Pali to English translation issue

[Gabriel_L]

Hi @Saimjh , welcome to SuttaCentral’s Discuss & Discover!

I assume your comments relate to a translation by bhante @sujato, hence I am tagging his username here to comment.

Also, if possible, could you provide a reference to which exact translation you found this pali term translated this way?

I recall reading somewhere here some sort of essay by bhante @sujato in which he presents his reasons and rationale for his translation style. I am not sure if this is what I have in mind but the topics below may shed some light on what he had in mind when working on his translations:

Testing readability of sutta translations

How important is readability? A simpler text will be more widely read and better comprehended. Here are two classic studies, quoted from Wikipedia. In 1947, Donald Murphy of Wallace’s Farmer used a split-run edition to study the effects of making text easier to read. They found that reducing from the 9th to the 6th-grade level increased readership 43% for an article on ‘nylon’. There was a gain of 42,000 readers in a circulation of 275,000. He found a 60% increase in readership for an article …

Why SuttaCentral doesn’t have footnotes

Note: I wrote this some time ago as part of another discussion. It’s a question that comes up from time to time, so I thought I’d make it more visible by making it it’s own thread. I have made a few changes to the original. In the original discussion, Ven Brahmali recommended adding footnotes to my translation, arguing that: Good. A translator’s work should be invisible. One of the biggest problems with footnotes is that you end up listening to the translator’s voice instead of the Buddha’s. …

You may also want to check this link, from the main website:

https://suttacentral.net/discourses#item8

Note as well, for some texts you have more than one translation available. Maybe an alternative version may suit your expectations better?