Translating Buddhist Texts: Bringing the Sacred Dharma to the World

The Tibetan canon contains three different editions of the Sutra of Golden Light—a 21-chapter edition, a 29-chapter edition, and a 31-chapter edition. The sutra contains a variety of teachings and its recitation is a cause for global harmony and peace as well as a source of vast merit. Lama Zopa Rinpoche has made a personal vow to preserve and propagate this sutra and it is his vision to translate all three versions of the sutra from Tibetan, making them available in as many languages as possible.

At Rinpoche’s behest, the 21-chapter edition of the Sutra of Golden Light was translated into English in 2005 by Losang Dawa and subsequently translated into many other languages. Work is currently underway to translate the 29-chapter and 31-chapter edition, as well as to review the translation of the 21-chapter edition.

As the translation of the 29 and 31-chapter edition has been personally requested by Rinpoche, the completion of this project is a priority for the FPMT Education Services—we need your support!

Help support this project:

• 21 & 29 Chapter Version | Help sponsor this translation – USD 15,500
• 31 Chapter Version | Help sponsor this translation – USD 11,500

We are current working on the translation and translation review of these texts:

• The Extensive Four Mandala Offering to Chittamani Tara
• The Abbreviated Four Mandala Offering to Chittamani Tara
• Chittamani Tara Sadhana
• Chittamani Tara Self-Initiation

Help sponsor this project: $13,500

A projected initiated by Lama Zopa Rinpoche. This is a compilation of commentaries given by Gyurme Khensur Rinpoche Lobsang Jampa over years on the Six Yogas of Naropa, compiled Lorne Ladner.

Help sponsor this project: $6,000

In 1975, Trijang Rinpoche gave an extensive and very detailed commentary on the Chakrasamvara body mandala practice at the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, Dharamsala. The Tibetan transcript of this teaching was thoroughly edited by a team of scholars at the request of Lama Zopa Rinpoche and was released in 2021. Also, at Rinpoche’s request, we are now working on translating this precious commentary into English.

Help sponsor this project: $70,000

Sunlight That Causes the Lotus of Faith to Blossom:  A Guidebook to the Supreme Sacred Place of Clear and Cool Mountain composed by Vajradhara Changkya Rolpai Dorje—an important Gelug lineage holder and guru of the Qianlong Emperor—and his followers.

Wutaishan, or Five-Peaked Mountain, is a mountain sacred to Manjushri that has long been one of the most important pilgrimage sites for Tibetan, Chinese, and Mongolian Buddhists. This text is the most renowned and historically important Tibetan guidebooks to the area. While having long been the foremost pilgrimage guide for Tibetan travelers, detailing the most important sacred sites on the mountain and the stories of masters who lived and visited the place, the text has never before been translated into English.

Help sponsor this project: US$12,000.

This elucidation of Śāntideva’s Bodhicaryāvatāra was written by Dragpa Gyaltsen (1762–1835), an abbot of the great Gelug monastery of Labrang Tashikhyil. Based largely on Gyaltsab’s commentary, Dragpa Gyaltsen’s composition is peppered with gems of elucidations from great Indian masters such as Nāgārjuna and Candrakīrti as well as renowned Tibetan scholars such as Tsongkhapa and Kachen Yeshe Gyaltsen. For those who are serious about studying and practicing the bodhisattva’s way of life, its harmonious amalgamation of informative rigor and practical sensibilities provides a clear inspiring guide on how to traverse the entire path to enlightenment. 

Help sponsor this project: US$27,000.

This is a commentary to the Ornament for Clear Realization (Abhisamayalamkara) by Gyaltsab Darma Rinchen, including Maitreya’s Ornament for Clear Realization and Haribhadra’s Commentary: Clear Meaning. The draft translation is currently being prepared for publication.
Translator: Toh Sze Gee

Help sponsor this project: US$6,000.

Joona Repo is currently the FPMT Translation Coordinator. He manages, edits, and reviews translations for Education Services and also coordinates the development of our translation policy. Joona has translated many sadhanas, prayers, and practice texts for FPMT such as the Six-Session Guru Yoga, the Sixty-Four Offerings, the Practices of Arya Sitatapatra, and various works on Vajrayogini, including the self-initiation ritual Quick Path to Khechara.

Joona has a PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and has held postdoctoral teaching and research positions with a focus on Tibetan art and/or religious history at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Heidelberg University, and the University of Helsinki, and has completed a visiting lectureship at Rangjung Yeshe Institute. His published research includes studies of Gelug history, particularly on Phabongkha Dechen Nyingpo, and work on Tibetan Buddhist painting and architecture.

Toh Sze Gee holds a BSc with honors in mathematics as well as a postgraduate diploma in education. After teaching in a junior college in Singapore for several years, she joined the first, seven-year residential FPMT Masters Program (MP) at Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa (ILTK) in 1998. She graduated with high honors; since then she has been teaching regular Dharma courses in Singapore and translating texts from Tibetan into English for the FPMT Basic Program (BP) and the FPMT Masters Program (MP).

Sze Gee was well known among her fellow MP students for her incredible energy both for study and Dharma practice. True to form, she accepted and served not only as teaching assistant for Ornament for Clear Realization during ILTK’s second FPMT Masters Program but also as an Tibetan-English interpreter. During that time, she completed translating Gyaltsab Je’s commentary to Ornament, including the Haribhadra commentary and Maitreya’s root verses. She is currently working on finalizing the translation in preparation for publication. She also completed the translation of Chokyi Gyaltsen’s General Meaning of the Middle Way, another important MP text.

Sze Gee has served as interpreter for Geshe Ngawang Drakpa at FPMT’s Tse Chen Ling in California. She since has been teaching assistant for Nalanda Monastery’s first MP and supported Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa’s third MP as teaching assistant by video from Singapore. She currently is teaching assistant for ILTK’s fourth MP, offering her expertise for the subject of Ornament.

Gavin Kilty spent over a decade in Dharamsala, India, studying the Gelug monastic curriculum at the Institute of Buddhist Dialectics and becoming proficient in Tibetan. After returning to the UK, he trained and worked as an English-language teacher, and since the late ’90s, he has worked as a Tibetan-English translator. He is also a teacher of Tibetan language and has taught courses for the FPMT’s Lotsawa Rinchen Zangpo Translator Program in Dharamsala, Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa in Italy, and Jamyang Buddhist Centre in London.

Gavin is a full-time translator for the Institute of Tibetan Classics. His completed works include Ornament of Stainless Light: An Exposition of the Kālacakra Tantra; Mirror of Beryl: A Historical Introduction to Tibetan Medicine; Tsongkhapa’s A Lamp to Illuminate the Five Stages: Teachings on Guhyasamāja Tantra; and Tales from the Tibetan Operas: The Eight Great Folk Operas of Tibet. His other translations include The Splendor of an Autumn Moon: The Devotional Verse of Tsongkhapa; The Life of My Teacher: A Biography of Ling Rinpoché by His Holiness the Dalai Lama; and Understanding the Case Against Shukden by the International Gelugpa Foundation. 

Gavin is a translation reviewer for 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha, and as a member of the FPMT Lotsawa Rinchen Zangpo Translation Team, he participated in the discussions that formed the basis for the compilation of FPMT’s glossary of preferred terms.

Gavin contributes to the FPMT Basic Program (BP) as a visiting teacher and translated “The Tathāgata Essence,” the first chapter of the standard BP commentary on the Uttaratantra by Gyaltsab Je. He is currently working on a translation of the Daśacakra Kṣitigarbha Sutra for FPMT Education Services.

Ven. Gyalten Lekden was born and raised outside of Boston, Massachusetts, in the United States. He first started studying and practicing Buddhism during his undergraduate studies. After completing BAs in Theater and Religious Studies, he continued on to complete his Master of Divinity in Buddhist Ministry at Harvard Divinity School. 

Ven. Lekden started leading Buddhist communities while an undergraduate and has studied, served, and taught at various Dharma centers since then. In 2012, he joined Sera Je Monastic University in southern India where he continues to practice and study in the geshe program.

Ven. Lekden is an FPMT registered teacher and has given talks and meditation instruction in India and the United States. He has translated a number of sadhanas, prayers, and other texts for FPMT.

Ven. Geshe Tenzin Namdak first worked as an environmental researcher having graduated in hydrology. He started studying Buddhism at Maitreya Instituut in the Netherlands in 1993 and took ordination from His Holiness the Dalai Lama before engaging in his formal studies in Buddhist philosophy and psychology at Sera Je Monastic University in 1997. He completed the entire twenty-year geshe program in 2017 and the traditional one-year Vajrayana study program at Gyume Tantric College in January 2019, the first Westerner to do so.

Geshe Namdak has interpreted from Tibetan into English for over a decade at various teaching events, is an interpreter for the annual ordination rituals with His Holiness in Dharamsala, and was a founding teacher of Sera Je’s Translators Program and member of Sera Je’s Education Department for six years. Currently, he teaches at Jamyang Buddhist Centre in London and at other centers in Europe and in India. He translated a cycle of texts related with Chenrezig Gyalwa Gyatso and various prayers and practices for FPMT Education Services and is working on several translation projects, including Khedrub Je’s Clearing Mental Darkness: An Ornament of Dharmakīrti’s “Seven Treatises on Valid Cognition”; Vinaya material; and practices related with Guhyasamāja.

Conni Krause participated in the seven-year Systematic Study of Buddhism program under Geshe Thubten Ngawang in Hamburg from 1990 to 1997. She is also a graduate of FPMT’s Lotsawa Rinchen Zangpo Translator Program (LRZTP) in Dharamsala and served as an interpreter for Geshe Thubten Soepa at Aryatara Institut in Munich.

Connie has translated Je Tsongkhapa’s Middle Length Lamrim from the original Tibetan into German and has helped to make available Discovering Buddhism and FPMT Basic Program texts as well as the FPMT Essential Buddhist Prayers books in German.

Ven. Fedor Stracke has been a Buddhist monk since 1988 and spent over fifteen years studying at Sera Je Monastic University and attending public teachings given by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Since 1996, Ven. Fedor has been teaching in several FPMT centers and has served as an interpreter from Tibetan for various geshes. He has offered the FPMT Basic Program at Kopan Monastery in Nepal and at Aryatara Institut in Munich, Germany.

He has translated the Commentary to “Engaging in the Bodhisattva Deeds” (spyod ’jug tikka) by Gyaltsab Je, a supplementary text for the BP subject of Bodhisattva Deeds, and Losang Chokyi Gyaltsen’s Wisdom Debating Ignorance (gshaga ‘debs), from Tibetan into English. For the FPMT Basic Program in Munich, Ven. Fedor has translated various BP texts into German.