Okay, well there is further discussion of this, but if I may add, as the editor of the Mills translation, it isn’t the best source, as the guiding translation principle was to produce a poetic English translation, hence it is not very literal.
I’d recommend checking the translation against the more literal ones by Vens Anandajoti and Nyanamoli, as well as the excellent translations of Buddharakkhita and Piyadassi. More recently, but not on our site, Ven Bodhi has published a complete translation of the Sutta Nipata, which will of course be excellent. I plan to translate the whole of the Sutta Nipata next year.
Okay, thank you, I will look into whether we should distinguish these in a similar manner on our site.
Indeed!
What I would recommend is that you begin with the first three sermons of the Buddha. These include much of the core doctrinal concepts like the four noble truths, the five aggregates, and so on, and so they would help to establish your basic translation vocabulary. They are also fairly simple prose, and have been translated many times before. Finally, they are widely read.
- SN 56.11: Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta
- SN 22.59: Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta
- SN 35.235: Ādittapariyāya Sutta
We have built a web software for translating suttas called Bilara. This makes translation much easier, and also makes it easy to publish your translations in a line-by-line form on SuttaCentral.
So would you like to sign up for Bilara and work there?
One last thing, I usually recommend for translators that they work in a team of at least two people, with either two translators to check each other’s work, or else a translator and a proofreader. What do you think?