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.

--
Professor Dominik Wujastyk
​,​

Singhmar Chair in Classical Indian Society and Polity
​,​

University of Alberta, Canada
​.​

South Asia at the U of A:
 
​sas.ualberta.ca​
​​



On Sun, 3 Jun 2018 at 15:24, Harry Spier via INDOLOGY <indology@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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