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Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey
Well Kulino, you clearly don't need to polish up your basic Javanese, I obviously misread what the peculiar words indicated.
Please accept my apologies.
You're right about the difficulty with translations, sometimes its just not possible to translate an idea into a different language, because the original idea does not exist in that other language. I'm not a linguist, so I don't know how the professionals approach this problem, but what I do is to try to understand the sense and feeling of the idea in Language 1 and then bring that sense and feeling into Language 2, even if the words used don't necessary match a direct translation.
But actually, I've never bothered with going back to the original manuscripts of things that have already been translated. There is only so much time in any one person's lifetime, I use the efforts of others to give me more time. This means that wherever possible I use existing translations into either English or Bahasa Indonesia.
Several works that I have for which no translations had been done, I paid to have translated by old generation Javanese people who could still read hanacaraka fluently. The last of these I had done during the 1990's, and even at that time it was very, very difficult to find anybody who could read the old script well. My original translators were a relative who made wayang puppets, he passed away in about 1983, after him a relative who was a school teacher, she passed away in the late 1980's, then I used a neighbour who was a retired public servant, he went blind in about 1993. After that I could not find anybody who was a truly competent reader of hanacaraka. I've got plenty of relatives who know the basics, but translation of any extended work is well and truly beyond them.
However, be all that as it may. We still have a problem with:-
Winginkinan punika ingkang sae
is "winginkinan" a typo, or have you given "wingkingan" (your "wingkinan") the "in" infix of Old Javanese?
In any case, this is krama that we're looking at, so "wingkingan" should perhaps be read as if it were "buri", which could mean:- later, after a while, past, then, or last, depending on context.
In respect of the "wingkinan" spelling of "wingkingan":- are you using a roman text and does the text you are working from use a cedilla under the "n"? If so, this indicates a spoken sound "ng".
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