Sanskrit & translations

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Sat, 25 Feb 2006 20:49:35 -0600 (CST)

<kshatek

Sanskrit & translations

 

Sastry ji:

 

Namaste. Since your response regarding Sanskrit and English

translations (And dhanyavaad to

everyone who responded to my inquiry regarding the capitalization

of "god" in Indian languages)I have

been thinking about this on and off. I have one question, and one

observation.

 

Question: What can we do, and by this I mean what resources are

available to us,if we wanted to

start speaking a few simple Sanskrit phrases in the home, and

especially to out kids i.e. kids born

and raised in the west, and whose first language is English?

 

Observation: There are going to be translations of our Sanskrit texts-

-for several complex

reasons, including such motivations which inspires the "Harvard

Gang." What we need to do, alongside the

popularizing of Sanskrit, is to have the best translations of all of

our texts translated by Hindu

Sanskrit experts, rendered into English (a colaboration) by those

Hindus who are expert in English

(this would have to be an ongoing project)and published and made

available in the US/UK. Perhaps,

we need a Sanskrit Instutite (through Hindu University?) specifically

for this, if this does not

already exist; such an Institute may also be charged with

popularizing Sanskrit.

 

Mangalam,

Sase

 

>BVK Sastry <sastry_bvk

>Sun Feb 19 10:16:45 CST 2006

>FHRS_USA

>RE: free Sanskrit from the shackles of inaccurate primary

and secondary translations

RE: [FHRS_USA] Sanskrit in English

 

>

>Namaste

>1. How do we make Sanskrit popular ?

>

>The answer could be in two streams.

>

>Conventional mode : One ismaking people talk `Sanskrit' (Revival

model of Hebrew). Any

languagesurvives only by speaking communities. In the current

period, the Hinducommunities `listen' to

Sanskrit `pronounced' (- repated/ chattered ? !) by the ritual

service providers in the rituals /

listen toscattered bits of Sanskrit in discourses through the

quotations / or carry thememory of the

Sanskrit compositions in their routine prayers –gita chantings/

Vishnu sahasranama and the like.

The entire shastras can be rattled outwithout getting the meaning.

The analogy of `ladle in the

soup', `stonein Ganga water', `load of sandal woodcarried by a mule'

is traditionally given here.

(please don't beoffended by the analogies. These are the traditional

analogies which have beenused

for hundreds of years in source works – The Sanskrit statements

are:darvi soopa rasaan iva, gangyama

shilaa, yatha kharah Chandana bhaaravaahii.Those interested in

referencing can go to the

subhashitas! ). This is necessaryto keep the `life line of the

Hinduism religious and sacred languages';

BUT it is NOT sufficient to achieve the desired goal.

>

>

>Inspirational mode: The secondstream is to make `Sanskrit relevant

for the contemporary life

style,pride and productivity, comforts and leadership'. The approach

oftranslation model is helpful

to some extent in the beginning, but harmful inthe long term. The

source language slowly moves out

of the public domain andgets replaced by the `translation language'.

This is the phase inwhich

Sanskrit is currently positioned. The Indian model of Sanskrit-

Prakritmaintained a live link for

moving from Prakrit to Sanskrit. This model gotdisturbed over the

last thousand years, post period of

10th century.The new model of Sanskrit –English has no life line

connection on themodel of

Sanskrit-Prakrits.

>

>In view of this, the approach needs to bethe inspirational model for

the revival of Sanskrit.

This demands finding outhow the Sanskrit language model can be

inspirational for the current

scienceand technology. This brings in a deeper analysis of the

strengths of Sanskritin relation to the

needs of sciences and technology.

>

>Here I am just focusing on one issue: Sanskritas a NON ROMAN SCRIPT

model for Human-Machine

linguistic interaction in themodes of script and voice. This opens

up a new facet of

technologyinvestigation of Sanskrit. While hindu traditionalists can

be deliberating onthis issue, the Hebrew /

Arabic / Chinese / Japanese / Korean dimension ofstudy from this

perspective has been going on for

the last ten or more years.Many of the UNICODE recommendations at

their deepest roots are coming

from the investigationsof this line, for the Hebrew. Explore the

url

http://www.sbl-site.org/TechResearch/default.aspx

>

>On this model, do we have any membersready to share the vision:

Ramayana/Gita in all languages

of the world –currently living or lived in the past ?

>

>Hindu community resources preferentiallyflowing to the cause of

service to the God/s to take care

of life beyond haveto find inspirational ways to enrich life in this

world and provide pride tothe

next generation to be a member of Hindu heritage. That is `revival

ofSanskrit by a restructuring

of the flow of current religious resources deployment'.Living with

imitational models of scanned

images of sacred texts in the digitalspace on freebies is not going

to provide a space in the

leadership forums.

>

>Regards

>

>BVK Sastry