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dkar chag Main Phooey on you as the Lord Buddha said [09.12.2010] **************** |
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{BLOG} I have run the Russian blog at the livejournal.com since October 2007. Specially for this page I decided to start a new English blog on various Tibetan issues. Below goes the last update. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________ Phooey on you as the Lord Buddha said [09.12.2010] From early 1990s, a lot of translations of Buddhist and Buddhological literature from English started to appear in Russia. They are often of very poor quality since people involved into this process are rather Buddhists than professional translators or scholars. Unfortunately, even if a translator is a scholar the result of his or her work can still be far from satisfactory. Regrettably enough, it is true to the recent Russian translation of the English translation of the great Tibetan scholar Bu-ston's History of Buddhism. The English translation was made by the well-known St Petersburg scholar E.E. Obermiller (1901-35) and remains important for Tibetologists world wide. In spite of this it was rather strange to translate an important Tibetan text from its English translation but even so we could expect a better result than that achived by Dr A.M. Donets, Ulan Ude, Russia. I think it suffices to mention the most curious phrase found in the translation by Dr A.M. Donets: [The Bodhisattva says:] - Charioteer, phooey on the minds of foolish sentient beings [— Êîëåñíè÷èé, òüôó íà óìû ãëóïûõ æèâûõ ñóùåñòâ!..] (Budon Rinchebdub. Istoriya buddizma (Indiya i Tibet). St Petersburg, Evrazia Publishers 1999. P. 145) I found the original English phrase from E.E. Obermiller's translation: — O Charioteer, fie on the minds of the stupid living beings… (History of Buddhism (Chos-hbyung) by Bu-ston. Part 1. The Jewelry of Scripture. Heidelberg 1931. C. 24) On the same page E.E. Obermiller quotes the relevant Sanskrit stanza from Lalitavistara-sūtra: Dhik sārathe abudha-bāla-janasya-buddhiḥ It is interesting enough that the Tibetan author limited himself to a shortened prosaic paraphrase and omitted the interjection of reproach dhik so the Tibetan text looks as follows: Byis pa'i skye bo mi mkhas pa'i... So, Dr E.E. Obermiller, with the best intentions, expanded the Tibetan text, while Dr A.M. Donets kept it noncritically in his own translation (in the Russian edition there is even no footnote with Sanskrit text). Moreover, he added some frivolity to the words of the Lord Buddha since the word t'fu (òüôó) sounds extremely informal and can be often supplied with spitting. :) ______________________________________________________________________________________________________ {Up↑} |
© Alexander Zorin ⇒ kawi@yandex.ru