Found an English translation for Dīghāvu upāsaka sutta

Hi all
this is my first contribution via this forum
I feel really pleased and excited about the work done here and feel much appreciation and gratitude to the staff.
I like to use Suttacentral for links to texts when I am quoting them. :slight_smile:
and noticed Dīghāvu upāsaka sutta didn’t have an English translation, but I found one online here:
http://obo.genaud.net/dhamma-vinaya/pts/sn/05_mv/sn05.55.003.wood.pts.htm
maybe it can’t be linked in Suttacentral because it is copyrighted by PTS?
best wishes

2 Likes

Thank you and welcome to the forum! Glad to hear that what we do is helpful to you.

Bhante @Sujato is working on translating all the Nikayas into English at the moment and those will be available without copyright.
We can indeed not use this PTS copy without asking their permission and personally I would rather wait for Bhante Sujato’s translations. Bhante Sujato: what do you think?

One tip: if you mention the sutta-number in a post here, like in this case SN 55.3, this post will show up in the menu sidebar at that sutta so people can find what you have written about it here on Discourse.

1 Like

Hi Ven,

In this case it’s not a copyright issue, it’s manpower. In fact the whole of AN and SN are freely released. We would have no objection about adding these to our sets of translations.

However, my focus right now is to create an entirely new set of English translations. Preparing and marking up a couple of thousand suttas in outdated and inaccurate translations is a lot of work. Still, if someone wanted to the work, we’d be happy to host them.

2 Likes

Thanks Ven Vimala and Ven Sujato for the replies.
How did/does the work go on translating the Āgama, Ven Sujato?
I’d be happy to help with making current versions available via SC. I think more than one English translation would be good.

1 Like

It’s going fine. I’ve just finished the Anguttara and Samyutta, and will be moving on to the Majjhima.

Well, thanks. Are you familiar with doing HTML coding?

1 Like

Yes. Fairly familiar. I used to have a job in 1994 doing the HTML markup for an online magazine. I have a purchased program to help with it that is not available any more. Homesite.

1 Like

PS I think you had a typo, Anguttara for Ekottara. I think these books were formed before the popular Theravada use of anga, which I think was related to ideas that the path was not sequential.

Dear Venerable,

That would be great if you wish to do this.
I’m happy to send you some info on how the coding is to be done for SC by email. You can send me the files when you are ready and I can upload them.

Much metta,
Ayya Vimala

ok, Ven Vimala. should I put my email address in a message here?

Better not - it’s a public forum. I have your email because I’m an admin on this forum :slight_smile:
Besides, I still have it from when you stayed at Santi.

Thanks to both of you for helping out.

At the moment we don’t have the capacity to show more than one translation per language. This is something that will be part of the upgrade we are working on.

Meanwhile, may I suggest to prepare the texts on a per-nikaya basis. Which nikaya is up to you; the only one we have complete is the Digha. We can use the final set of texts to “fill in the gaps” of our extant texts, until such time as our new system is up and running. Then the complete translation can be made available as an alternative set.

Just on the question of alternatives, for the record I am not a huge fan of having multiple translations. Or perhaps I should say, I don’t think it’s very useful in the current state of available translations for Buddhist texts. In Bible studies it’s different, because you have a wide range of different translations, all excellent, and all focused on a particular niche, whether it be simplicity, literalness, historical accuracy, or whatever. For the suttas, in most cases the translations are simply not of comparable quality. The old PTS translations, to my mind, are almost entirely of historical interest, and neither in style nor in accuracy are they comparable to Ven Bodhi’s work. Their only advantage is that they are available, which, to be sure, is a big deal.

Anyway, that’s just my opinion, and, as I say, the next iteration of our site will support multiple translations. So it is just a matter of preparing the HTML files.

1 Like

Where would I get the data for the DIgha translation?

All our data is on Github:

Thanks, Venerable. Is there anything I should do with notes such as: change meta author various, add dots behind header numbers, id sn 1-34, change translation class supplied to class add, change meta author various? Or are these just notes of what changes have been made?

The meta author, translation language and id should indeed be changed. This is in the email I sent you also (I know, that was a lot of info so I can imagine you missed it).
Dots behind header numbers is indeed good.
span classes like “add” and “supplied” denote texts that are a for editorial addition of omitted text and for editorial restoration of lost text resp… I don’t think you would need those.

Hello Ven. thanks for that reply. I had a setback as I had to replace the power supply of my computer, but it’s fixed now. I did notice the info in the instructions about the changes, but I just wasn’t sure if the notes with the files were that they needed to be done or that they were recent changes. Season’s Greetings

1 Like

It is uploaded here now. Thank you very much! :anjal: