[tikums]

Why, thank you, I speak Russian fluently. It doesn't matter whether the text has been translated from Traditional Chinese or Sanskrit, the issue remains the same: Buddhist terminology is specific to the Buddhist tradition. You will face the same challenge, as long as the language that it is being translated to is not steeped in the same tradition.

[ommunist]

You have a lot to discover in original Buddhism before making statements like that. I am fascinated and struggling with help of Roerich's Tibetan-English-Russian dictionary, and I must say, there is difference in meanings, whether its sutra in Chinese or Tibetan. Ancient translators had their own problems, and direction of tradition is more like India -> Tibet -> China. So Sanskrit originals prevail, and I am yet to learn the script.

[tikums]

I am talking about the general principle of translating a text with developed and precise terminology that is steeped in tradition for which no reference point exists in the language-of-destination. Therefore, it matters very little whether we're talking about translating ancient Chinese or Tibetan texts. The challenges are similar in scale. Case in point[1]:

"This is a major reason why the Daodejing, to take a famous example, is impenetrable to a few, enigmatic to many more, and highly allusive for everyone, and has been the subject of well over 150 translations of it in English alone."

[1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-translate-interpr...

[E6300]

You're undermining your own argument, that Latvian is especially difficult to translate abstract texts into.