Perhaps this should be closed as a 'shopping' question, but maybe translations take a long time to make and therefore there are not too many of them, and they don't go out of date quickly.
The English texts I use seem unreliable. For example:
One book I have (using a 1925 CE translation) has a translation which (because it uses an abstract noun "the lovely") I had thoroughly failed to understand. In that case, the 'Access to Insight' translation was clearer (using concrete nouns like 'with people' and 'with friends' instead of abstractions like "with what is lovely"). So I have been using Access to Insight.
However when I wanted the Samuddo Sutta, the Access to Insight version is (in my opinion) relatively very inadequate compared to this Buddha Vacana version.
I only found these using Google, i.e. I have no expertise about what translations exist.
- Can you recommend any (single) specific translations?
- Can you give any survey of what (many) is available?
- Or should I ask about translators instead of translations (I'd prefer 'the best' translation rather than the 'historically-first' translation)?
Even if there are too many, are there great/classic resources that any Anglophone should know?
Printed books would be on-topic, though I'm warned that such things might be ten times the size of a bible.
Online or (at least) digital references might be convenient. For example the side-by-side (hyper-linkable) translation feature found on the Buddha Vacana site helped me understand (by linking to the Pali word) what it meant when it said "mental phenomena".
A resource for any European language (English, French, German, etc) would be interesting
Google Translate doesn't do Pali or Sanskrit, but if there's a (free or affordable) semi-competent machine-based translator (accurate although not poetic or idiomatic), that might be good (though it may be hoping too much, to hope for the existence of such a thing yet).
