Padmakara's history & goals
Contents:
- The need for reliable, readable translations
- The evolution of Padmakara
- Practicalities: not for profit
- Why it is urgent that more texts are translated
The need for reliable, readable translations
Tibetan text
As interest in the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism has grown in the West, so too has the need for a language that helps to make those teachings comprehensible to an international public without too much difficulty, and allows their true meaning to be accurately conveyed. To develop such a language is a challenging task which is far from complete. It requires the collaboration of international scholars and translators, as well as meticulous supervision by knowledgeable Tibetan masters. The pioneering early translations of academics were often too remote from the living tradition of oral exegesis, while the wave of more faithful translations that followed, made by the first enthusiastic Western disciples of Tibetan masters, were expressed in forms too culturally remote from their Western audience.
During the twentieth century, in many countries, selected Buddhist texts were translated by scholars working in a university context, some of them eminent pioneers in the field, with extensive academic knowledge of Tibetan. Unfortunately, they often contained substantial errors of interpretation, for two main reasons. The first was the very attitude that traditionally underlies academic research: the need for ‘objectivity’, i.e. a perceived need to avoid personal involvement. The second, related and perhaps even more important, was the absence of contact between such academic translators and the living tradition of oral explanation. While in the West a written text is generally expected to contain most of the information required for study of the subject, a book in Tibetan Buddhist culture is more often an aide-memoire or teaching tool which simply provides the skeleton to be fleshed out with detailed explanations handed down orally over the generations. Understanding the often cryptic pronouncements of a written text is therefore not a question of best-guess personal interpretation—for there is a precise meaning which can be discovered by asking an accomplished scholar who has received extensive oral teaching on that particular text.
Other translations have subsequently been made by devoted Buddhists working with great respect for the tradition and in contact with masters holding the oral lineage—but often with insufficient concern for clear language and style. The translators may often have had no specific training in writing their target language, and may well have spent years immersed in another culture, geographically far away from their own. The translations that result have tended to be expressed in a tortuous, hybrid language and syntax, difficult to read and giving the impression that not only the language, but the subject-matter itself, is somehow obscure and inaccessible.
There was therefore an urgent need for work by translators not only with a good knowledge of Tibetan, but also working closely with authentic masters, well grounded in personal experience, and able to write in a clear, accurate and elegant style. It was in the hope of being able to meet that need that Padmakara was created.
The evolution of Padmakara
Padmakara translators in the 1980s
Padmakara was founded in the seventies under the inspiration of Pema Wangyal Rinpoche. The Kunzang Lamai Shelung, a famous nineteenth century text by the Patrul Rinpoche, was the first of its publications, translated into French (as Le Chemin de la Grande Perfection) after years of research and hundreds of clarifications received from great lamas. In 1987, when it was published, it received a warm welcome as a reliable text written in a style both elegant and easy to read. The most interesting comment from readers was that it seemed to have been written in French from the outset. This set the tone for further publications with the same aim of providing translations as accurate as possible and at the same time written in natural, present-day language. The Padmakara Translation Group has grown from three people at the beginning into the present group of nine full-time and several part-time translators, working under the direction of the resident lamas and visiting scholars, and assisted by a few volunteer proofreaders.
The translators have all been studying and practising Buddhism for many years, and most have completed at least one or more three-year meditation retreats. Their knowledge is therefore not merely theoretical. Conscious of the continuous effort and self-assessment that are necessary for their own translations to avoid the problems identified above, they do their best to maintain a close contact and collaboration with authentic scholars and masters, a commitment to practice, an interest in good writing, and an emphasis on teamwork.
As the number of full-length books translated into French and English grew to a dozen titles over the first five or six years, accompanied by a large number of smaller practice texts, it became clear to Pema Wangyal Rinpoche that this firm basis should be extended to make translations available in as many other languages as possible. By 1994, several translations into German and Spanish had been completed, and this work has continued with translations now being produced not only in English and French but also in German, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Finnish, and Russian, and even a few in Chinese, Nepali, and Hindi. At present, Padmakara’s wish is to produce translations in as many other languages as possible.
Practicalities: not for profit
The process of translating Tibetan Buddhist texts takes far too long for any normal idea of publishing ‘profitability’ to be considered. The only way to ensure that the translators can carry out this work properly is by a system of external grants.
Padmakara is a non-profit ‘Association’ under French law, with two salaried administrative staff members. The retail prices of the books that it publishes in France, set within the normal range for their kind, bear no relationship to the true, full costs of producing them. It is therefore not surprising that income from book sales only covers office running expenses plus the costs of printing one or two books of 150-400 pages per year; it is insufficient even to cover the salaries of Padmakara’s administrative staff (see also Padmakara’s goals and ethics as a publisher), let alone the work of the translators.
For many years, the actual work of translation depended entirely on qualified translators working in their spare time on a voluntary basis, with projects measured in decades. More recently, thanks to the financial support of the Tsadra Foundation, the Fondation Padmasambava via the Fondation de France, and private donors, seven of Padmakara’s nine principal translators (mainly of English and French nationality), receive regular sponsorship. Padmakara has been incredibly fortunate in the support it has received from these grants, sponsorships and donations, which has enabled more than 65 significant volumes in numerous languages, as well more than 40 practise manuals and booklets, to be translated and published. However, both in France and in other countries, there are still a considerable number of translators affiliated to Padmakara who have to work part-time without being paid, while at the same time doing commercial work to earn a living.
In view of the importance of the undertaking and the unique combination of skills and circumstances now assembled, it is urgent that adequate funding be found to place this work on a stable foundation. Translations of Buddhist texts require much more care and time than ordinary translations, and the number of texts yet to be translated is very vast. Padmakara would like to be able to support more translators financially so that they can devote a greater amount of their time to this work. Ideally, they should be able to work full time on the translation of texts. We are still a long way from this goal.
Why it is urgent that more texts are translated
It might seem that translation of Tibetan Buddhist texts is a leisurely process that can be undertaken gradually now that the preservation of the original Tibetan texts has been, for the most part, assured. To understand why this is far from the truth, an idea of the way books are used in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition is essential.
Oral teaching, with the personal interaction of master and student, is the very backbone of Tibetan Buddhist culture. The living, oral tradition—held and passed on by exceptional individuals who had transformed themselves using the teaching they had themselves received—is the vital ingredient without which books, however detailed their contents, are considered lifeless vestiges. Yet books are so important, nevertheless, as they give form to a particular tradition or method, and provide the structure of a particular approach to knowledge, a skeleton to be fleshed out with the detailed oral explanation.
Some texts, succinct to the point of being quite cryptic, were written in verse to aid memorization. Other texts would provide more amplified commentary to such scriptures, but were never conceived of as containing all the information necessary for their full comprehension. There are even texts written in such a way that they can be understood differently by individuals of different capacity. This means that a translator must always have access to the living, oral tradition if he is to convey the right meaning.
Until recently, anyone who wished to study a text in detail with an authentic master from beginning to end could do so. Nowadays, that is becoming increasingly difficult. Year after year, many of the greatest lamas have been disappearing. Ten years ago they were still numerous, but nowadays only a handful remains. For some of the most profound texts the explanation of certain terms or passages has already been lost altogether.
Now, while on the one hand there are still a few learned lamas and scholars able to explain the texts from the authentic oral tradition they have received, and on the other there are well-trained translators with the necessary skills to translate them in the light of those explanations, it is important that as many major texts as possible get translated into at least one Western language. These favourable conditions may not last for long. There is so much to be done. There is no time for a leisurely approach.
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