A beta platform is now online that joins AI-generated line-by-line drafts with community voting and human edits.
The Tipiṭaka has been loaded, but any public-domain or appropriately licensed text can be added.
Workflow
A large-language model produces the initial draft aligned with the source text.
Logged-in users may vote on an existing translation or submit an alternative.
The version with the highest rating is displayed.
Demo
Original text and draft appear side by side.
Click a line to open the vote / add interface.
Overall progress is shown under the language tab (currently AI draft only).
Purpose
Community input is expected to shorten the path from draft to polished translation and to expand modern-language renderings—beginning with a contemporary Japanese Tipiṭaka.
Comments, bug reports, and feature requests are welcome.
All users can vote.
However, I’m considering an algorithm that weights votes differently — for example, giving more weight to votes from active monks or those with a proven track record in translation.
What about an algorithm that considers translations of similar passages in the suttas? That would help standardize parallel passages, pericopes, and recurrent formulas that appear in multiple suttas.
Thank you!
I did consider that too, but I believe that the same phrase can appear in multiple suttas with different meanings depending on the context.
So I’ve decided to hold off on it for now.
If you have any other ideas, I’d love to hear them!
Sorry, but this simply isn’t true. What is someone who has no training or experience in Pali basing their vote on?
And people with real training in Pali language translation are unlikely to participate in a project like this. Why would they waste their time when they know they can easily be out-voted? It’s actually kind of insulting.
It could be made more convenient for translating if I could see the Pali - English paragraphs side-by-side, not one below the other. Or, another option would be that it’s not:
Pali Paragraph
English Paragraph
Pali Paragraph
English Paragraph
which is bulky and hard to translate with such a long text together, and instead see:
Pali sentence
English sentence
Pali sentence
English sentence
This would make the system very convenient and I’d love to contribute with my knowledge and abilities to the translation.
No translation is perfect. There are times when you need to check the original text. With Evame, you can use the floating controller that appears when you scroll up to quickly switch views and compare when needed.
The accuracy of automatic translation has its limits, and room for improvement is often neglected. At Evame, translations are improved daily through user votes and suggestions. Try clicking on this translated text. A form for voting or adding suggestions should appear. You can also receive feedback on your text’s translation from around the world and continuously improve it.
How to view Pali and English side-by-side and edit the translations
Click Start to log in (or create an account), then return to the same page.
Click on any English sentence (or paragraph). A panel will pop up where you can
vote for the current translation, or
submit your own improved translation.
I wish I could attach screenshots here, but the chat doesn’t allow images. If any step is still unclear, just tell me and I’ll walk you through it one step at a time.
Unfortunately, I end up seeing paragraph by paragraph, not sentence by sentence. And totally not side by side. Please see my private message and let’s connect to resolve the situation. I will then summarize the result of our discussion in here.
There are a lot of translations available already in English. If people need more, they should learn Pāḷi and study in that language. The more translations that are in English, the less chance the Sāsana has of surviving. It’s amazing to me that people actually want more translations in English, even when they can plainly observe that the West is declining by the decade.
This is like saying that it should be memorized like its original form was done long ago. There is also a rule about teaching pali line by line to non-monks. Literally a copyright.
It is proven that Myanmar (the country which has preserved the texts and practices) didn’t get Buddhism until the third try becaues it was written down on the third try. I think we can say the same about written texts in pali vs english.
Renaldo