Linguistic Hospitality
Dominique Townsend (Bard) and Lucas Carmichael (University of Colorado, Boulder) present Paul Ricoeur’s essay, “On Translation“, as a starting point for discussion of linguistic hospitality. After a brief introduction to the essay, small group discussions on the ethics of translation, the dynamics of retranslation, and “resistance to the foreign” focus the conversation. The small groups then share a summary of their exploration and find that Ricoeur’s optimism in his encouragement to give up the idea of a perfect translation became the basis for small group conversation and further discussion.
Event: Lotsawa Translation Workshop – Breakout Session
Date: October 7, 2018 – 11:00 am
Speakers: Dominique Townsend, Lucas Carmichael
Topics: Tibetan Language, Translation, Transmission
Dominique Townsend
Bard College
Dominique Townsend is Assistant Professor of Buddhist Studies at Bard College. She received her BA from Barnard College, MTS from Harvard Divinity School and PhD from Columbia University in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures. Her research is stimulated by productive tensions in Buddhist cultures, such as the relationship between the cultivation of the arts and renunciation. Dominique’s primary interests include Buddhist poetics, pedagogy, and institutionalized charisma. Her current project, based on her dissertation research, focuses on aesthetics and cosmopolitanism in Tibetan Buddhism, with a particular focus on the history of Mindrölling Monastery.
Lucas Carmichael
University of Colorado, Boulder
Lucas Carmichael received his Ph.D. in Religion and Literature from the University of Chicago, with a dissertation on English translations of the Daode jing. He is the co-founder and co-chair of the five-year “Transnational Religious Expression: Between Asia and North America” seminar at the American Academy of Religion. His research is stimulated by attention to translators as scribes and mediators of the cultural distances, hermeneutical negotiations, and historical connections between foreign texts and domestic readers. He focuses primarily on the translation, transmission, reception, and popularization of Chinese classics in Europe and America, and is currently preparing a book manuscript titled The Daode Jing as American Scripture.
