SuttaCentral
Other people are allowed to disagree with you without having bad motivations.
You may not be trying to, I’ll agree with that.
Opinions about what makes a “good” translation are endless. You have to be able to answer the question “good for what” and “good for whom”.
In some situation calling them all god’s is fine. (as the Buddha did) Other situations not so much.
I don’t translate Pali. I translate ancient Chinese translations of probably Prakrit or Tocharian texts that are generally lost to time. So, yeah. It’s not so simple.
After looking to make sure my memory is correct, I see that Brahma gods are referred to as devas in Pali sources. E.g., in SN 56.11, where the devas of the Brahmakayika Heaven are mentioned. Generally speaking, my impression is that “deva” refers to beings in all the heavens, including the Brahma Heavens and the Formless Heavens (where they don’t have any physical form at all and hence no light, either). I’ve also seen devas divided into Earth devas and Sky devas in Buddhist texts, making it an even broader term.
Probably for kama loka beings it should be kept as devas and for rupa loka and above , the brahmas . This is to differentiate how buddhism identify different class of divine beings from other religions . In the agama it is much easier to differentiate them . Kamaloka devas are 欲界天神 and Rupaloka and above devas are 梵天神 .
Nor have I. My actual position is that some instances of expansion to a word’s semantic range merit taking seriously, while others don’t. One case of the latter is where the change is on account of conventions established by people not generally noted for acuity and good sense (i.e., the New Age enthusiasts’ use of ‘angel’).
I believe you’re confusing me with Bhante Sujāto. I haven’t posted any argument at all about the shared radiance of celestial beings
The two suttas I linked to don’t say anything about radiance. Rather, they use the term devā in a manner that shows that it can include every manner of post-mortem celestial rebirth.
Though you may loathe the Abhidhamma, the particular Abhidhamma passage to which I was alluding (i.e., the Chagatikathā of the Kathāvatthu) is one that really merits a round of applause from even the most intransigent of neo-Suttantikas, for it is actually defending the sutta teaching that there are five gatis against the newfangled opinion of the Andhakas and Uttarāpathakas that there are six.
I have never claimed that the common class membership of the different celestials is on account of their glowing. (I doubt whether this is even the case, for it’s hard to imagine an arūpa deva – a purely intellectual being – possessing the ability to glow). Thus far I’ve mentioned only one feature that they share: they are all higher than humans. There are of course others:
• They are all opapātika with respect to manner of generation.
• They are all ordinarily invisible to humans.
• With the exception of the impercipient devas, each class of celestials enjoys some distinct advantage over humans: greater aesthetic, erotic, gastronomic, auditory, etc., fulfillment in the case of the kāma devas; the bliss of jhāna for the rūpa brahmās; the bliss of cessation and exclusive companionship of Aryans for the Suddhāvāsa devas; and being burdened with only four khandhas, rather than five, for the arūpa devas.
• Exceptionally long lifespans.
• A less fraught and less painful manner of decease than what typically obtains among humans and animals.
And many others. I’m quite sure that for every point of difference you can come up, I can match you with a point of similarity.
As it happens, my two favourite Pali translators render deva and brahmā as “deva” and “brahmā”, while my favourite Sanskrit translator uses the Spenserian “faerie” for deva. And so in my case, at least, your ungentlemanly imputation of emotional bias is completely groundless.
But opting for a translation that hints at some family resemblance between different classes of celestials is not “merging them into one kind of being”.
When zoologists decided to place the Congolese okapi in familia Giraffidae, it wasn’t with the thought, “This is a giraffe”, but rather, “Cladistic analysis shows this animal to have a closer kinship with the giraffe than with anything else (even if it does happen to look like a donkey crossed with a mutant zebra) and to be not sufficiently remote from a giraffe to justify placement in a family of its own.”
Mzimu – born in November last year at Yorkshire Wildlife Park.
Well, I hate to disappoint, but I’m afraid I was never particularly a fan of Frank Zappa. It’s simply that his work was part of the musical wallpaper during my teen years 
My actual musical tastes were ones I had to keep rather quiet about, for it would have social suicide to admit that what I really loved was English trad folk (especially Peter Bellamy’s beautiful renditions of Rudyard Kipling poems), Welsh male-voice choirs, Verdi’s operas and Yiddish klezmer songs.
More of a ‘Sempre libera’ than a ‘Call any Vegetable’ guy! 
Sure but kamaloka deva was never referred as Brahma deva or did they ? So , the point is buddhism may somehow needs to differentiate or distinguish their deities or divine beings from other religions like christian and islam , so that people dont get confused . No ? But anyway i think at the end of the day it is up to translators not me , this is just a suggestion .
Hinduism before the Buddha times was different than in later times. This only can complicate the issue
I think there is first confussion to be cleaned. As Buddhists we follow the sense existent in our sources to understand the variety of beings. It is not our problem when some theists religions can fit the term “god” into their own notions. Before the semitic religions, the common notion for a “god” was similar in all places: the humans named a “god” to any being from an higher origin or realm than humans beings. And this is what we read inside the Buddhist texts.
A deva is a god. A Brahma is a god not necessarily superior to a deva in spiritual terms. There are quite devas in higher realms than brahmas. The next table can be useful:
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/dhamma/sagga/loka.html
when a being dies and reborn like a Brahma, his new Reality will be made with an apparent infinite empty space to be occupied by that being. Sometimes that space can become inhabited by other beings who are reborn there, and sometimes with different characteristics belonging to different realms, devas, humans, animals, etc.
Probably, a Brahma is not so frequently mentioned like a deva because a different notion and perception. Commonly the devas are perceived like concrete beings while Brahmas are closer to a host-beings or an state-of-being. Most of devas are kama loka like us, while Brahmas are arupa loka.
There is a Sutta in where some people asked to the Buddha if he was a deva after perceiving his radiance. They didn’t asked if he was a Brahma because it doesn’t have sense in front an objectified perception of a god, which was named a deva
> “When asked, ‘Are you a deva?’ you answer, ‘No, brahman, I am not a deva.’ When asked, ‘Are you a gandhabba?’ you answer, ‘No, brahman, I am not a gandhabba.’ When asked, ‘Are you a yakkha?’ you answer, ‘No, brahman, I am not a yakkha.’ When asked, ‘Are you a human being?’ you answer, ‘No, brahman, I am not a human being.’ Then what sort of being are you?”. AN 4.36
Also in the Chantings there is no mention of Brahmas:
> “From all around the galaxies, may the devas come here. May they listen to the True Dhamma of the King of Sages, leading to heaven & emancipation. Those in the heavens of sensuality & form, on peaks & mountain precipices, in palaces floating in the sky, in islands, countries, & towns, in groves of trees & thickets, around homesites & fields. And the earth-devas, spirits, gandhabbas, & nāgas in water, on land, in badlands, & standing nearby: May they come & listen with approval as I recite the word of the excellent sage.”
we can suppose there is not necessity to mention Brahmas while they lack of a clear objectification and their nature is able to know anything in their domains or they believe so.
A deva can be a god spiritually superior to some Brahma, it would depend of the deva as also it could happen with some humans. Buddha and arhants were spiritually higher than Brahmas and devas. There is a Sutta MN 49 with a Brahma who believes that his brahma-attainment was the highest attainment.
Also, some devas can be perceived in many different ways not only in subtile ways neither in “angelical” ways.
