Free online translations of non-Western philosophy?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, Newish CC Prof writes:

Since I've seen several discussions here of resources for teaching non-western philosophy.

One hurdle I've found as I tried to figure out how to do that more is availability of texts. I'm committed to not making my students buy textbooks, and have no discretion on what textbook I'd make them buy if I did.

Serviceable public domain translations of all the "canonical" western figures are easy to find online. Every recommendation I've seen for translations of Chinese, Indian, African, etc. figures has been a book I'd have to ILL and then get sketchy with the departmental scanner.

Are there freely available English translations to be had online outside "the Western canon?"

This is a great question, and two readers submitted helpful replies. Chris Stephens writes:

Robert Eno has translations of many classical Chinese philosophy texts available on line for free student and instructor use. https://chinatxt.sitehost.iu.edu/Resources.html

And Andrew writes:

I'd recommend that recent Hackett editions. They are affordably priced and well-structured, e.g., Confucius by Edward Slingerland, Mengzi by Bryan van Norden. Back in the day, I think they'd even send an evaluation copy if you asked. What I've used but found a bit harder to work is Ames & Hall translations. Alternately, there are free translations on ctext.org but those are usually the 100+ year old ones.

These comments are helpful, but only point to online resources for translation of Chinese texts. Anyone know of any good online resources for free, public-domain translation of 'non-Western' texts more generally?

Comments

[anon]

I don't know how well regarded they are by folks with more language expertise than me, but some Rhys Davids translations are old enough you can find them in full on archive.org. I've used his translation of the Questions of King Milinda in class and it went well enough. There's the occasional untranslated word you need to say something about, but this has been fine.

This specific text is part of a longer series, all of which is public domain now, but I don't know how all of them are. The series includes lots that goes beyond Chinese Philosophy (saying this last bit in response to Marcus)

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_Books_of_the_East)

[2cents]

For Chinese Philosophy, in addition to what are mentioned above, another useful free online database is: https://ctext.org/ens

One frustration of reading those texts in Chinese Philosophy is that some key concepts are often translated differently by different translators (for example, "Ren" and "Li" in Confucianism). Sometimes, the same concept is translated into different terms within the same text. It creates some unnecessary confusions for people who are not familiar with Chinese language. Personally, if I were a beginner, I would have preferred to read texts that are translated by a single person, such as Eno's translations.

[jdkbrown]

Access to Insight (https://www.accesstoinsight.org/) has translations of much of the Pali canon, the core texts of Theravada Buddhism.

[Gambling Addict]

You can find multiple online translations of Buddhist Sutras from the Pali Canon here: https://www.accesstoinsight.org/index.html

As a tactic for providing students with free readings, I've heard that some people will download pdfs of books on libgen, then rip and distribute the legally protected amount of the book for their class (e.g., a chapter). Not that I'd condone illegally downloading the book in the first place. You clearly shouldn't do that.

[Tim]

I also recommend: https://ctext.org/ens. It is sometimes modified by native Chinese speakers working in Chinese philosophy. It toggles between English/Chinese. And it has some texts that have not been translated into English on major presses (e.g. Hackett). The downsides are it is an ugly website, with inconsistent coverage. But it is free!

[David]

Noah Levin collected and edited an OER resource on this: South and East Asia Philosophy Reader. https://www.ngefarpress.com/p/blog-page.html#Eastern. It's about the fifth one done in the list at the linked page.

[a stick in the mud]

Gambling A ...
I teach students about research ethics - that is part of my job. If we run a course encouraging students to use illegally downloaded material, it is challenging then to expect them to internalize the sorts of norms researchers need in order to research effectively, and ethically.

[elisa freschi]

There are excellent translations of Sanskrit philosophy (e.g., John Taber's "A Hindu critique of Buddhist epistemology") that are NOT publicly available. However, perhaps your library can afford them or already bought an e-copy of them?
Alternatively, you might acquire the pdf and upload it on Perusall.com (selecting the option that makes it impossible for students to download it) and avoid copyright infringement in this way.

I discuss some of my favourite translation in my post today (May the 16th).