Dear DhO members who know MCTB2 and also can read Chinese,

In a mild miracle and apparent labor of love, a person named Jin Fang has completed the monumental task of a first rough draft of a complete translation of MCTB2 into Chinese, and has just sent it to me. The problem is that I do not read Chinese.

So, I was wondering if I could get at least one confidentially-minded volunteer reader to go through this rough draft and make whatever comments they care to lend to help it be of use to practitioners. By confidential, I mean someone who would be kind enough no to distribute the draft to anyone else. I would be happy to ask for you to be credited with helping to proof and add comments to the work.

Thanks for even considering such a large task. Even to read a sample of it to give me a sense of how good the translation is would be a kind gift to the project.

Daniel

Sent you an e-mail.

My girlfriend is Taiwanese and would like to read it.

Did a short comment and sent Daniel.

Great effort, needs polishing though, I hope it can be published in Chinese eventually.

A little story:

Many years ago I translated the "in the seen just the seen.... ...no you in terms of that" portion of Bahiya Sutta into Chinese, and the Thusness Seven Stages into Chinese ( http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.sg/p/chinese-translation-of.html ).

I posted the Chinese Thusness Seven Stages, followed by the Bahiya Sutta, into a China's Buddhist forum.

Just by my meagre efforts to translate small portions of texts alone, someone realized the MCTB 4th Path just from reading my partial translation of Bahiya Sutta. He became very clear and confident and stabilized in his new realization. Previously he was at the I AM stages ( http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2007/03/thusnesss-six-stages-of-experience.html )


The Chinese world lacks very clear dharma books like MCTB. I'm sure if it is translated well, it will be of great benefit to many (China alone has about four times the population of USA) to come. Many more will become awakened. I hope this serves as an encouragement for future translation efforts.

Being a Singaporean, we have a bilingual (English and Chinese) advantage. Our main language is actually English, however our command of Chinese (especially with the younger generation like myself) are not as good as those living in China or Taiwan.

https://www.vistawide.com/languages/top_30_languages.htm

I see there's already people helping, but in case you want others to read too: My wife is Chinese and has done vipassana retreats in both the Goenka and Mahasi lineage. I could ask her. Although she's not part of the DhO, she definitely can be trusted with confidentiality.

She's told me before that a lot of Chinese Buddhist texts are written in very high level Chinese language that only very educated Chinese can understand. It is a great idea to translate MTCB in Chinese. I hope the project succeeds.

Benoit

Hi, Benoit,

Please join the review of MCTB2 Chinese draft version at :  http://integrateddaniel.info/mctb2-chinese 

Please join the review and refine for MCTB2 Chinese draft version : http://integrateddaniel.info/mctb2-chinese

Hi Jin Fang,

Can you tell me what kind of feedback we are looking for from the reader? Is it about the reader reading first the English version and then the Chinese and compare?


Benoit

Dear Ben V.,

We are looking for the advice on accuracy and typo of the Chinese translation. People can read side by side the two version of both Chinese and English.

Any advice could help improve better version of the translation are welcomed.

Here is the Chinese version of MCTB2.  (http://integrateddaniel.info/mctb2-chinese)

Jin

My wife took a look at it and had difficulties with some terms. She said she realizes the level of her Chinese (in reading) may not be high enough for this task, as she immigrated to Canada at 13 and thus ended her Chinese school education at that age. So she will have to desist.

On a side, perhaps more or less unrelated note, she did discuss with me the use of the term 'arahant' (阿罗汉 if we want to use Chinese characters
in the title on the front cover page and the possible reception of this in Chinese Buddhist communities. She thinks it could raise controversies in Chinese Buddhist communities, more so than it raised for a Western audience. There is I think a context in the Western audience for using the title (countering the mushroom culture), whereas the context in Chinese Buddhist communities may be different (?) I remember translating books (from English to French) in a well known worldwide Chinese Buddhist organization. At one point I had a discussion with the nun who was giving me books to translate and she asked about my own practice. In that discussion I alluded to Webu Sayadaw from Burma and how he was a reputed Arahant. She had quite a strong reaction of disbelief about anyone in today's world being an arahant, and argued strongly about this. I just said I was quite open to the idea there were still arahants in today's world. After that discussion, the organization never called me again to translate their work.

This is by no means a criticism, as I (and many of us) know of and pay more attention to the immense pragmatic value of what's actually written in the book than the title on the cover page. It would be unfortunate though that the book not be taken seriously just because the author uses the title Arahant, as it would mean losing the opportunity for people to benefit from its contents. A nun told me Buddhist books have been banned in Asia (Burma actually) for very small reasons (like tiny passages that mildly deviated from some Abhidhamma passage). 

I leave it to you and Daniel to take this into consideration or not. 

Wishing all the best for the success of this project.

China had much bigger problems than who may or not be an Arahant. If they can stomach communist propaganda, they could theoretically handle an Arahant claim, ?

Mainland China is not what I had in mind when I was referring to Chinese Buddhist Communities, as most Chinese Buddhists live outside of Mainland China: Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, South East Asia etc. To my knowledge there is not much Buddhism in the Mainland, a situation which is actually linked to Communism and Mao's revolution which was very anti-religion including Buddhism.

Also, when you say "they" I'm not sure who you are referring to (Chinese government or the rest of its citizens). It would not be really fair to say they all stomach communist propaganda when it comes to non-government citizens. 

My statements about the 'arahant' title was based on observations I've had being once connected with a big Chinese Buddhist organization and comments from my Chinese Buddhist wife about how it may be received in these communities. She also certainly does not stomach communist propaganda, coming from Hong Kong. 

My apologies. I wrongly equated Chinese Bhuddist with Chinese in general

Sure. And whatever the case may be about the reception of the arahant title,  let's all wish this project is successful. I think MCTB can potentially benefit many. 

What I was trying to point to in my post is that those who land any path, more particularly the later paths is that they are just as much privilege as practice. Perfect practice is perfect privilege. It's dependent co-arising.

This demonstrates my lack. Have you ever wondered why cursing someone hurts so much. It's a violation of practice and privilege. But it's not. Not yet anyway.

Sorry if this registers as Trolling. Didn't mean it that way.