Accuracy and Inspiration: Translating Mahamudra Texts

2022-10-26T05:39:16-06:00

The craft of translation often involves the tension between the need for accuracy and the need to express inspirational text in appropriately inspirational language. In this session, Elizabeth Callahan shares her experience wrestling with these issues on her work with Dakpo Tashi Namgyal’s Moonbeams of Mahāmudrā (Phyag chen zla ba’i ‘od zer) and the Ninth Karmapa’s Dispelling the Darkness of Ignorance (Ma rig mun sel). Professor Mathes discusses difficulties arising from translating quotations of Indian texts found in Tibetan works, such as Phyag rgya chen po gsal sgron and the Zla ba’i ‘od zer.

Be Kind to Your Reader

Marcus Perman2022-11-16T23:36:57-07:00

In this first keynote speech of the Translation & Transmission Conference series, we hear from internationally renowned scholar and translator David Bellos on a wide range of topics including his approach to translation, uses and misuses of xenisms, translationese, translation history, and an important reminder to “be kind to the reader.” In discussing the history of translation in the western world, Professor Bellos describes two, almost simultaneous, historical origins for translation in the middle of the third century B.C.E., where, for the first time, two texts were brought from one language into another, not just rewritten, or re-encoded, re-elaborated, they […]