Criteria for Beauty and Readability
When assessing the beauty and readability of a translation one might pose the following questions: does the text come alive in the target language? Is there a distinct emotional tone that comes through in the translation? Does a chosen grammatical structure have the power to convey what we are trying to convey? How do we summon that power to our work?
In this breakout group, Amelia Hall and Andrew Schelling, colleagues at Naropa University in Boulder, CO, address these questions and discuss the importance of techniques to invoke the power of the creative act of translation. They encourage the translator to remain receptive and trust in the genius of his or her own contemporary language to deliver both beauty and readability.
Event: Lotsawa Translation Workshop – Breakout Session
Date: October 6, 2018 – 9:00 am
Speakers: Amelia Hall, Andrew Schelling
Topics: Poetry, Sanskrit Language, Tibetan Language, Translation, Transmission
Amelia Hall
Naropa University
Amelia Hall became a student of Thinley Norbu Rinpoche and Lama Tharchin Rinpoche in 2001. In 2005 she embarked upon a master’s degree in Tibetan and Himalayan Studies from the University of Oxford. She obtained her doctorate from Oxford in 2012, her dissertation, Revelations of a Modern Mystic: The Life and Legacy of Kun bzang bde chen gling pa 1928-2006, translates and reflects upon the biography of this Tibetan Buddhist visionary and the assimilation of Tibetan Buddhism in contemporary North America. She currently teaches courses on Buddhism and Tibetan language at Naropa University. In addition she directs research projects for the Naksang Foundation. Current projects focus on the translation and study of biographies, historical texts, and maps relating to the spread of Buddhism in the 17th Century CE from Tibet and Bhutan to Arunachal Pradesh. She is also an affiliated scholar at the Tibetan and Himalayan Studies Centre at Wolfson College, University of Oxford.
Andrew Schelling
Naropa University
Andrew Schelling is a North American poet, translator, and editor. He has published seven books of classical Sanskrit, Prakrit, and vernacular poetry in translation. Dropping the Bow: Poems from Ancient India, received the 1992 Academy of American Poets award for translation, the first time the preeminent institute for poetry in America recognized work from an Asian language. His latest book, Tracks Along the Left Coast: Jaime de Angulo and Pacific Coast Culture, is a folkloric account of California linguistics. A collection of old India’s poet Bhartrihari will be released by Shambhala Publications in Fall 2018. He teaches poetry and Sanskrit at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado.
