Uncontrived Elegance in Tibetan Songs

Migmar Lama2022-11-16T23:40:42-07:00

John Canti (Padmakara, 84000) and Sarah Harding (Tsadra Foundation) explore “uncontrived elegance” in poetry and song in Tibetan literature. Compared to the purportedly spontaneous composition of the original, is a translation ever uncontrived? John draws on examples from Dudjom Lingpa and Shabkar to illustrate the possibilities of translation and the evocative dimensions that can be expressed based on the source literature. Sarah suggests that a smooth, readable translation, facilitating ease of comprehension, may be the best we can do. After a lively discussion, Sarah leads the group in translating a short line of text to illustrate their points.

Uncontrived Elegance in Tibetan SongsMigmar Lama2022-11-16T23:40:42-07:00

Vocabularies of Longing

Migmar Lama2022-11-16T23:40:42-07:00

How do the translator and the reader work with emotion flowing from text? Sarah Jacoby (Northwestern) and Lara Braitstein (McGill) pose questions and present examples from Tibetan poetry in this breakout session convened on the first morning of the 2018 Lotsawa Translation Workshop. Sarah discusses how we move from literature to life if literary theory maintains that the stories are only words on a page. She explores the intersubjective encounter with what we read and how emotion can be decoded when considering the work’s literary origins and historical context, then offers some tips for translators to work with the emotional […]

Vocabularies of LongingMigmar Lama2022-11-16T23:40:42-07:00

Collections of Songs (mgur ‘bum)

Migmar Lama2022-11-16T23:40:43-07:00

By taking a bird’s-eye view of collections of songs (mgur ‘bum), Kurtis Schaeffer (University of Virginia) and Andrew Quintman (Wesleyan) examine gaps in our knowledge based on the extant collections and their experiences both as translators and as historians of literature. They elicit an exploratory discussion by beginning with a series of key questions and positing ways in which we can think about songs as an autonomous literary form as well as how we might approach the provenance of songs and the process of their production and reproduction from the standpoint of history, in addition to other stimulating topics. What […]

Collections of Songs (mgur ‘bum)Migmar Lama2022-11-16T23:40:43-07:00

Gender in Translating Devotional Verse

Migmar Lama2022-11-16T23:40:43-07:00

In this collaborative discussion breakout session, Jue Liang (University of Virginia) and Natasha Mikles (Texas State) discuss the dynamics of socially constructed ideas about gender on our readings of classical texts and biographies. The group also explores devotion as a culturally constructed idea and devotional language as gendered. Jue and Natasha lead the group in developing “word banks” of terms that elicit a mood of binary gender constructs and then the discussion naturally unfolds into thoughtful exploration of the deconstruction of the binary and a consideration of the opposites of gender and devotion and the value we place on all […]

Gender in Translating Devotional VerseMigmar Lama2022-11-16T23:40:43-07:00

Linguistic Hospitality

Migmar Lama2022-11-16T23:40:44-07:00

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.

Linguistic HospitalityMigmar Lama2022-11-16T23:40:44-07:00

Rasa Theory and Affect

Migmar Lama2022-11-16T23:40:44-07:00

Nancy Lin (84000) and Annabella Pitkin (Lehigh) lead a rich discussion about how rasa and affect theories might help translators of Tibetan appreciate and communicate about art and literature in English, particularly regarding the more subtle aspects of tone, mood, and feeling in a given work. Nancy begins by facilitating a discussion of a particular verse to develop a shared vocabulary for rasa theory. She then presents potential understandings of rasa through consideration of Bharata’s Treatise on Drama and Daṇḍin’s Mirror of Poetry and employs this shared vocabulary in a conversation about the work of Tibetan authors. Annabella poses compelling […]

Rasa Theory and AffectMigmar Lama2022-11-16T23:40:44-07:00

Balancing Form and Content

Migmar Lama2022-11-16T23:40:44-07:00

Jann Ronis (Buddhist Digital Resource Center) begins this session with a brief tour of evocative definitions of literature, form, and content from a variety of perspectives and muses that form is not the external shape, but the energy behind the making of a poem. And if this is so, can we also think of the form of a translation in the same way? He takes us one step further to consider the importance of intertextuality–when we approach translation by way of understanding the work as it was meant by the author, we can be supported by our own extensive contextual […]

Balancing Form and ContentMigmar Lama2022-11-16T23:40:44-07:00

Devotion to the Guru, Loyalty to the Nation

Migmar Lama2022-11-16T23:40:45-07:00

Riga Shakya, doctoral student in history at Columbia University, looks at the relationship between history and literature and the making of an inner Asian empire, specifically the early Qing expanses into the Tibetan plateau. By considering autobiographies, biographies, and key historical sources of this period, Riga explores the “language of loyalty” and the role of lay elites in articulation of the relationship between empire and subject populations. Holly Gayley (University of Colorado, Boulder) extrapolates on the theme of “language of loyalty”, drawing attention to pop music of the twenty and twenty-first centuries that illustrates embodied acts of devotion through the […]

Devotion to the Guru, Loyalty to the NationMigmar Lama2022-11-16T23:40:45-07:00

Ornamentation Shared by Poetry and Song

Migmar Lama2022-10-26T05:23:38-06:00

With humor and levity, longtime collaborators Nicole Willock (Old Dominion) and Gedun Rabsal (Indiana) present chapter three of Daṇḍin’s Mirror of Poetics (Kāvyādarśa) through the lens of twentieth century Tibetan scholar Tseten Zhabdrung (the Snyan ngag spyi don). The focus is the concept of “world-play” (sgra rgyan) and the various examples given in this section of the text. Nicole outlines the third chapter and delves into the “richness of the phonemic value of poetry” with focus on beat, rhythm, and alliteration using examples from one section of the commentarial text focused on “phonemic reduplication” (zung ldan). Professor Rabsal looks at […]

Ornamentation Shared by Poetry and SongMigmar Lama2022-10-26T05:23:38-06:00

Textuality and Materiality

Migmar Lama2022-10-26T05:22:00-06:00

What is the physical basis of a work of art and how does its material existence represent the process of its creation? Ben Nourse (University of Denver) and Alexander Gardner (Treasury of Lives) meander through various examples of physical objects embodying abstract work in this breakout session. Discussion about the constellation of objects around a book or a text considers that community endeavor could be important in creating material culture and that the appreciation and exploration of a physical location can enrich a translation of a certain text.

Textuality and MaterialityMigmar Lama2022-10-26T05:22:00-06:00