Tibetan Translation – Tsadra Conferences

Women’s Voices in Tibetan Texts

Gwen Witt Dorring — Fri, 18 Nov 2022 09:09:58 +0000

Ornamentation Shared by Poetry and Song

Migmar Lama — Wed, 02 Jan 2019 08:06:06 +0000

With humor and levity, longtime collaborators Nicole Willock (Old Dominion) and Gedun Rabsal (Indiana) present chapter three of Daṇḍin’s Mirror of Poetics (Kāvyādarśa) through the lens of twentieth century Tibetan scholar Tseten Zhabdrung (the Snyan ngag spyi don). The focus is the concept of “world-play” (sgra rgyan) and the various examples given in this section of the text. Nicole outlines the third chapter and delves into the “richness of the phonemic value of poetry” with focus on beat, rhythm, and alliteration using examples from one section of the commentarial text focused on “phonemic reduplication” (zung ldan). Professor Rabsal looks at examples from Longchenpa and other authors and provides some analysis of the differences he sees between poetry (snan ngag) and song (mgur) in Tibetan literature.

Lotsawa Translation Workshop Closing Remarks

Migmar Lama — Wed, 02 Jan 2019 08:04:26 +0000

In this short session, Dominique Townsend (Bard), Holly Gayley (University of Colorado, Boulder), Marcus Perman (Tsadra Foundation), Janet Gyatso (Harvard), Kurtis Schaeffer (UVa) and Lama Jabb (Oxford) offer their gratitude and brief reflections to responders, participants, and sponsors. Four participants of the workshop share their impressions of the weekend including having developed a deeper understanding of what is at stake in, and the challenges of, the practice of translation, and the importance of one’s disposition as an ambassador of a text’s content and context. Overall, attendees expressed appreciation of the collaborative process and how the community of translators of Tibetan language literature is growing and developing in a warm, familial manner.

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.