Social Status of Translators & Tantric Issues_Shanghai Translation Company
发表时间:2016/04/20 00:00:00 浏览次数:1199
One stunning experience in the Far East is that translators have always enjoyed immense social prestige out here, if only out of recognition for the wealth of information they have enabled China to access and several early masters of Tibetan schools of Buddhism are primarily billed as translators (e.g. Marpa, teacher of Milarepa in the Kagyu school). Moreover, domestic experience of running a country with 50+ official languages means decisionmakers have "hands-on" experiences of the intangible dimensions of cross-cultural communication and how a single inappropriate word or gesture can torpedo dialogue(yes, that's right, although all except Chinese are official only in the provinces in which they are spoken but then again the People's Daily occasionally puts out some English versions of some official statements that were drafted on Translators' Pluto).
In France, I helped translate Buddhist texts from French to English. I say "helped" because it was all done by translation committees where every sentence was the fruit of a joint effort.
For the translation of Tantric meditation texts however, the output provided to practitioners of that divinity consisted of the original text in Tibetan, a transliteration that practitioners recite and a translation so that non-speakers of Tibetan can match the Tibetan text and sounds with the appropriate visualization that accompanies it. In effect, the sounds and their sequencing(call it "poetry power" if you like) is considered to exert Tantra-therapeutic effect on the practitioner. As do the accompanying visualizations.
In France, I helped translate Buddhist texts from French to English. I say "helped" because it was all done by translation committees where every sentence was the fruit of a joint effort.
For the translation of Tantric meditation texts however, the output provided to practitioners of that divinity consisted of the original text in Tibetan, a transliteration that practitioners recite and a translation so that non-speakers of Tibetan can match the Tibetan text and sounds with the appropriate visualization that accompanies it. In effect, the sounds and their sequencing(call it "poetry power" if you like) is considered to exert Tantra-therapeutic effect on the practitioner. As do the accompanying visualizations.
The original Tibetan language and visualizations package both the poetry power and picture power in the same sentence while the French translation settles only for transmitting the picture power. The lamas say this is inevitable until, one day, a fully enlightened practitioner who is a native French speaker sits down and translates the original Tantric rituals. Only then will French practitioners be able to dispense with the Tibetan transliteration.
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