?

  2. Does anyone know of any previous studies identifying all of the parallels between his text and the Pali?

I went through the “Ones” last night and found almost all of the Pali suttas in that section in the Chinese version (the Chinese has 60 sutras, so there are many variants that aren’t in Pali). If there’s a good study already, it’d save me the time of doing that. It seems to be a topic not really examined yet in English, but I don’t have access to academic publications.

Charlie

8 Likes