“Beijing's Peking University has now launched an ambitious program to train more than 60 Chinese students in Sanskrit, with the hope of creating a team of researchers to help translate hundreds of manuscripts containing scriptures that were found in Tibet and other centers of Buddhism, such as Hangzhou in China's east.”
Recently read this article in Hindu about an ambitious project that Chinese government is undertaking to translate scriptures in Tibetan and Chinese back to Sanskrit.
Background
Let’s spend some time on the background and the link between India and China. Buddhism is the thread which binds the two countries and the language that traveled alongside it was Sanskrit. Sanskrit is an historical Indo-Aryan language and has been the language of Hinduism and Buddhism and it is believed that the first grammar of the language is dated to be written around 4 century BC.
Let’s spend some time on the background and the link between India and China. Buddhism is the thread which binds the two countries and the language that traveled alongside it was Sanskrit. Sanskrit is an historical Indo-Aryan language and has been the language of Hinduism and Buddhism and it is believed that the first grammar of the language is dated to be written around 4 century BC.
Gautam Buddha was born in India as Siddhartha, a wealthy prince and the movement or religion called Buddhism started in India. Slowly the movement crossed the Himalayas and Buddhism and Sanskrit which was the language of the elite Brahmins (priests) moved along with it across the border to Tibet (which is now Chinese territory) and then to China and even Japan. A lot of Tibetan texts and manuscripts were written in Sanskrit and was later translated to other languages.
Let’s talk about the project now.
I guess there is much more going on here – I have a feeling that this is a political process which has been known since the time of Akbar. If one writes his own version of history all one needs to worry about is that in future, there is no other version which can refute it. The future can be tomorrow, two years or may be generations and there are known catalysts to the whole process. This has been deployed over and over again and works better than most other forms of control and comes across as education rather than propaganda.
What forms the basis of this thought – I guess a recent history of Tibet and the way China handles religion – the way Dalai Lama has been treated. Art and culture are in a way reflection of society but they reflect back and can be easily exploited as a means to deliberately fabricate consent and opinions. Recreating these sacred texts and manuscripts might be an attempt to do so and I guess Chinese government will strongly refute it if any one raises this question and no one else will ever know what the real motive is.
For the sake of discussion I presume there is no hidden agenda and ulterior motive here. We need to understand the subtle differences when we talk about languages and translation here. Sanskrit has been around for a long time now. As we all know languages grow with time – this probably explains why more and more words are added to dictionary every year. For example, today “googling” is a verb, one can chair a meeting – these things were unknown to English as we know it even ten years back.
Consider on the other hand existing idioms and expressions – they evolve and their intensity fluctuates over time and sometimes even the context changes altogether. I will quote two words that I know –boob and Gay which changed over the years.
"Boob" is a 1950's shortening of "booby", which in the 1930's came from "bubby". Linguists aren't sure, but "bubby" may derive from the German "Bübbi" which means 'teat'. In 1347, when the bubonic plaque ravaged Europe, one of the symptoms of the plaque was called bubos or boobos which was a swelling of the lymph nodes, hence swelling of the chest can be referred to as boobs. From the novel The History of Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding,(1762) the Lady of the house( Lady Booby) attempts to seduce the hero and the first thing she does is reveal her breasts, and for convoluted reasons it was also mistake not to have "taken up the offer".
“Gay” is even more interesting. It was during the Gay Nineties it became synonymous with homosexuals and the usage became popular in 1940s. Back in 14 century however it simply meant some one full of joy, merry, light-hearted person. In 1890s the promiscuity crept into the word when the gay house started to mean a brothel.
There must be hundreds more and idioms will be more complicated.
Add to that new idioms and expressions are coined every day like “war on terror”, “Prague spring” or even “Arab uprising” by media and writers around the world. These are powerful concepts in a language which describe situations perfectly but were not available to the creators of the original manuscript.
And top that with complicated research which says that language changes in sudden leaps. I am not into languages but I guess I will leave the theoretical and academic interests outside. I insist this is a layman’s view onto translation and my limited understanding no way meant to undermine the efforts of the translators. I respect them a lot.
I guess translators are smart people and look into the development of language and everything including the time and space when they translate but there is one last point which I want to bring up.
I am going to use an example – Urdu to English in the context of Sufism. There are two words in Urdu to describe love – “Ishq” and “Mohabbat“
“Muhabbat” is the ordinary love and is an emotion, a sentiment, superficial and even transient. Someone can love a person today but the feeling may be gone soon. It is usually short lived and non-permanent though it can span over years and life time. They say there is no depth.
“Ishq” in essence described the passionate love for God and is not mortal love. It is the center of the being and comes from within – it possesses people. There is no turning back and is like an elated state one can never leave once reached. The “Ishq” cannot be reached without “Mohabbat”. One loses all control and is like drunk and mad.
If translated in English – the only corresponding match is “LOVE”.
Conclusion
Imagine working with ancient translations of Sanskrit texts - the translation itself was done hundreds of years ago and now Chinese want to translate it back into Originals. What will we gain back an original or a new version or the remaining in the ancient scripture will be “Lost in Translation” from Chinese/Tibetan to Sanskrit.
Idries Shah said west has limited understanding of Sufism as the interpretation is based on Sufi texts in English which were translated from Persian which was itself a translation of ….
Copy of a copy is again a copy and wouldn't translation of translation always be a translation?
References:
For more information on Sanskrit check out the Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanskrit
Check here for Buddhism -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism
The link to the Hindi Article http://www.hindu.com/2011/05/18/stories/2011051864340600.htm
History of “Gay”: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=gay
