Friday 16 May 2008

Happiness and the Art of Being — complete Spanish translation is now available

Pedro Rodea has translated into Spanish many English books on the teachings of Bhagavan Sri Ramana, including Nan Yar? (Who am I?), Upadesa Undiyar, Sri Arunachala Pancharatnam (with the commentary by Sri Sadhu Om), Guru Vachaka Kovai (from the English translation by Sri Sadhu Om and me), Maharshi’s Gospel, Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, Day by Day with Bhagavan and Be As You Are, and his translations are posted either as PDF files or as zipped Word documents on his AtivarnAshram website. Some of his translations, such as Guru Vachaka Kovai, have also been published as printed books by Ignitus Ediciones.

In a post that I wrote on 22nd August of last year, Spanish translation of Happiness and the Art of Being, I said that Pedro was also translating Happiness and the Art of Being into Spanish, and that his translation of some of the chapters was available on the AtivarnAshram website. Recently he completed this translation, and it is now available on the AtivarnAshram website as a PDF e-book, which can be opened by clicking on the following link:

La Felicidad y el Arte de Ser:
Introducción a la filosofía y la práctica de las enseñanzas espirituales de
Bhagavan Sri Ramana

Some selected passages from this Spanish translation can also be accessed through links on the Michael James page of the AtivarnAshram website.

On a more personal note, due to some difficult circumstances that Sri Bhagavan created in my outward life (but that he now seems to have more or less resolved), for the past four or five months I was not able to add any fresh material either to my Happiness of Being website or to this blog. However, now that my life is back on a more even keel, I hope to be able again to devote most of my working time to translating and writing about Bhagavan's teachings, in which case I will be able to add fresh material to my website and blog more frequently.

On Wednesday I updated the Spanish translation section of the Happiness and the Art of Being page of my website with a link to La Felicidad y el Arte de Ser, and yesterday for the first time in more than five months I added a new article to this blog, Sri Ramanopadesa Nunmalai — English translation by Sri Sadhu Om and Michael James, which includes a copy of the lengthy introduction that I wrote for the newly published word-for-word meaning and English translation of Upadesa Nunmalai, the collection of poems that Sri Ramana wrote conveying his teachings or upadesa.

If it is the will of Sri Bhagavan, I hope to be able to post a new article on this blog at least once a week, usually on a Thursday, though occasionally I may not be able to do so, and during some weeks I may post more than one article. My tentative plan is to start next week posting some extracts from the material that I originally intended to include in Happiness and the Art of Being, but which (in order to avoid making it much more voluminous than it already is) I later decided to set aside for some other books that I may complete in future.

In addition to various minor tasks such as adding a new article to this blog every week, I hope to be able to concentrate most of my effort on other larger projects, particularly on revising various old translations and making new translations of Tamil works written by Sri Bhagavan, Sri Muruganar and Sri Sadhu Om. The first major project I plan to work on is to revise the English translation of Sadhanai Saram, the 'Essence of Spiritual Practice', a collection of verses that Sri Sadhu Om wrote at various times, mostly in answer to questions that he was asked about the practice of the spiritual teachings of Sri Ramana, after which I hope to thoroughly revise the English translation of both parts of Sri Ramana Vazhi (The Path of Sri Ramana).

2 comments:

dell said...

Great post.The importance of a english translation being accurate and efficient can indeed not be overstated. Especially in the ever faster moving world of globalized business, successful information and technology transfer within multinational businesses can make the difference between win or lose.

Anonymous said...

Sri Ramana Maharshi was quite precise about the dissemination of spiritual
teachings on a one to one basis.

In 1936, when Paramahamsa Yogananda visited the Asramam, he asked Sri Bhagavan:

'How is the spiritual uplift of the people to be effected? What are the instructions to be given to them?'

Sri Bhagavan replied: 'They differ according to the temperaments of the individuals and according to the spiritual ripeness of their minds. They cannot be any instruction en masse.' (Talks 107