This is a translation of the
Bodhisattvacharyavatara by
Shantideva and of the commentary named
Entrance for the Children of the Conquerors written by the great Gyaltsab Je, (whose commentaries are like, totally great:)). Both texts are ancient texts, the first being composed in the 8th century and the second late 13th or early 14th century, with styles of expression and scholarly standards different to modern time treatises. There were already many translations of the
Bodhisattvacharyavatara, and when I told my kind and incomparable teacher Lama Lundrub that I was translating it, his memorable reaction was, "Oh no, not another translation." But I was translating mainly the commentary, and needed verses to insert in the commentary. There is a synergy between the commentary and the root text, in that the commentatry usually incorporates all the syllables into the explanation. The root verse is the basic explanation, like the skeleton, which is then elaborated and elongated by the commentary, the meat. Similar to the skeleton being present in the body, the words of the root text should all be present in the commentary. It is like this in the Tibetan, and should be like that in the English, but I was not able to yet to do this in a complete manner. It is on the to do list.
While there were many translations of the root text published, I had not seen one I
liked. Many seem to have been translated without relying on a good commentary, and
seem to have quite a few mistakes. The verses are often also translated much more
flowery and poetic, and the verses are often also fuller, then what appears to my mind
when I read the Tibetan.
In my view a translation of a root text should be as much as possible a mirror image in
the target language of the source language, while avoiding the traps of a literal translation only. Being restricted to 9 syllables per line, and the target audience being having a lot of merit, the verses in a root text often ended up as cryptic, incomplete sentences.
It is the job of the word commentary, such as the commentary by Gyaltsab Je, to fill in
the gaps, and it is not the job of the translator to do that in-text. This brings me to the
commentary, which is written in a particular scholarly style using repetitions, often with difficult double negatives, and very long sentences, which were seen as a sign of good writing, and works in the Tibetan, but it does not work for the western reader, and so I took some liberties there. I did not translated the commentary literally, like a computer program would do, but tried to keep in mind my target audience and read ability. Therefore I would say it is an accurate but not a literal translation.
My translating style is however to first err on the side of caution and being literal, to
avoid mistakes, and then, in repeated editions, edge myself to the middle without loosing the meaning, by improving style, expression and read ability. This process is not yet finalized. But no matter how much good will one may have, it is still a translation of an ancient text, written by a great great scholar, whose target audience was not necessarily the modern reader accustomed to receiving information in 140 characters.
Gyaltsab Je sometimes packs a lot of profound information into a few paragraphs, information that actually will take years to understand, such as the explanations of the
ninth chapter, and some explanations are very sophisticated, such as the explanation
of the homage. However, the benefit is derived from making the mental effort to understand, and the mind, being clear and knowing, has the ability to understand new things it did not understand before. . Since one can become omniscient, there is nothing one cannot understand over time. And the very difficult points one can always leave to return to later.
One aspect of the commentary that one soon notices is that it is outlined in a very detailed manner, and to help finding one’s way through the text there is a mind map and a leveled outline at the back of each chapter. (Stracke, translator's foreword, 7–8)
