My apologies, I tried to find the thread I originally brought this issue up in, but I could not find it.
In that other thread I mentioned that previous translators of the suttas often choose ( among more than one choice ) technically correct English words for Pali translations which have misleading connotations that can turn contemporary native English speakers off of Buddhism.
Often these choices seen negative, anti-life, and can remind people of puritanical Christian writings.
Ajahn Sujato asked me to provide some examples, but not keeping notes of such things over time I could only give him one or two.
I came across a good one today, so here goes.
I was reading SN 22.59 and came across this paragraph:
âSeeing thus, bhikkhus, the instructed noble disciple experiences revulsion towards form, revulsion towards feeling, revulsion towards perception, revulsion towards volitional formations, revulsion towards consciousness. Experiencing revulsion, he becomes dispassionate. Through dispassion his mind is liberated. When it is liberated there comes the knowledge: âItâs liberated.â He understands: âDestroyed is birth, the holy life has been lived, what had to be done has been done, there is no more for this state of being.ââ
âRevulsionâ seemed like a rather strong word to me. Thankfully, suttacentral.net has the Pali version of the suttas. I determined that the Pali word is ânibbindatiâ. Using this Pali-English translator I found that nibbindati is defined as:
nibbindati: [ni + vid + áč-a] gets wearied of; is disgusted with.
As a long term meditator, being âweariedâ with form, feeling, etc leading to dispassion sounds much more natural to me than ârevulsionâ. To me as a native English speaker ârevulsionâ conjures up images of closing my mouth and swallowing vomit back down.
This kind of situation is why I think multiple translations are valuable, and why I feel that some of the contemporary translators out there have a negative, anti-life bias, as the two main ones are native English speakers who are well aware of such common connotations.