Translating Canonical Materials: Sutra
Leading members of the 84000 Project John Canti, Andreas Doctor, and Tom Tillemans speak about the scope of the project and issues that arise when translating canonical materials: multiple source texts, working from translations to make an English version, the difficulty of interpreting the intended literary style of the source materials, and the importance of the 84000 Project to the transmission of the dharma to the West.
Event: TT Conference 2014 – Workshop
Date: October 3, 2014 – 4:30 pm
Speakers: Andreas Doctor, John Canti, Tom Tillemans
Topics: Canonical Works, Translation
Andreas Doctor
Dharmachakra Translation Committee; Rangjung Yeshe Institute
Andreas Doctor (PhD, University of Calgary) is director of Dharmachakra Translation Committee, Kathmandu, Nepal. He also serves on the editorial committee of 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha. He is currently working with the Dharmachakra Translation Committee on translations of several sūtras and tantras from the Tibetan canon as part of the 84000 Project to translate the Tibetan Kangyur into English.
John Canti
Padmakara Translation Group; 84000
In 1970, while studying medicine at Cambridge, he first met his Buddhist teachers, and started to practice under their guidance. After hospital work in London and Cambridge, he moved in the late seventies to eastern Nepal to establish tuberculosis programs in two remote hill districts. Beginning in 1980, he underwent two three-year retreats in the Dordogne, France. Emerging from retreat at the end of the 80s, he helped found the Padmakara Translation Group, of which he is now president, and remains an active translator. Since 2001 he has also been a Fellow of the Tsadra Foundation. He serves on the working committee of 84000 as chair of the editorial section. He is based in France but also spends part of his time in Nepal and India. Currently John is working on Mipham’s commentary on the Ratnagotravibhāgottaratantraśāstra.
Tom Tillemans
University of Lausanne; 84000
Tom J.F. Tillemans is Professor Emeritus of Buddhist Studies in the Department of South Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. The focus of his research has been on Buddhist logic and epistemology, Madhyamaka philosophy, and comparative philosophy. He was from 1998 until 2006 co-editor of the Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies. Born in 1950 in the Netherlands and raised in Canada, he now serves as the editor in chief for the 84000 Project tasked with translating the scriptures of the Buddhist canon. Publications include Scripture, Logic, Language: Essays on Dharmakīrti and his Tibetan Successors (1999); Materials for the Study of Āryadeva, Dharmapāla, and Candrakīrti (1990, reprint 2008); Persons of Authority (1993); Agents and Actions in Classical Tibetan (with Derek Herforth, 1989); Dharmakīrti’s Pramāṇavārttika: An Annotated Translation of the Fourth Chapter (parārthānumāna) (2000); Apoha. Buddhist Nominalism and Human Cognition (with Mark Siderits and Arindam Chakrabarti, 2011); Moonshadows: Conventional Truth in Buddhist Philosophy (with Jay Garfield, Georges Dreyfus, et al., 2011).
