Stories about translation
2 Buddhist wisdom stories about translation from Buddhist teachers, each linked to the original talk.
- Raining cats and dogsAnalogy · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: People whose first language is not English, translating 'it was raining cats and dogs' word for word into their home language, laugh because cats and dogs do not fall from the…
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And a good example of that is when people who come to Australia and English is not their first language where they have to try and translate things like it was raining cats and dogs and if they translate that word by word into their original home language they start laughing because of course to rain means to come down from the sky and it never happen that a cat and dog has fallen from the sky from a tree may be but not from the sky and if you do translate word for word you actually miss a lot of the meaning of what was meant to be conveyed
- That's not what Ajahn Chah said — I was thereStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Ajahn Brahm read a monk's translation of an Ajahn Chah talk he had personally heard and protested that it was not what Chah had said. The translator replied that he thought it…
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remember this one translation which was done by a monk I remember reading it and said what? that's not what Ajahn Chah said I was there when he gave that talk And the monk said oh .. yeah yeah but I think this is what Ajahn Chah wanted to say And you got to be very careful there, in translating