नमस्ते

I thought it would be a fun exercise to translate a few of my favorite quotes from Star Wars and Harry Potter into Sanskrit. I’m starting with four simple quotes to provide detailed analysis of each, and to save the more complex quotes for when I have developed more sophisticated Sanskrit abilities. I have included the quote in English, my Sanskrit translation, a Romanization of my Sanskrit translation with most sandhi operations removed, and a re-translation into English. I chose to include a re-translation to better illustrate my choices of re-wording.

“It is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness.” – Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows. मर्णभयमप्रकाशभयमेवाज्ञातभयम्।

marṇabhayam aprakāśabhayam eva ajñātabhayam.

This is my favorite quote from the Harry Potter series. Re-translated into English, my translation becomes, “Fear of death, like fear of darkness, is fear of the unknown.” I believe that this captures the essence of Dumbledore’s wise words. The resulting Sanskrit is an example of one of most of my favorite aspects of the language: an entire sentence is grouped into a single unit of letters, lacks an explicit verb (the verb ‘to be’ is implied), and contains words that are compounds of multiple words. As a result, the Sanskrit is comparatively shorter than the English re-translation.

“Your eyes can deceive you. Do not trust them.” – Ben Kenobi in A New Hope चक्षुर्मायासमर्थः। तन्मा श्रम्भस्व​।

cakṣus māyāsamarthaḥ. tat mā śrambhasva.

Back to English, “Eyesight is capable of deceit. Do not trust it.” Here I chose the word माया (māyā) for illusion/deceit, as this is the word used in various philosophical texts dating back to the Upanishads for deception of the senses.

“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” – Yoda in The Phantom Menace भयं पापगतिः। भयमभ्यसूयाहेतुरभ्यसुया द्वेषहेतुर्द्वेषो बादाहेतुश्च​।

bhayam pāpagatiḥ. bhayam abhyasūyāhetuḥ, abhyasūyā dveṣahetuḥ, dveṣaḥ bādāhetuḥ ca.

“Fear is the path to sin. Fear is the cause of anger, anger is the cause of hate, and hate is the cause of suffering.” In the various compounds in the sentence, I used हेतु (hetu) as the word for “cause”. I also elected to replace “the dark side” with पाप, sin. This sentence highlights another of my favorite aspects of the language: the formation of an “and” series allows one to simply lay all elements of the series side by side, and end the series with च​. The members of the series are made clearer in the

“Great warrior. Wars not make one great.” – Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back अपि तवं महाभट इति भषसे। युद्धानि न विभुषयन्ति पुरुषम्।

api tvam mahābhaṭaḥ iti bhāṣase? yuddhāni na vibhuṣayanti puruṣam.

“‘Great warrior,’ do you say? Wars do not ornament a man.” I must note that Yoda’s grammar almost perfectly matches with the typical word order of a Sanskrit sentence (though, of course, there is often no incorrect ordering).

It is highly likely that, having taken only a semester of Sanskrit so far, I have made some mistakes in the above translations. I would appreciate any and all identifications of mistakes and suggestions to fix them. That being said, this was a fun, useful exercise. I will certainly continue doing translations like this, and maybe soon will also write my own original pieces in Sanskrit.