The Lotsawa Translation Workshop, held at the University of Colorado Boulder on October 5-8, 2018, created an opportunity to nurture a community of practice around the translation of Tibetan Buddhist texts. The thematic focus of the workshop was “Tibetan songs (mgur) and affect in a Buddhist devotional framework”.
Workshop Format
Modeled on the Bread Loaf Translators’ Conference at Middlebury College, the three-day workshop combined lectures, panels, and break-out sessions in the morning with each afternoon dedicated to working on translations-in-progress in small groups of eight. Participants who applied to attend the conference included junior translators, graduate students with advanced Tibetan literary skills, post-doctoral scholars, and early-career faculty. Their proposed translation submissions included various styles of verse that relate to the dynamics of devotion and the associated range of emotions.
Afternoon workshops focused on how to convey the literary style, tone, and emotional tenor of Tibetan verse in these translations-in-progress. Workshop groups included four participants and four presenters and workshop hosts who provided feedback to the participants. Each participant enjoyed a one-and-a-half hour collaborative feedback session dedicated to their translation-in-progress. Optional activities during the evenings included a pre-conference lecture, welcome reception, a fireside resources presentation, and a translation poetry slam.
After workshopping and revising during the conference, a number of the translations submitted by participants will be selected for compilation into an edited volume to which presenters and workshop hosts will also contribute.

Goals
The Lotsawa Translation Workshop was designed to provide an opportunity for translators and scholars at various stages in their careers to work together in a hands-on workshop setting on translations-in-progress. The goals of the Lotsawa Translation Workshop are:
- to connect theory and practice in crafting literary translations of Buddhist literature from Tibetan into English;
- to forge a community of practice around translation through experimentation, dialogue, and feedback;
- to make short Buddhist works of Tibetan literature available to practitioners, undergraduates, and the general public through publishing thematic anthologies of translations.


2018 Lotsawa Translation Workshop
Friday, October 5, 2018
WELCOME DAY
5:30 PM
Opening Remarks with Holly Gayley and Marcus Perman
5:30 PM
Evening Event with Janet Gyatso and Kurtis Schaeffer
Saturday, October 6, 2018
DAY ONE
9:00 AM
Keynote Lecture: An Act of Bardo: Translating Tibetan Poetry
11:00 AM
Breakout Sessions
- Criteria for Beauty and Readability
- Uncontrived Elegance in Tibetan Songs
- Vocabularies of Longing
2:00 PM
Workshop Sessions
Sunday, October 7, 2018
DAY TWO
9:00 AM
Plenary Panel 1: Dynamics of Devotion
11:00 AM
Breakout Sessions
- Collections of Songs (mgur ‘bum)
- Gender in Translating Devotional Verse
- Linguistic Hospitality
- Rasa Theory and Affect
2:00 PM
Workshop Sessions
Monday, October 8, 2018
DAY THREE
9:00 AM
Plenary Panel 2: Reflections on the Translation Process
11:00 AM
Breakout Sessions
- Balancing Form and Content
- Devotion to the Guru, Loyalty to the Nation
- Ornamentation Shared by Poetry and Song
- Textuality and Materiality
12:30 PM
Closing Remarks with Dominique Townsend, Holly Gayley, Janet Gyatso, Kurtis Schaeffer, and Lama Jabb
Speakers and Facilitators
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Lama Jabb
Wolfston College, Oxford

Nicole Willock
Old Dominion University

Annabella Pitkin
Lehigh University

Amelia Hall
Naropa University

Sarah Harding
Tsadra Foundation Fellow; Naropa University

Andrew Schelling
Naropa University

Lucas Carmichael
University of Colorado, Boulder

Lara Braistein
McGill University

Jue Liang
University of Virginia

John Canti
Padmakara Translation Group; 84000

Jules Levinson
UMA Institute for Tibetan Studies

Ben Nourse
University of Denver

Stephen Gethin
Padmakara Translation Group; Tsadra Foundation Fellow

Riga Shakya
Columbia University

Andrew Quintman
Yale University

Nancy Lin
84000 and Berkeley

Heidi Nevin
Independent

Natasha Mickles
Texas State University

Anne Klein
Rice University

Sarah Jacoby
Northwestern University

Dominique Townsend
Bard College, NY

Jann Ronis
Buddhist Digital Resource Center

Janet Gyatso
Harvard University

Kurtis Schaeffer
University of Virginia

Holly Gayley
University of Colorado, Boulder
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