Preface: The Gita Comes Alive - A note from the author Jeffrey Armstrong
Explore the two major problems in Bhagavad Gita translation and why a decolonized, Sanskrit-centered approach restores the Gita’s original meaning.
THE TWO PROBLEMS OF GITA TRANSLATION
Except from the Bhagavad Gita Comes Alive by Jeffrey Armstong
I have been working on this translation of the Bhagavad Gita for over a decade. In the beginning, I thought I was creating a translation not dissimilar to the rest—a one-to-one Sanskrit-English translation. But the more I delved into the linguistics and semantics of the original Sanskrit and the many misleading English translations, the more convinced I became of the need for a thorough decolonizing of the Bhagavad Gita, in the translation and, through the process, in the text itself.
In working on this Sanskrit-to-English translation of the Bhagavad Gita—and reading through dozens of translations—two common yet profound problems have been consistently revealed.
One, whether intentionally or not, every Bhagavad Gita translation has failed to bridge the intellectual gap between the unique and precise meanings of key Sanskrit words and the vague and distorted English words used incorrectly as synonyms to explain them. Consider these blatant and repetitive examples of inappropriately paired words found in almost all Gita translations: dharma to religion, Svarga Loka to heaven, isha to lord, papa to sin, tapasya to austerity, atma to soul, pranic to spiritual, Bhagavan to God, shraddha to faith, varna to caste, patala to hell, yajna to sacrifice, devas to gods or demi-gods, dana to charity, avatar to prophet, and at least a hundred others.
Individually, the mistranslations are disconcerting and annoying. Collectively, they are misleading and disastrous to the readers’ understanding and growth.
In the process of leaning on false definitions and incorrect synonyms that colonize the text, translators inadvertently stop their readers from gaining a true and deeper understanding of these profound Sanskrit terms. Christianized translations are so universal it feels as though the Gita is bumping into language guards who will not allow the truest Gita translation to cross international borders because the text’s original meaning is simply too foreign for the West to grasp. I do not agree.
And so my passion and focus has been to excise the offending words and re-insert the Sanskrit words and, where necessary, clarify the Sanskrit meaning with definitions directly after the term (inside single quotation marks). For some key words, a more detailed definition is provided in the glossary at the back of the book.
Problem two flows from problem one. By choosing incorrect and often Christianized definitions for key Sanskrit words, translators have not insisted that students of the Bhagavad Gita undertake learning upwards of 200 essential Sanskrit words. The process of not learning these words renders the text far more generic and far less powerful, intellectually and spiritually. Learning the key words instills in the reader both a more precise understanding of the philosophy taught in the Gita and a vocabulary for expressing that understanding accurately.
Why are precise definitions leading back to the original Sanskrit so critical? The Vedic philosophy presented in the Gita teaches concepts that have never been taught or even fully expressed in Western culture and the English language. Thus, these profound Vedic concepts cannot be articulated by any single English word. And these Sanskrit terms make up a large part of the essence of the Bhagavad Gita.
And so it is my deepest hope that by delving into The Bhagavad Gita Comes Alive: A translation devoted to Sanskrit vidya—the English-speaking student will experience the unique, eternal, and original meaning of the Bhagavad Gita as its teachings were intended.
Jeffrey Armstrong | Kavindra Rishi