This edited volume contains ten of the papers from the conference “Translating Buddhism” held in July 2016, which the editor Alice Collett splits into three sections: Texts, Translators, and Words. Collett states that these three nouns make up, “ … essentially, the bare components of the subdiscipline of translation studies (in Buddhist studies)” (p. 15). As a collection of essays contextualizing historical translations and providing perspectives on the translation of certain terms into English, the volume succeeds in the modest aims of its title; though it is a little “piecemeal”, as the editor acknowledges (pp. 4 and 15).
The contributors’ chapters run a spectrum from proposing ways to translate (Natalie Gummer's chapter, pp. 49–68 and to a lesser extent Collett Cox's, pp. 19–47), through highlighting the problems of previous modern translation choices at the level of words and/or terms (the chapters of Ligeia Lugli, Collett, C.V. Jones, Dhivan Thomas Jones, and Aruna Gamage, pp. 149–282) to studies of previous translators and translations (Oskar von Hinüber and Elizabeth Harris, pp. 109–147). The only chapter that does not really address translation studies, though it is a fine contribution on reading practices and women in Buddhism, is that of Amy Paris Langenberg, which was published elsewhere during the volume's long gestation period and whose results could have instead been reduced and re-tuned to the theme of translation studies. The tripartite split of the chapters makes sense of the material covered, except that Lugli's chapter is perhaps more about words than translators. Nonetheless, these are all good studies fitting well within the field of Buddhist studies and deserving publication as various “historical and contextual perspectives” (following the book's subtitle).
However, Collett's introduction (pp. 1–16) goes further, and admirably sets out to initiate a discussion within Buddhist studies, to rethink important but neglected aspects of the field, such as the act of translation and the study of earlier translations, in order to establish a Buddhist studies subdiscipline of translation studies (the reviewer assumes in addition to a translation studies subfield of Buddhist studies). Such metatextual framing is important in the act of translation, and in translation studies too, where it can radically alter the interpretation of the text(s) thus framed. Likewise, the strong introduction to this volume changed this reviewer's interpretation of the individual chapters somewhat. It is unclear to what extent the contributors to this volume were aware of, or would approve of, Collett's (re)framing of the book as a prelude to accessing the discipline of translation studies, although intertextual references show some awareness of this (e.g. p. 127). This reviewer welcomes the ambitious introduction, which in fact echoes (or perhaps responds to) calls from within translation studies itself for less of an exclusive focus on the translation of European-language/“Western” texts (pp. 1–2). The book itself contains a number of positive steps in this direction but also suggests that there is still some way to go before such a Buddhist studies subdiscipline of translation studies could be realized in more than name only.
From the perspective of Buddhist studies, for example, the contributors maintain a good gender balance. Yet, the fact that Aruna Gamage is the only representative of an Asian background (and himself with a PhD from SOAS, London) points to a future task for the subdiscipline to achieve, namely greater diversity of outlook. In a similar vein, the reviewer notes the lack of perspectives from the psychology or cognitive study of religion, the structural sociology of religion (although Elizabeth Harris’ contribution goes in this direction), or comparative religion (despite the beginning of C.V. Jones’ chapter setting the stage for such dialogue). Without these different insights, the volume tends towards presenting a falsely homogeneous depiction of Buddhist studies from the perspective of the history of religions alone.
As for building bridges towards translation studies, Cox's chapter makes the most explicit and beneficial efforts, although this discussion turns away from translation studies into philology and the text in general conceived as process rather than eternal (pp. 26 f.), meaning that here (and in the introduction) no solid disciplinary guidelines for (the study of) translation itself are laid out that could inform the practices of scholars seeking to perform such study or translation with a focus on Buddhist texts. Lugli does some very useful heavy lifting in this regard, applying findings from more general linguistics to the problem of mistaking certain words for unchangeable terms and not making room for their fluidity in one's translation (pp. 149–72). Collett then combines the philological insights of Cox, Lugli, and Langenberg in a chapter on the Sanskrit term antevāsinī (“female pupil”, pp. 175–94). Taken together, these two insights act as a powerful antidote to the reification of Buddhist texts and terms, but care should be taken since they also may induce a certain dangerous relativism in the overzealous translator.
Finally, Collett concludes the introduction by saying, inter alia, “that a ‘historically sensitive’ approach to translation is the most fitting for Buddhist studies” (p. 15). Such a phenomenological or source-text centred conclusion (taken from Collett Cox's chapter) may well not do justice to the other possible approaches to the subdiscipline, and even (to this reviewer's mind) creates a tension with Gummer's approach, which is to focus instead on the effect of the translation on the reader (though backed up by a historically sensitive interpretation of the original context of the text).
Nevertheless, looking for theoretical and methodological aid outside Buddhist studies is to be applauded. Although most of the chapters in this proceedings use the more traditional resources already available to Buddhist studies as a subfield of the history of religions, the volume is a useful first step to courting translation studies scholars on behalf of Buddhist studies for the benefit of both disciplines in the future.
