Translating Biographical and Historical Materials
This workshop addresses the motivation and practical considerations of translating historical and biographical works. Amelia Hall talks about her experience with the construction and translation of a namtar (Wyl. rnam thar, hagiography) and the idiosyncrasies of balancing the needs of the academy and the world of spiritual practitioners as it relates to such a genre. Kurtis Schaeffer walks us through the practical decisions he made while producing a translation of an eighteenth century text to keep his specific audience inspired and engaged. Dan Martin offers a perspective about dating texts in an historical context using available resources.
Event: TT Conference 2014 – Workshop
Date: October 3, 2014 – 4:30 pm
Speakers: Amelia Hall, Dan Martin, Kurtis Schaeffer
Topics: Biographical Materials, Historical Materials, Translation
Amelia Hall
University of Oxford and CMU
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 as a religious studies faculty member at Central Michigan 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 seventeenth 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.
Kurtis Schaeffer
University of Virginia
Kurtis R. Schaeffer received an M.A. in Buddhist Studies from the University of Washington in 1995, a PhD in Tibetan and South Asian Religions from Harvard in 2000 and is now an associate professor of Tibetan and Buddhist Studies at the University of Virginia. His books include Sources of Tibetan Tradition (2013), The Tibetan History Reader (2013), The Culture of the Book in Tibet (2009), An Early Tibetan Catalogue of Buddhist Literature (2009), Dreaming the Great Brahmin, and Himalayan Hermitess (2004).
Dan Martin
Independent
Dan Martin, PhD in Tibetan Studies, Indiana University, 1991. Researcher and translator with many interests in Tibetan religions, literature and cultural topics. Currently working on a translation of a lengthy thirteenth-century history for the Library of Tibetan Classics series.
