Amelia Hall – Tsadra Conferences

Criteria for Beauty and Readability

Migmar Lama — Wed, 02 Jan 2019 08:18:17 +0000

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.

Oddities and Curiosities in Tibetan Translation

Marcus Perman — Wed, 11 Apr 2018 06:00:43 +0000

“What is an oddity,” you ask? How odd of you to ask! We all know what oddities are when we see them. It may be a subjective response, but it’s there all the same. The odd thing seems out of place, it sits there glaring out at you without an obvious explanation. Every problem has its solution, or so it’s sometimes said, but that doesn’t mean they always will be solved.

The co-organizers take turns presenting oddities from among their personal favorites. The range of possible oddities, which seems beyond all limit, were narrowed down to more manageable categories that included the following: 1. Oddities of script. 2. Oddities of Spelling. 3. Word oddities. 4. Odd identifications (problems with proper names). 5. Odd philosophical discussions. 6. Odd choices of quotations 7. Odd ways of filling numeric categories. And, as a final catchall category, we should add oddities of content. Our primary intention is to discuss literary examples, oddities found in Tibetan-language texts.

Translating Biographical and Historical Materials

Marcus Perman — Sat, 24 Mar 2018 02:57:03 +0000

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.