[INDOLOGY] Brackets in modern sanskrit translations

Birgit Kellner birgit.kellner at oeaw.ac.at
Mon Jun 4 04:04:37 UTC 2018


The use of brackets in translations of philosophical texts in particular 
has been much discussed lately, and my impression is that in this area 
brackets have fallen out of favor (or are in the process of falling ...).

McCrea and Patil articulate and also demonstrate a "no 
brackets"-approach to translation in their rendering of Jñānaśrīmitra's 
Apohaprakaraṇa ("Buddhist Philosophy of Language in India", Columbia 
Univ. Press 2010).

But to answer Harry Spier's specific question, the convention I am 
familiar with in German translations is that square brackets are used 
for supplying words without lexical representation in the Sanskrit, 
while round brackets are used to enclose Sanskrit terms when such terms 
are adduced within the English translation.

With best regards,

Birgit Kellner


Am 2018-06-04 um 04:23 schrieb Dominik Wujastyk via INDOLOGY:
> Your question presses a big red button for me :-)  My thoughts are 
> here 
> <https://cikitsa.blogspot.com/2016/04/on-use-of-parentheses-in-translation.html>.
>
> --
> Professor Dominik Wujastyk <http://ualberta.academia.edu/DominikWujastyk>
> ​,​
>
> Singhmar Chair in Classical Indian Society and Polity
> ​,​
>
> Department of History and Classics 
> <http://historyandclassics.ualberta.ca/>
> ​,​
> University of Alberta, Canada
> ​.​
>
> South Asia at the U of A:
> ​sas.ualberta.ca​ <http://sas.ualberta.ca/>
> ​​
>
>
>
> On Sun, 3 Jun 2018 at 15:24, Harry Spier via INDOLOGY 
> <indology at list.indology.info <mailto:indology at list.indology.info>> wrote:
>
>     My understanding is that in modern sanskrit translations when the
>     translator inserts words into the translation that weren't in the
>     sanskrit to make the meaning clearer then those words  are usually
>     put in brackets.
>
>     Is there a convention on what type of brackets are usually used,
>     square brackets or regular brackets?
>
>     Thanks,
>     Harry Spier
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-- 
----
Prof. Dr. Birgit Kellner
Director
Institute for the Cultural and Intellectual History of Asia
Austrian Academy of Sciences
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