Translating Pāḷi Negative Opposites

In the case of the translation of Pāḷi negative opposites, we need to remember that a fundamental principle in this system is intentional not-doing. With this in mind you will see that translating the literal not-something to some word implying doing something would be both a mistranslation and a perversion of the Dhamma.

We take a misleading liberty with our translations of negatives into positive opposites, and we short-change English by not making much instructive use of the negative opposite as we could.