Talk:Sri Sri Ramakrishna Kathamrita

Name of article

The English translations are titled "Sri Sri Ramakrishna Kathamrita" (in title caps, without hyphens, with "sh" and "i") or "Kathamritam". Shouldn't this be the name of the article?

Of course the article should give also the alternate form (phonetic transcription? transliteration?) without the "i", but with all the customary diacritics ("Śrīśrīrāmakṛṣṇakathāmṛta", according to Atamajnanananda). All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 12:08, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

What translation are you referring to? — goethean ॐ 12:47, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I named the article based on how scholars in academic journals were referring to the work. Transliteration from Bengali is highly variable, so multiple names are acceptable for this article. It might be best if we could decide on a Bengali-to-English convention to stick to. There haven't been many discussions about these topics because frankly, you are the first person who I have encountered here who is interested in understanding the scholarly material rather than fighting it tooth and nail. — goethean ॐ 14:02, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I merely noted the translations cited in the article itself.
As for Bengali spellings, from the little I have seen so far there seems to be two main ways of transcribing it with Latin letters ("romanizations"), one without diacritics (used in most non-scholarly publications but also in some sholarly ones, mainly for names) and the other with diacritics (used in many scholarly words, espacially when quoting text or words in Bengali). Presumably the former tries to suggest the best approximation to the sound that an English speaker can be expected manage, while the second tries to be as failthful to the Bengali spelling as possible, i.e. is a "transliteration" of the latter.
The same occurs with Japanese, which I am a bit familiar with; where the first approach gives "Tokyo" and "shiatsu", the second gives "Tōkyō" and "siatu". The former is relatively old (19th or early 20th century) while the latter seems more modern, at least outside of linguistic works. Some Japanese articles in Wilipedia are titled by one system, some by the other, and it seems that there is dispute as to whether they should be uniformized, and if so in which direction.
The title of this article seems to be some intermediate variant, not entirely "phonetical" (note the "s" instead of "sh") but not literal either (note the "i" in "Ramakrisna" and the lack of diacritics). In my very limited experience, it seemed fairly uncommon. All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 15:16, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

There are two conventions that can be followed, Use IAST in titles or use Non-IAST titles with common english. The general convention in wikipedia is to use Non-IAST titles, for ex : Mahabharata, Ramayana, Bhagavad Gita etc., ( There have also been debates on using IAST, with the outcome of using Non-IAST general usage title ). The current title is inaccurate without IAST. Following the convention with other articles, its better to stick the non-IAST common usage. If in doubt we can still approach the Hinduism project noticeboard, and they can help us out. --TheMandarin (talk) 15:17, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Found the relevant guideline, Wikipedia:NC#Special_characters_and_formatting--"Avoid accent-/quote-like characters" and Wikipedia:NC#Deciding_an_article_name -- "Consistent – Using names and terms that follow the same pattern as those of other similar articles" --TheMandarin (talk) 16:31, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Kathamrita

A discussion of the book's title could be added: it refers to a verse of the Bhagavatam, from the Gopi Gita (which M had printed on the title page). It also is in line with the tradition of such works, such as the work on Sri Chaitanya's life, Sri Sri Chaitanya Charitamrita. If time permits, I may add later... Devadaru (talk) 13:59, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

translations

Translations into languages other than English could/should also be included.

I think translations have been made into major Indian languages like Hindi, Tamil, Kannada, Marathi. But that needs checking--which ones.

Also, translations have been made into various European languages, like French, Spanish, Dutch, and German, as well as into Japanese. The Japanese translation, as well as some of the other translations, may have been made from the English Gospel, rather than from the original Bengali.

So there is lots of scope for more research and additions here.

Devadaru (talk) 19:46, 11 December 2017 (UTC)