Translating Spiritual Instructions
This workshop highlights the complex and nuanced process of translation and interpretation of key terms for spiritual instructions. Sangye Khandro presents examples of upadeśa, or spiritual instructions, so that the audience may reflect upon the importance of the translator’s expert status and the necessity of working closely with lineage masters to accomplish translation work. Peter Alan Roberts shares advice he wishes he could have shared with his younger self relating to the translation of oral instructions, and Sarah Harding speaks on the differences of translation choice between gdams ngag, man ngag, and zhal gdams, and challenges the publishing of such instructions for a wide readership.
Event: TT Conference 2014 – Workshop
Date: October 3, 2014 – 4:30 pm
Speakers: Peter Alan Roberts, Sangye Khandro, Sarah Harding
Topics: Spiritual Instructions, Translation
Sarah Harding
Tsadra Foundation Fellow; Naropa University
Sarah Harding has been a Buddhist practitioner since 1974 and has been teaching and translating since completing a three-year retreat in 1980 under the guidance of Kyabje Kalu Rinpoche. Her publications include Creation and Completion, The Life and Revelations of Pema Lingpa, Treasury of Knowledge: Esoteric Instructions, Machig’s Complete Explanation, and Niguma, Lady of Illusion. She is an associate professor at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, where she has been teaching since 1992, and has been a fellow of the Tsadra Foundation since 2000. Currently she is working on translating the zhi byed and gcod sections of the gdams ngag rin po che’i mdzod.
Peter Alan Roberts
Independent
Peter Alan Roberts was born in Wales and lives in Hollywood, California. He earned a BA in Sanskrit and Pali and a DPhil in Tibetan Studies from Oxford University (Harris-Manchester College). For more than thirty years he has been working as an interpreter for lamas and as a translator of Tibetan texts. He specializes in the literature of the Kagyü and Nyingma traditions with a focus on tantric practices, and he is the author of The Biographies of Rechungpa and Mahāmudrā and Related Instructions.
Sangye Khandro
Light of Berotsana
Sangye Khandro has been a Buddhist since 1971 and a translator of the Dharma since 1976. She has helped to establish numerous centers in the USA and has served as translator for many prominent masters in all four lineages. Sangye has been the spiritual companion of the Venerable Gyatrul Rinpoche for nearly thirty years and has continued to help serve the centers established by her root teacher, Kyabje Dudjom Rinpoche, with whom she studied and practiced for many years. Sangye Khandro is one of the founders of the Light of Berotsana Translation Group.
