Method & disclosure
How these translations are made
We want you to know exactly how the texts you read here came to be — including where machines helped and where they may fall short. An honest, imperfect translation freely given serves the teaching better than a perfect one locked away. This page is our disclosure, and our promise.
This page describes the editions we prepare ourselves. The library also hosts texts translated by others; those are reproduced as their translators left them, and each carries its own credit.
The physical book is scanned
Each surviving copy is photographed page by page at archival resolution, so the original remains the reference for everything that follows.
High-resolution OCR
The Devanāgarī text is read by machine (optical character recognition), then checked against the page images to catch what the scan misread.
AI-assisted translation
The Hindi is rendered into English with AI assistance under human direction, cross-checked against reference works and existing scholarship, and flagged wherever the meaning is uncertain.
Held for human review
Low-confidence passages are not hidden. They are recorded openly — in the notes and in the text itself — so that scholars, paṇḍits, and devotees can weigh them.
Our use of AI, stated plainly
The translations we prepare are produced with AI assistance under human direction. AI is a tool here, not the author — it drafts and proposes, and a human editor decides. AI can misread a rare word, miss a scriptural allusion, or render a devotional phrase too flatly. Where we caught such things, we corrected them; where we were unsure, we marked it. We would rather show you the seam than pretend there isn’t one.
Texts we did not translate
A part of this library was translated by other people — devotees, paṇḍits, and publishers, some of them decades ago. We do not edit, improve, or re-render their work. It appears here as they left it, under their names, with its source stated. Where such a text sits beside one of ours, the difference is labelled on the book’s page so you always know whose words you are reading.
What the confidence notes mean
Throughout each reading edition we prepare you will find small translator’s notes marking passages of low confidence — a faint scan, an ambiguous word, a phrase with more than one defensible reading. These are features, not failures: they tell you precisely where to bring your own judgement, and where a future edition may differ.
A note for liturgical use
The editions here are reading copies, intended to make these teachings accessible. They are not certified ritual or liturgical texts. For chanting, ceremony, or any observance where the exact words matter, please consult a qualified paṇḍit and, where possible, the original — which we provide alongside every translation for exactly this reason.