“Not Unlike the Wrong Side of a Turkish Carpet”

Drawn from a larger comparative study, this article offers a detailedexamination of eleven English translations of the Dhammapada’s titlesand subtitles as a means of exemplifying some of the problems inherent intranslating the text itself. The outcomes of the examination seek to answerat least two questions: What do these figures reveal about the problemsinherent in the translation processes themselves? What are possible causesfor the diversities in the titling of these sections, all of which bear the samesource-language title? To contextualise this examination, the systems andsub-systems of the translation process, together with some concomitantproblems, are presented as are the ways in which the translations wereselected. The outcomes themselves are presented in tabular and numericalform before they are discussed. Clearly, the target-language choices availableto translators present not only a range of potential meanings but alsothe concomitant possibilities of ambiguity, thus engendering as muchconfusion as clarity for readers. Ultimately, readers of translations mayhave to be satisfied with the gist of the source-language original becauseany sense of definitive meaning remains essentially elusive

Ambiguity · CLARITY · Epistemology · Linguistics · Sociology · Turkish · Computer Science · Philosophy · Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Literary Criticism · Translation Studies and Practices