4 ms·
> ‘the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak’ Even when humans in western world translate from languages like Sanskrit or Japanese they totally fail to und
by tn13 10y ago
> ‘the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak’
Even when humans in western world translate from languages like Sanskrit or Japanese they totally fail to understand the context that is so obvious to native speaker of those languages. Japanese quickly understand the Sanskrit word 'Namaste' ("I bow to you") but western scholars tends to replace it as "Hello" which it isn't. Hello (accounts vary) comes from Old High German word halâ, holâ which is a cry to seek attention of a boatman.
When translating a story from say Sanskrit to English, if we replace each instance of Hello with 'I bow to you', the story might becomes less readable for western audience and replacing it with "Hello" might sound consistent but it simply fails to capture the culture from which the word is originated.
My knowledge of Sanskrit is limited but when I first read about `Sage Dirghatamas` who is the father of meditation is often translated by western scholars as "Dirgha-Tamas" => "enveloped in perpetual darkness" => The man was probably blind. To their credit there are several stories that mention Dirgha-Tamas as born blind.
But even as a novice scholar of Sanskrit I was quickly able to see that Drigha-Tamas => "man staring into infinite darkness" => Very Very contemplative man. The "born blind" is mere a metaphor for someone who is very closed to out experiences and focused on his inner experiences.
- princeb 10y agointeresting mention of "namaste" - in many cultures the origin of words no longer play a part in their meaning anymore, but i don't know if this applies to namaste 'goodbye' has no religious interpretation. neither does 'jesus christ' as an exclamation - as far as i know both believers and nonbelievers use the term. even something as recent as 'hi how are you' - you may be given this greeting in london, and the appropriate reponse is not an answer but also 'hi how are you'.
- matt-attack 10y agoThanks, had no idea "goodbye" came from "God be with you" [1]. 1: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/goodbye https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/goodbye
- tn13 10y ago> in many cultures the origin of words no longer play a part in their meaning anymore Even though that might be true the original meaning tells a lot about the culture. Ignoring that leads to cultural appropriation (I hate that phrase). For example "God damn" is a modern slang which is probably not even considered a slang but few centuries ago it was an extremely serious slang with serious repercussions. I don't think that phrase and its meaning can be translated in polytheistic dominated languages like Sanskrit. A cool example is that when as a Hindu I find it completely normal to worship Goddess of death I often find even non religious Christians finding it disgusting.
- ScottBurson 10y agoMother Kali is very cool :-) I think my favorite, though, is Akhilandeshvari. Just thinking about her brings tears to my eyes. (I know only what little I've read about them. I'm not a practicing Hindu. Maybe I was in a past life :-)
- blastrat 10y agoyes, "hello" can be traced back to older forms of "attention seeking hollers", but the popular currency of the modern hello came about because it was the greeting chosen for the telephone. I believe the original suggestion was to answer the phone with "ahoy!"