Tibetan Translators NEED Christianity, Pt. 1
Background
When I first was introduced to Buddhism, I remember visiting a monastery whose shelved wall held a copy of the Tibetan Buddhist Canon—in its entirety, more than 300 volumes, stacked from floor to ceiling. These, I was told, were the holy scriptures of Buddhism; the Buddhist Bible.Of course, I'm certain that, in those early days, even if I didn't give voice to the cringe-worthy cliche: "Buddhism is really more of a philosophy than a religion," I certainly thought it. What we tend to see as the literary tradition of Buddhism versus that of Christianity is surely a part of that sense we have that there is more to Buddhism; the Bible is a tiny, 2-volume work that doesn't cover nearly the range of the Buddhist texts.
And, like many others, I was also interested in Buddhism because I was (at least partially) rejecting Christianity. What I failed to see then was that the "Christianity" I had been exposed to was the narrow, modern, pigeon-holed folk version, whereas a ton of the "intellectual" stuff—philosophy, the sciences, literature, mysticism, etc—had been parceled out across other social spaces. A major container for our Western Christian heritage is actually academia, which is actually a secularized version of the monastic system.
In other words, just being a student (in any subject) is the modern-day version of being a monk (well, all of the intellectual pursuits with very much none of the celibacy; what a great system!). It's why we wear robes when we graduate—as a way to pay homage to our academic heritage. Although much of it has morphed beyond recognition, our Western, Christian traditions encompass much, much more than we're wont to give them credit for.
What I'm basically suggesting here is that there is, however, an Western Christian Canon—we just don't happen to see it as the single, unified thing that the Tibetan Buddhist Canon is. And, it stands to reason that it would behoove Tibetan translators to familiarize themselves with this English religious material—including religious philosophy (and the history of western thought)—in order to better translate Tibetan religious material.
What I want to cover in this small series of blog posts are questions related to this central idea: that if we hope to translate Tibetan texts of a certain genre (from the source language) into English texts (to the target language), we need to be fluent in reading and especially writing in the English version of that genre. If, for example, I am translating a Buddhist prayer, I need to be fluent in reading and writing English prayers first!
Comments