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Comment by ommunist | Hacker News Reader

ROTFL. This is translation not from Sanskrit, but from Traditional Chinese. Dude, you really need to learn some languages. Try Russian. Latvian has many words taken from Russian in 19th century.

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> try to translate a piece of classic buddhist text to Latvian

Here is a translation of a classic buddhist sūtra in Latvian: http://www.ugis.info/?t#sutra_

> You will simply have no words to express what you need

That is a challenge that all translators face, no matter the language pair. There are no direct equivalents of "अभिधर्म" or "Ānanda" in any of the Western languages either, be it Latvian, English or Welsh. Incidentally, both Lithuanian and Latvian happen to be closer to Sanskrit than the latter. Again, I don't quite see the point you're making. Care to elaborate?

You said it yourself - the lack of direct equivalents is nothing special. What is amusing however, is how in some languages you'll find a lot of "untranslatables" grouped around a particular concept or theme. Language X may have a curiously large amount of untranslatable words that have to do with describing how one feels, while language Y may have a plethora of quick, informal words and phrases that are very hard to translate.

Languages borrow words from neighbours, just as peoples get influences from neighbouring peoples, so it is hardly a surprise that Latvian language has Slavic words - and Russian language has borrowed lots from neighbours, as well as substantial amount of words from English, German and French languages. Not just in 19th century, but for the past 1000 years; a significant impact to Russian language was during the time of Peter the Great when cultural opening brought lots of new words.

Indeed, there are so many words of French and German origins in the Russian language, that linguists have lost their count. This is to do with the Russian nobility, at different periods, helming from those countries and/or it being the language of the court at the time (same as with French in England, however briefly). There is no shame in borrowing. Good languages copy, great languages steal.

I don't even really know Russian, I've never studied it; but I have learned the alphabet, and I can typically understand some part of newspaper articles etc simply because there are so many loan words from languages I know (English, German, Swedish and Finnish).

There is a movement to "purify" Russian language of loan words, which sounds silly: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/20/russia...

Yup, silly it is. I made a survey of preferential by understanding term for "widget" in Russian among Russian businessmen this January, and got about 90% "pro" votes for using the borrowed English term. Practical people do not care for "purity".

FWIW, Latvian is also more related to Russian than most other non-Slavic European languages, since both languages belong to the same top-level subdivision within Indo-European (Balto-Slavic).

> ROTFL.

> Dude, you really need to learn some languages.

Please stop posting uncivilly to HN. Several of your comments are interesting but that doesn't make it ok to be rude. We ban accounts that do that repeatedly.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13766510 and marked it off-topic.

Why, thank you, I speak Russian fluently. It doesn't matter whether the text has been translated from Traditional Chinese or Sanskrit, the issue remains the same: Buddhist terminology is specific to the Buddhist tradition. You will face the same challenge, as long as the language that it is being translated to is not steeped in the same tradition.

You have a lot to discover in original Buddhism before making statements like that. I am fascinated and struggling with help of Roerich's Tibetan-English-Russian dictionary, and I must say, there is difference in meanings, whether its sutra in Chinese or Tibetan. Ancient translators had their own problems, and direction of tradition is more like India -> Tibet -> China. So Sanskrit originals prevail, and I am yet to learn the script.

You're undermining your own argument, that Latvian is especially difficult to translate abstract texts into.

Not much, since I came to Tibetan from English, and a course in Russian delivered by Mongolian and Tibetan native speaker. I can give a funny example on how difficult it is to keep conveyance of meaning in translation.

Tibetan རང་དབང is translated to English as "independence", when in fact it is itself translation of Sanskrit स्वतन्त्रः, which is in fact "self-empowering reliance", a bit different thing.

Latvian for "independence" is "neatkarība" which itself is wrong pair, because "independence" means not being dependent, and therefore free, while Latvian word means more like "impossibility to take by force". So it might be incorrect to use it in translating Tibetan term. What may be more suitable is to use 'patvaldība', but it is more about power, than reliance.

Sorry, but I fail to see the relevance.

No proper term in Latvian can be found in this example.

> No proper term in Latvian can be found in this example [by yours truly]

FTFY.

> Latvian for "independence" is "neatkarība" which itself is wrong pair, because "independence" means not being dependent, and therefore free, while Latvian word means more like "impossibility to take by force".

"Ne" is a negation (= "in" or "not"), whereas "atkarība" is simply "dependence". Thus, (in)(dependence) is the equivalent of (ne)(atkarība). I don't see where you got it to mean "impossibility to take by force". Independence can be lost, it's not an impossibility. Source:

https://translate.google.com/#auto/en/neatkar%C4%ABba

http://www.tezaurs.lv/?w=neatkar%C4%ABba#/sv/neatkar%C4%ABba

OK. 'Atkarība' is literally state of land that one can 'atkarot', i.e. take back by force. In old money being "atkarīgs" literally means being the one whose land was taken by force. Its a Normann to Saxon situation in a way.

Interesting, the Latvian word feels like a cognate of Russian непокорённость (nepokoryonnost'), which means something like "ability to resist conquest". I wonder if kor/kar is the same Balto-Slavic root, or is this a false cognate?

More like "непокоряемость", but modern Latvians like @tikums forgot it.

The word for independence ("neatkarība") in Latvian is a calque from the German Abhängigkeit ‎("dependence")[1]. Thus, "atkarāties" and "karāties" ("to hang"). Thus, the English expression "it hangs in the balance". On balance, most of the things you've said about the Latvian language in this thread hang by a thread, and that thread is close to tear.

Please check your sources and brush up on whatever rudimentary Latvian skills you still posses. You will certainly not master the language by defaulting to what is, in essence, chauvinism. Rest assured, we can read between the lines of what you're implying ["Russian language superior! We have big words, words for everything! The best words!], but it's just not gonna fly here.

[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/atkar%C4%ABba

Calque of German abhängig ‎(“dependent”), coined at the end of the 19th century from atkār(t) ‎(“to hang down”) +‎ -īgs (with atkārt from at- +‎ kārt ‎(“to hang”)), together with the related term atkarība.

Source: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/atkar%C4%ABgs

I am talking about the general principle of translating a text with developed and precise terminology that is steeped in tradition for which no reference point exists in the language-of-destination. Therefore, it matters very little whether we're talking about translating ancient Chinese or Tibetan texts. The challenges are similar in scale. Case in point[1]:

"This is a major reason why the Daodejing, to take a famous example, is impenetrable to a few, enigmatic to many more, and highly allusive for everyone, and has been the subject of well over 150 translations of it in English alone."

[1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-translate-interpr...

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