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A Tibetan Buddhist monk reads sacred texts. Scholars, teachers and volunteers have embarked on a translation of all the Buddhist scripture in ancient Tibetan, a task that, 10 years into it, they estimate will take until the year 2110 to complete. Photo: Getty Images

Buddha translation from ancient Tibetan to English a 100-year task, say volunteers and scholars 10 years into the job

  • English translations of all available Buddhist texts will be made freely available on an app – but the massive project won’t be completed for another 90 years
  • The editorial co-director of the project says ‘the work may not be economically productive, but we humans really need meaning as well as material prosperity’
Religion

Buddhism promotes the belief that, through meditation, a person can break free from the endless cycle of rebirth to attain nirvana, or enlightenment.

As a religion with roots in India and which, over hundreds of years, spread throughout Asia and then worldwide, it could be assumed that there is a wealth of easily accessible material on it.

However, in 2009, a group of more than 50 Buddhist scholars, teachers and volunteers estimated that only about five per cent of Buddhist texts had been translated. They were concerned that, in 50 years, only a handful of people would be left that can understand and interpret them.

The race, therefore, is on: over the next 90 years, experts in ancient Tibetan plan to translate all available Buddhist texts into English and to make their work freely available.

The target date for the completion of this massive undertaking is some time in 2110. It is estimated there are more than 230,000 pages to translate and, a decade after that first meeting, 10 per cent has been completed.

“There’s the Koran, the Bible, and the Torah, and in a way Buddhism is different; it has these vast bodies of literature, all of which are considered scripture, [so] it’s not so easy,” says Dr John Canti, 69, the editorial co-director of 84000 (the name of the project).

“But at the same time, it needs to be made available so that people can draw different conclusions and different elements from it that are most suitable to different cultures.”

How Buddhism came to Tibet from China and Nepal

Some 15 teams are translating the Tibetan texts into English. Teams outside 84000 are translating Chinese texts into English.

He explains that 84000 has two meanings: in Buddhist literature it is a metaphor for a very large number, and there are believed to be 84,000 mental states, emotions and feelings that relate to the body, mind and speech.

Buddhism dates back to the fifth and fourth centuries BC, when Siddhartha Gautama attained nirvana, became the Buddha and began teaching his disciples how to achieve the same enlightenment. Eventually, his teachings were recorded in Sanskrit (the root of many Indian languages) in the first century BC.
There are some 15 teams translating the Tibetan texts into English. Photo: Getty Images
Interest in the religion began to spread from the seventh century onwards, when Tibetans learned of Buddhism, crossed the Himalayas and translated the Sanskrit text into their own language. They took the texts back with them, resulting in what Canti describes as “a cultural transfer”.

“When the text started to be translated into Tibetan, it wasn’t a very highly literate language. A lot of it was invented: terms, phrases, methods of literary expression were invented to accommodate this translated literature,” Canti explains.

Tibetan was unlike Chinese, which had already developed into a literary language that Sinicized, or made Chinese, the Buddhist texts, he adds.

A folio from a dispersed Ashtasahasrika Prajnaparamita (Perfection of Wisdom) Manuscript. Photo: Getty Images

“It [the Chinese version] was translated to convey the meaning, but it was not a literal translation as [with] the Tibetans. The Chinese tends to be very beautiful, poetic translations, especially the later ones, but [is] a bit further from the original text, whereas the Tibetan translations tended to be very close and the expressions would be the same, sentences would be broken in the same place. So a lot of the original structure of the text would be preserved.

“Buddha always said his teachings ought to be in the vernacular and made for other people to understand … That made it very easy to spread to other countries.”

Many Buddhist texts have been destroyed throughout history, in particular during the Mughal invasions of India around the 13th century, when Islam was introduced to India. This resulted in the almost complete disappearance of Buddhism from the country.
It has been really fascinating to explore this literature in all its detail, and we feel that making it all available to readers today will help and inspire people in all sorts of different ways, as well as stimulate study and research
John Canti, editorial co-director, 84000 Project
In 1950, Tibet was annexed by China. Nine years later, Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama fled to India and he has since lived in exile in Dharamsala. From 1959 to 1961, most of Tibet’s 6,000 temples were destroyed along with the texts they housed. This destruction continued during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976).

“There was a huge destruction. ‘Out with the old’. But not all factions of the [Communist Party of China] were responsible for that,” says Canti. “It seems [premier] Zhou Enlai did a lot to protect the libraries of the Potala [palace] from destruction by the Red Guard hotheads.”

Nevertheless, Red Guards (groups of militant students) set fire to a monastery library in eastern Tibet, and there were accounts that it burned for three months, Canti says. He hopes there may be texts in other monasteries in China and Central Asia that have yet to be discovered.
The target date for the completion of the 84000 project is some time in 2110. Photo: 84000

Canti, who grew up in a Christian household in London, became interested in Buddhism while studying medicine at Cambridge University. “I always found Christianity a little difficult to approach; either you believed in God and you felt faith and connection, or you didn’t, and I just didn’t. And there wasn’t a way in, somehow,” he says.

During his time at university, a well-travelled neighbour told him about the Tibetans – and Canti was fascinated. He later met some Tibetan lamas (spiritual leaders) living in England, and travelled to India and Nepal. Through his medical training, he was able to meet and treat elderly Buddhism teachers.

“What really struck me was the impact these incredible great masters had on me. They were impressive human beings: they were wise, kind, knowledgeable, and they obviously had access to something that was completely missing in the modern Western world. So I became very interested in that. What was it all about? To explore that whole world takes a lifetime.”

John Canti became interested in Buddhism while studying at Cambridge University. Photo: 84000

Buddhism appealed to him because the Tibetan elders talked about it as a spiritual path that is also practical, comparing it to gardening. “How do you cultivate the best part of your[self] and how do you set about that? There are very simple, practical steps, and there was plenty to do, which seemed to me very obvious,” he says.

A practising Buddhist for 50 years, Canti now lives in Dordogne, in southwestern France. He oversees the translation projects for 84000, manages the editorial team, updates translations with extra notes and publishes them on 84000.co.

The work was initially funded by the non-profit organisation Khyentse Foundation, and Huang Jingrui, 84000’s executive director says it is now an independent non-profit organisation funded almost entirely by donors, of which the foundation is one. She adds that an app is being developed to offer easy access to the texts.

Huang Jingrui says an app is being developed to offer easy access to the texts. Photo: 84000

Given that the project still has some 90 years to go, Huang says long-term strategic planning is important. “We are looking at developing the younger, next generation of editors, building up their ability to hold this together.”

Another hi-tech aspect of the project involves allowing readers to download the texts from the website into an e-book format.

“We are also converting our published translations into translation memory … we have people matching the English and Tibetan terms. That’s our contribution to the global community in the long run,” Huang explains.

“Things like Google Translate don’t work so well because they need millions of data [points]. As we publish translations, we want to contribute to that repository.”

The 84000 project translates Buddhist text into English. Photo: 84000

Canti, who has overseen the project for the past 10 years, says his admiration for the Buddha’s teachings has grown exponentially.

“It has been really fascinating to explore this literature in all its detail, and we feel that making it all available to readers today will help and inspire people in all sorts of different ways, as well as stimulate study and research.

“The work may not be economically productive, but we humans really need meaning as well as material prosperity, and it is becoming obvious that the systems of ethics and morality that underpin society, and more broadly our goals and aspirations, badly need basic rethinking.”

For more information head to 84000.co
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