Buddhist Translations Past, Present, and Future: With a Focus on Chinese and Tibetan Renderings

Abstract

Translation is of enormous importance in the fi eld of humanities. This is true not only of reception of religious thought, philosophical texts, literary works, and other documents; it can be readily understood just by looking at translations into modern languages of many “classics.” An accurate understanding of technical key terms is especially profoundly important in the cases of religious thought and philosophical texts. The fi rst prerequisite is to have an accurate understanding of such technical terms in the contexts in which they appear in individual works, while considering their historical, cultural, and philosophical backgrounds. Next the translator is faced with the necessity of choosing an equivalent in the target language that is suffi ciently reliable and as masterful a translation as possible. When it is not possible to fi nd existing vocabulary that is appropriate, the translator must use a transliteration (Buddha, bodhisattva, arhat, Sāmadhi, nirvāṇa) or create a Chinese neologism (yuanqi [縁起] for pratītya-samutpāda, foxing [仏性] for buddhadhātu, jingjin [精進] for vīrya, or zhongsheng [衆生] for sattva).