Sanskrit Language – 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.

Kavya in Tibet

Marcus Perman — Wed, 18 Apr 2018 06:00:05 +0000

Kavya in Tibet is a session following from a workshop on Tseten Zhabdrung’s commentary on poetics (Snyan ngag spyi don) that was hosted at the Latse Library with Gendun Rabsel, Nicole Willock, Andy Quintman, and Kurtis Schaeffer. The Tibetan system of poetics and ornate poetry is highly influential in the history of Tibetan writing and is based on the most important Indian manual of poetics, Daṇḍin’s Mirror of Poetics (Kāvyādarśa). This session introduced some of the fundamental theory and practice of this snyan ngag type of literature. The intellectual gravity of snyan ngag did not make itself felt until 1267 and 1270 when the Kāvyādarśa was translated fully into Tibetan. From that point onward we see hundreds of major and minor works on snyan ngag and its influence on writers throughout the Tibetan world can hardly be overstated. The organizers of this session give four main reasons for presenting a more extended public presentation of kavya and why that would be useful and enjoyable for people who engage in different kinds of work with Tibetan texts: 1) snyan ngag is one of Tibet’s major art forms and most other types of writing are heavily influenced and often include snyan ngag; 2) This classical form of literary art is still alive today, and snyan ngag is at the center of contemporary discussions and debates about the relationship between innovation and tradition in modern Tibetan literature; 3) it is notoriously difficult to learn, but useful for a deeper understanding and appreciation of Tibetan literature; 4) historically it is now possible to approach this challenging technical literature because of the work being done be a few scholars and translators these days.

Unique Registers and Specialized Terminology: Sanskrit and the Tibetan Language in Translation

Marcus Perman — Mon, 16 Apr 2018 06:00:38 +0000

Art Engle has translated both Vasubandhu’s Pañcaskandhaprakarana (ཕུང་པོ་ལྔའི་རབ་ཏུ་བྱེད་པ་) with Stiramathi’s commentary and Asaṅga’s Bodhisattvabhūmi (བྱང་ཆུབ་སེམས་དཔའི་ས་). Over the course of many years of close textual study and Buddhist practice his insights into the translation of Sanskrit and Tibetan texts will be of interest to a great number of those translators faced with issues arising from translating Tibetan texts that are themselves translations of older Indian texts. Similarly, Christian Wedemeyer has translated Āryadeva’s Caryāmelāpakapradīpa (སྤྱོད་པ་བསྡུས་པའི་སྒྲོན་མ་) and annotated translations of short works on the Guhyasamāja, including sādhanas and instructional works by Nāgārjuna, Āryadeva, Nāgabodhi, Candrakīrti, and others. His recent work on these texts has led him to question how terms come to mean particular things for different communities and he will explore some of the related theoretical issues in this session.