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Re: Need to do careful transliteration

From the Bhakti List Archives

Venkatesan Ananth • January 10, 2001 


This is an important issue. As one of the guilty
parties that have at times mangled a word because
of a lack of good Sanskrit base, I would like to
respond to this post. 

It is important that an effort is made by all of 
us to get the word transliterated correctly before 
using it in a post even if, as Sri Srimahavishnu 
Vinjamuri has indicated, the results are not of a 
serious nature.

However, short of learning Sanskrit to quite an
extent (I am in the process of learning but there
is a long way to go), or having to research well
before posting, I am unable to come up with a good 
solution to the problem.

One method might be to collect a list like Sri
Srimahavishnu Vinjamuri has posted and put it
on a few Srivaishnava webpages and point those
in need to these pages. As and when new errors
are made, they can be updated on these pages
and a gentle reminder sent by private mail to
the author of the post. There are also several 
Sanskrit dictionaries on the web that might come 
in handy and links can be made to these.

The one point that I am a little confused on is:
does good transliteration need to extend to 
pronouns as well. I have used Venkatesan as my 
name and I feel that it is not necessary to
sign as VenkatEsan. If this is an acceptable
approach could I extend it when using the names
of some of the divyadEsap perumALs and thAyArs?

As someone who badly needs to learn I request the
learned memebers to make their suggestions.

adiyEn madhurakavi dAsan
T.C.A. Venkatesan


--- Srimahavishnu Vinjamuri 
wrote:
> SrImad vEnkata lakshmaNa yativarAya namah
> SrI rukmiNI samEta pArthasArathi parabrahmaNE namah.
> 
> Dear Bhagavatottamas,
> 
> namskaram.
> 
> adiyen is wrtiting this mail after more than two
> years
> of hesitation. also Sriman mani once touched upon
> this issue.
> 
> adiyen is now tempted to write this  mail after
> adiyen has seen "charaNam" instead of SaraNam in one
> of the websites.
> 
> for the benefit of a very few Bhagavatas,
> who are frequently writing wrongly transliterated
> samskruta words in the list and elsewhere, adiyen
> wishes to post the following sanskrit words
> tranliterated into Englsh which can serve as a
> guideline.
> 
> Wrong                       right
> charaNam (foot)            SaraNam (refuge)
> SaraNam (refuge)            charaNam (foot)
> chatrugnar                  Satrughnar
> Sarama SlOkam                charama SlOkam
> boologam                     bhUlOkam
> naragam                      narakam
> aidhihyam                     aitihyam
> vaidheegam                    vaidikam
> lowkeegam                     lowkikam
> vadabhadraSAyi                 vatapatraSAyi
> kAlakshEbham                   kAlakshEpam
> prAraptam                      prArabdham
>  
> and a few oher words.
> 
> Not all of the above (except the first two) are of
> serious nature. But there is nothing wrong in
> writing the things rightly.
> 
> It is higly offensive to find fault with
> Bhagavatottamas. I tender many many apologies. My
> only intention is to serve a very few Bhagavatas in
> improving their transliteration.
> 
> dasanudasan
> vishnu
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Get FREE Email/Voicemail with 15MB at Lycos
> Communications at http://comm.lycos.com
> 
>
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