nimi pi kon pona tu tu pi nasin sewi pi jan "Buddha" (The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism)

[jan Seli]

toki!

mi jan sin pi toki pona. tenpo pini lili la mi toki ante e ni tawa toki pona:

lon li pilin ike.
pilin ike li jo e tan.
jan li ken weka e pilin ike.
nasin pi weka e pilin ike li lon.

Okay, now English. I know it all could've gone wrong )

Hi!

I'm new to toki pona. Recently I've translated this into the simple language:

Life is suffering.
The suffering has a reason.
The suffering may be brought to an end.
There's a (certain universal) way to cease the suffering.

What do you think about this translation, and what are your better variants if any? ))

[janKipo]

pona a! taso (tenpo ali la nimi 'taso' li lon):
"Noble Truths" suggests several things beside "words of good spirit" 'sona pona' is standard for wise sayings of all sorts and 'lon' (and 'toki lon') are common for truth. Buddha has a tp name, 'Puta', and this applies, as an adjective to all things Buddhist, so 'nasin sewi Puta' is also correct
"translate" seems to be regularly 'ante toki' , though yours makes sense, too.
'nasin pi weka e pilin ike li lon.' You can't have an 'e' in a noun phrases, as the first part of this sentence is. When a verb phrase, like 'weka e pilin ike' gets shifted to modify a noun, all the innards get shifted to modifiers themselves, that is, get attached with 'pi' (if they are more than a word long, as 'pilin ike' is), so, 'nasin pi weka pi pilin ike li lon' . If this is not suitably simple (and some think that more than one 'pi', especially nested like this, is never simple enough), you can go back to basics: 'nasin li lon tawa ni: jan li weka e pilin ike' 'There is a method for a person to get rid of suffering"

[jan_Lope]

[janKipo]

Actually, there are more are more than one word after 'pi'; it's just that they are words that can't go there grammatically. 'pi' with only one word after is careless or archaic; 'pi' with a predicate after it (without 'li' even) is a major blunder.

[jan Seli]

jan_Lope o, janKipo o, pona!
mi kama sona e ijo sin pi toki pona.