23

Words and Essence: The Challenges of Translation

FRANCISCA CHO      ELIZABETH CALLAHAN

VEN. BHIKKHU BODHI      LARRY MERMELSTEIN

 

Whether it’s a sutra, a work of poetry, a meditation manual, or a philosophical commentary, inevitably something is lost to the reader in translation. How do you minimize that?

FRANCISCA CHO: Translation is a huge concern in my academic discipline, comparative religious studies, but in teaching undergraduates about religion, I have learned to become more relaxed about what is getting lost. I accept the fact that translations are creations in their own right and the main role of a translation is to be accessible and understandable to the English reader in the modern context. There’s a tendency for academics and translators to be very concerned about what’s not said, but I have become convinced over the years that it is not so important as reaching the reader in their own context.

ELIZABETH CALLAHAN: The challenge for me is to join together the strong need to provide something that makes sense to the reader with the need to maintain the integrity of the original. Every translator is always striking this balance. For a more general audience, the primary concern may be readability and allowing readers to derive the meaning more immediately. If it’s a technical topic and your audience has more background, then you can show them the bones of it more. In the end, of course, the whole point is to have them derive meaning from it, so it’s not a good idea to let meaning get lost in a tangle of jargon that only scholars and people who know the original languages can understand.

VEN. BHIKKHU BODHI: As I study the texts in the original language, I make extensive notes and organize them according to an outline system I have devised. In so doing, I see the extensive underground current of connections between terms and ideas. It’s very precise and systematic in the original language, but when one renders it into English or some other contemporary language, no matter how consistent one might try to make one’s translation, that underground current of connections, resonances of terms, and overlapping and interconnected meanings largely gets lost.

LARRY MERMELSTEIN: While some things may be lost in translation, there is something that is gained as well. With the very high degree of literacy in the English-speaking world, we have the possibility of many more people understanding something of the teachings. Up until recent times in Tibet, no more than a fifth or a quarter of the population was literate. With greater literacy there is a huge capability for greater access to the literature.

Since Buddhism is so often talking about very subtle experiences, is one translating the experience or the word? Do you consider the experience the English word will evoke in the reader, or do you primarily look for words that accurately reflect the source language?

ELIZABETH CALLAHAN: I think translators are always balancing the two concerns. Tibetans have terms that I call “experiential words.” They are words or phrases that are only used to describe meditation experiences. Although they are derived from actual words, they are onomatopoeic in character. When I translated The Ocean of Definitive Meaning, I encountered quite a number of these. In each case, I chose a word in English that I felt carried the same flavor of expression. Then I included the Tibetan in parentheses after each occurrence and devoted one glossary to these terms.

An example of this kind of term is the Tibetan word hrig ge. I translated it as “sharp.” The glossary entry says, “A nonconceptual, unobscured state where one sees one’s own nature. Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche demonstrated this by staring straight ahead with wide-open eyes.” The entry also includes a quote from Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, who said, “It is nonthought, like a gap experience. It is demonstrated by staring. It is like when one sees something scary and one’s eyes become wide-open.” Then it includes the Great Tibetan-Chinese Dictionary gloss as “vibrant clarity.” Finally, it mentions that the term is also translated as “dazzling,” “glaring,” and “wakeful.”

LARRY MERMELSTEIN: In our formative years in working with Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, we spent quite a lot of time trying to imagine how a reader might understand a particular term’s translation, and this perspective was very important to us. While sometimes an excellent choice might emerge from our consultation with the dictionary, the OED being our chief reference, if this was likely to remain obscure to our intended audience, we would often feel the need to look further.

VEN. BHIKKHU BODHI: I don’t think it is necessary to posit a sharp distinction between translating the word and translating the experience. A balance between the two is the ideal and some synthesis between them is a realistic possibility. But I believe that if the translator is in fact translating, and not using the text as a springboard to creative innovation, he or she must remain faithful to the words of the text.

This means the translator must try to understand those words as accurately as possible, both in the context out of which the text arose, and in relation to the larger corpus of which that text might be a part. Since these texts are dealing, at least part of the time, with inner experiences, when attempting to convey his or her understanding of what those experiences involve—and this inevitably engages the translator to some extent in interpretation—the translator will have to select the renderings in the target language that convey most satisfactorily this experiential dimension.

In my own experience, when I have to translate texts using Pali technical terms, I try to understand the meaning of those words against the broader Indian background of early Buddhism and in relation to the network of interconnected ideas that underlie the suttas themselves. Then I try to find words in English that will convey those meanings most satisfactorily.

Of course, there are inevitably huge gaps between the meanings suggested by the Pali words and the ideas that English counterparts will convey. We must try our best to find a terminology that will capture the intended meanings, but we must also remember that translation cannot be a self-sufficient enterprise. It must also be supplemented by explanation and annotation, which will set the terms in their appropriate context of Buddhist doctrine and practice so that the reader can better appreciate how they are being used.

For example, “concentration” is hardly satisfactory as a rendering for samādhi, but unless we decide to allow this word to go untranslated, any other rendering—“composure,” “collectedness,” “absorption”—will also be inadequate. The meaning of the term samādhi only begins to come to light when the reader is given an explanation of samādhi: how samādhi functions in the Buddhist meditative path, what its practice entails, how the experience of it is described, and so forth.

One way to let readers connect more directly to the original meaning or experience is to leave some words untranslated. Do any of you do that?

VEN. BHIKKHU BODHI: Not very much. It is a gentler inducement to the reader to continue to read a text in which most of the words are in intelligible English rather than to immediately flood them with a barrage of Pali words. If the reader is persistent and intent on understanding the teachings of the Buddhist texts, then through continued exposure to these terms, they’ll get an idea of the deep meaning. To help show interrelationships, I may show the original word in brackets and explain other words it is connected to etymologically. But I try to leave as few words untranslated as possible: Buddha, and even that can be rendered as “the enlightened one”; Dhamma, Sangha, nibbāna; and occasionally kamma.

Why not translate Sangha as “community”?

VEN. BHIKKHU BODHI: I think “community” suggests to a modern reader quite different things than what Sangha would have meant—and does mean—in relation to Buddhism. In the context of the early Buddhist texts, it means either the monastic order or the spiritual community of those who have reached one of the levels of realization. One might think of it just as the social community, which would not convey the idea of a specific spiritual order.

Sometimes an untranslated word can travel through several languages. For example, Professor Cho, one of Manhae’s poems is called “Samādhi of Sorrow.” Why did you choose not to translate samādhi?

FRANCISCA CHO: I was following Manhae’s lead. His poems were written in Korean, but he maintained the use of the Chinese characters, which in this case would offer a phonetic rendition of the Sanskrit term samādhi. Since he wanted to use that term and not translate it into something like “concentration” in the Korean, I decided to use the Romanized equivalent of the Sanskrit term in my own translation.

LARRY MERMELSTEIN: We have a similar situation in translating from Tibetan. The Tibetans did not leave that much untranslated from Sanskrit, but they do use some Sanskrit terms and we almost always mirror that in the same way Francisca was describing. If a Tibetan text uses the Sanskrit word duḥkha, we would not translate that into Tibetan or English. We have gone even further, though, in using a lot of Sanskrit technical terms whether they had been translated into Tibetan or not.

If we can find a very good English equivalent, especially if it’s one that many other translators have already accepted, we will use it, since we prefer to use as much English as possible. But we do use a lot of Sanskrit terminology. We do that if a term is presenting a central concept and we don’t feel we can find a suitable English term that is likely to be picked up on by others in the translation world.

Bodhicitta is a good example. There are lots of translations of that term but I don’t know that any of them has yet stood out as so good that everybody bows their heads to it and says, “Yeah, we really want to use that.” Also, if we render it in English, we wonder whether the reader will instantly recognize it as a technical term of really great import. Leaving it in Sanskrit can let someone know that it’s a very important term and they should learn more about it. Like Bhikkhu Bodhi, we feel that the work we do necessitates a glossary, where every single foreign word is dealt with.

Why not get together and come up with an agreed-upon English rendering of bodhicitta that everybody uses?

LARRY MERMELSTEIN: It could be interesting to have a gathering of translators and try to come up with some standard renderings, but I would not be very hopeful about that. Who would have the authority? In Tibet, of course, you had royal patronage, so there could be a decree that said, “We’re going to do it this way.” I don’t see that being likely in the world today.

ELIZABETH CALLAHAN: It’s too early to standardize, I would say. We have just begun doing this and from where I sit it seems to me we are just starting to do good work. If we try to standardize right now we might—even if we could agree—end up settling for terms that we might later find don’t work so well. Maybe we could find something better if we kept trying.

All translation work is experimentation. When I understand that, I feel freed up to try a new term, float it out for a while, and if it doesn’t work, fine. Sometimes one might use the Sanskrit term for a while to see if that will come to common usage in English. At other times one might try to create a technical term in English that will hold up in the variety of contexts in which the original term was used.

FRANCISCA CHO: Perhaps the long-term goal is, in fact, to use the original Sanskrit, Pali, or Tibetan term and make that current rather than trying to find an English equivalent. These ancient words contain universes of meaning and nuances of history, which are very cumbersome to translate.

What we should be moving toward is a general cultural literacy in Buddhist thought and ideas so that people can use at least basic terms, such as Dharma and karma and so forth, without having to translate. As Bhikkhu Bodhi said, to use “community” for Sangha is much too general. It doesn’t engage the history and evolution of the Buddhist community that is the Sangha. It’s simply more efficient to use the original term. The process of absorbing these terms into the language may take awhile, and it may entail misunderstandings or oversimplified understandings at the beginning. But it seems to me that the goal should be to get to the point where we can use these Buddhist terms as English words.

VEN. BHIKKHU BODHI: That would succeed only with a very limited number of words. If one tries to impose that scheme on a wider range of terms, one risks making Buddhist texts obscure to a large part of the population. There’s also a problem with choosing standardized English translations for Buddhist terms, because living languages are constantly changing. When one looks at the standardized renderings of Buddhist technical terms into Tibetan and Chinese, one has to remember that those texts were translated largely by an educated monastic to be read by an educated monastic readership, an elite that would become familiar with these terms in their own languages.

In the Theravāda Buddhist countries, until modern times, the texts were not translated into the vernacular languages. Anybody who wanted to understand them would have to read them in Pali. If one wants to have fixed, standard renderings of Buddhist technical terms into English and to make that rendering valid for centuries, one will be freezing the meaning of these terms, and the terms will not keep pace with the natural changes that take place in the evolution of language. At that point, the meaning of the terms will become obscure to the wider readership and only understood by a limited number of people who specialize in the study of the texts.

LARRY MERMELSTEIN: Our translation committee’s allegiance to Sanskrit is exactly for that reason. We hope and expect that more terms will enter English. But I also agree with Bhikkhu Bodhi that it’s a pipe dream to think that as many of the words that we currently use in Sanskrit are going to be found in English dictionaries.

FRANCISCA CHO: There already are more there than you might think.

ELIZABETH CALLAHAN: I agree. Sanskrit terms are showing up in English dictionaries these days a lot more than one would expect.

That can be very helpful. When I am casting about for translation equivalents in English, I often come across terms that have a lot of cultural connotations and implications in English that don’t exist with the Tibetan or Sanskrit term. However, I might still use an English word, because the value of the meaning it conveys may outweigh the extraneous connotations.

For example, “essence” has two principal meanings in English: the distilled extract of something or what something inherently is. The first of these is a misleading meaning for the Tibetan ngo bo. One way out is to translate ngo bo as “nature,” which is one of those overused translation terms. But I would prefer to use “essence,” because sometimes you have to put aside some of the usages in English and focus on one of the other meanings of a particular term. Use it and it starts to take on the Buddhist understanding of the term.

One of the ways I work with this is to use a lot of footnotes or endnotes and glossaries to try to bring out the meanings that these terms have in their original languages so that when people are reading it they can figure out how the word fits in to the overall picture and form other associations with it. It’s not so much that we are redefining terms but sometimes we are trying to separate them from their cultural connotations.

LARRY MERMELSTEIN: Sometimes you definitely have to draw the line. We considered and rejected the word “sin” to translate the Tibetan sdig pa (pāpa in Sanskrit). In many ways, it’s an accurate translation, but it is simply too laden. We chose “evil deeds” instead, which is still somewhat laden, but less so.

FRANCISCA CHO: On the other hand, some English words have come to be very widely associated with Buddhism or meditation. Mindfulness is a good example. It works because it didn’t have a preexisting standard usage, so people can recognize it immediately as a Buddhist term. Perhaps that’s one characteristic that is necessary for a successful English translation to take place.

Does a standard Buddhist vocabulary promote the very solidification that Buddhism is meant to dissolve? Do code words impede understanding?

ELIZABETH CALLAHAN: People can always fixate on terms or symbols, but the Buddhist teachings clearly state that the conventions, which include words and terms, are used as a means for seeing ultimate reality, which transcends such conventions. We use conventions to transcend conventions. People will try to pin things down, especially as beginners, regardless of whether there is a standard vocabulary or not. The translator’s job is to convey the right tone of the work. If the teaching is about transcendence, then the words should point people in that direction, but simply using new terms each time will not necessarily accomplish this.

As far as so-called code words go, there is much more value than danger there. Code words, such as the use of rig pa (awareness) by students and teachers in the Dzogchen tradition, carry a wealth of import, years of personal experience, and volumes of teachings. Rather than getting in the way, they simplify the matter.

LARRY MERMELSTEIN: It’s extremely helpful to develop some amount of standard vocabulary in English, just as is present in Sanskrit and Tibetan. The so-called theistic tendency or the urge to solidify one’s reference points is fundamental to human beings, and this is not easy to undermine. Of course, as one’s Dharma becomes more jargonized, it decreases in its effectiveness for wide communication, beyond the tribe so to speak. Keeping such tendencies in mind forms part of the general awareness that translators need to bring to their work.

Carl Bielefeldt, a Dōgen translator, talks about providing what he calls “a hypersensitive translation” to try to capture some of the wordplay, poetry, humor, allusions, and the like, subtleties you appreciate in reading a language you know well that are very hard to bring across in translation.

VEN. BHIKKHU BODHI: Translating the play of words is definitely the most difficult aspect of translation. There’s lots of word play in the Pali canon. In the early discourses of the Buddha, the Buddha raises the question of how one can be called a samaṇa, a true ascetic. He replies himself, saying, “One is a samaṇa because one has pacified, subdued—samita—unwholesome states of mind—manas.”

On the surface, this might look like a straightforward etymological derivation, but it isn’t. Rather, it’s an example of a pun or what might be called “edifying etymology,” a word being playfully derived from another that it resembles to convey a doctrinal point. Similarly, we find the Buddha redefining brāhmaṇa as “one who has expelled—bāhita—unwholesome states of mind—manas.”

Rūpa, the first of the five skandhas, is playfully derived from ruppati, “to be molested or worn out.” The two words have no connection apart from the word play. I have attempted to replicate this in English by translating rūpa as “form” and ruppati as “deformed.” Thus we read, “Why, monks, is it called form? It is deformed; therefore, it is called form. Deformed by what? Deformed by cold and heat, by hunger and thirst, by contact with flies, mosquitoes, wind, sun, and serpents. It is deformed, monks, therefore it is called form.”

LARRY MERMELSTEIN: Sanskrit has a lot of that same kind of word play, and so does Tibetan to a certain degree. If the word play is doctrinally important or particularly clever, we might try to make a note of it, but most of the time playful language gets lost.

FRANCISCA CHO: It probably isn’t possible to preserve word play per se, but what one can do is preserve the spirit of the original literature by finding opportunities in the target language. That’s an important dimension of translating poetry. You are not translating words; you are transmitting something larger. It allows more leeway in terms of creative translation.

In translating Manhae’s work, when I rendered the Korean into English, I ended up with a lot of rhyming words that I could take advantage of. Poetry is different from translating prose and doctrinal materials; poetry offers possibilities to mirror the creativity and play in the source by doing the same thing in the target language.

ELIZABETH CALLAHAN: That’s a very good point. As I said before, we are experimenting. We need different kinds of translations. Some people will be able to render more poetic translations and others will do more technical translations. If we could have four or five translations of the major works, I think that would be great.

The translator Red Pine has said that a translation can be better than the original since “the original is dancing by itself. It only becomes complete when there is a translation of it. The nuances become much more evident.” He talks about translation as a dialogue with the original.

FRANCISCA CHO: That approach is very much in keeping with the spirit of Dharma tradition and the principle of canonical authority. The whole point of teaching is to speak to the meaning of the Dharma but not to any particular letter, language, or text.

What about the idea of more free-form translations, where the author creates essentially a new work, such as has been widely done with Christian scriptures?

VEN. BHIKKHU BODHI: The idea of giving up translating texts and instead going for fresh creations based on them sounds self-contradictory. It assumes that we can understand the originals well enough to produce free-form creations of them, yet cannot understand them well enough to express their meanings in decent English in a way that rigorously conforms to the original.

Those with creative talent might want to use the text as a source of inspiration for creating new works that provide an outlet for their creative energies. But this should not be taken as a substitute for careful, scrupulous, and accurate translations. Inevitably, these will have their shortcomings, but there will always be a need for them and always an opportunity for more accurate and more eloquent versions.

Some of you translate alone and some of you translate by committee. Can you say something about the pros and cons of working by yourself as opposed to being part of a team?

ELIZABETH CALLAHAN: Most translators would agree that being part of some kind of group process is better than just working alone. We work alone mainly because we don’t have the opportunity to work as a group. The middle ground is when you can circulate your work before it is published among other translators for their feedback and checking.

I would say, though, that working alone has probably pushed me to delve into issues much more than I would have if I had had a group to rely on. If I had a group and I was wrestling with something difficult, I could just put it out to the group mind and perhaps we could all come up with something. But if I’m just sitting here by myself with my books, and maybe some Tibetan teachers to discuss it with, I have to keep pushing at the issue until I feel satisfied. That’s probably pushed me to be a better translator.

VEN. BHIKKHU BODHI: I’ve always worked pretty much all by myself, but I think it is preferable for translation to be done with a group. Different people can put their thoughts together and one person can check the translation done by somebody else and make suggestions for revisions. I have had the advantage of sending my translations to other monks who are quite knowledgeable about Pali, and their feedback has led me to make a number of beneficial changes.

LARRY MERMELSTEIN: Most of the members of our committee translate as part of a group, though some of us also translate individually. We all appreciate having colleagues right at hand who are committed to the process.

Even when you have a group like ours that has worked together for many years and has a pretty established vocabulary, the process can still be painfully slow. So the efficiency of the individual translator is far greater than that of a group. Another thing that a group must watch out for is that an individual might have occasional moments of brilliance that the group can destroy, because it wants to be consistent in either terminology or tone. An occasional brilliant moment might be lost with the group mind.

But in my experience, the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages. Besides the tremendous value and protection of the vetting process, there is simply the value of having more minds involved in the process. I wish there were a way to create many more translation groups, but it requires a huge amount of support.

FRANCISCA CHO: Another way of being a community of translators, even when you work largely by yourself, is to look very carefully at previous translations. It may be that you don’t like a previous translation, or there are obvious problems with it, but nevertheless you can often find things that you like or things that provoke thought. For me that’s formed a dialogue, not with a live person but certainly with living beings from the past.

ELIZABETH CALLAHAN: You can also read what other translators are doing in related texts in the same field. I am working on a text on philosophical tenets and there is a tremendous amount being done in that area right now, mainly by academics. I use that as information and inspiration and see how other people are translating the same words and phrases. Some of it I adopt and some of it I reject and others I just keep in mind. But I always feel that I am working within a larger community that is joined in the experiment.