In translating the Vedanā Saṃyutta, I came to SN 36.19, and then I wondered: could we translate Pañcakaṅga’s name? Something like Fivelimbs. Unfortunately this works less well in Spanish, my target language, where all I can think of is “Quintópodo” (quintopod, just like eight-limbed animals are ‘octopods’), which sounds like a Roman emperor… But what do y’all think?
I see @sujato ventured freely translating Yodhajīva as ‘Dustin’, so I figured… why not Quintópodo? (I could add a note on the first occurrence explaining it.)
Sure, yes, we could do that. I’d want to look deeper into it: why is he called “fivelimbs”? There’s probably a story in the commentary. Maybe it’s his occupation? Or family? Or some personal event? Maybe we find something related in a Vedic text?
The interesting reason for translating names (apart from the occasional homage for a good friend!) is that names in Pali often have meanings that pertain to the context.
Buddhaghosa says (MA.ii.629; SA.iii.86) that Pañcakanga was the Thapati’s personal name, and that he was so called (“Five tools”) because he carried the five tools of a carpenter: vāsīpharasu (adze), nikhādana (chisel), danda (measuring stick), muggara (gavel), and kālasutta (blackened thread). He explains Thapati by vaddhakī jettha.
So I was wrong with aṅga: it’s not five limbs but five tools. I’ll see what I can do with that!
That’s the trouble: There are some names that are difficult to interpret, or they were understood to mean different things to different people. So, there are edge cases that we might want to leave untranslated, but nothing says a name with a clear meaning can’t be translated. It’s really a matter of what style and voice we want the translation to have. Myself, I’ve opted to try to transliterate names as much as possible and provide interpretations in notes, but it’s just the policy I settled on. Many names are symbolic and play a role in the narrative, as Sujato says.
