Marcus Perman, Director of Research for Tsadra Foundation, encourages translators in their work by articulating the relevance of translated publications for the Western Tibetan Buddhist audience. Ending with a moment of silence for two bright translators who recently passed away (Chris Stagg and Gen Tsering Dhundup Gongkatsang), Marcus helps start the workshop with a reflective tone, an appropriate ground upon which to introduce the keynote dialogue with Janet Gyatso and Kurtis Schaeffer.

The two scholars continue by contextualizing a major theme of current translation work: the fact that we can now focus on Tibetan literature as literature. Janet Gyatso (Harvard) reminds the audience to step back from the question of translation–before we become good translators, we need to be good readers and appreciators.

Janet follows her own example by giving a short presentation on her collaboration with Pema Bum, a Tibetan intellectual and scholar of literature, on three examples of verse that illustrate the literary technology found in Daṇḍin’s Mirror of Poetry (Kāvyādarśa, Tib. snyan ngak me long), an Indian text that exerted significant influence on Tibetan literature. Kurtis then acknowledges the humanness that can emerge from poetry–the social and interpersonal aspects evinced through these literary techniques–and reminds us to attend to the sensuousness and humor of the artform, and the awe evoked by the experience of it.

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.