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Translating Buddhist Texts: Bringing the Sacred Dharma to the World
English Translations | Resources for Readers | Some of Our English-Language Translators | Other Language Translations and Translators
As the Dharma takes root in the West, clear and accurate translations of Buddhist texts, prayers, and teachings are crucial. FPMT Translation Services oversees the translation, editing, publishing, and updating of English translations of sadhanas, prayers, rituals, sutras, commentaries on philosophy and tantra, and key texts for FPMT students and Education Services programs. We work with translators around the world and collaborate with regional translation offices and groups to translate texts into Chinese, French, German, Spanish, and other languages.
Thank you so much for your support!
English Translations
In order to help preserve the integrity and accuracy of the Gelug textual tradition in English, FPMT Translation Services aims to release high-quality translations that are accessible to practitioners and convenient to use, but are still produced with scholarly rigor.
We constantly strive to improve the quality of our translations. FPMT Translation Services employs a multi-stage editorial process for all of our texts that includes not only content and copy editing, but also a review by a second translator.
Taking Up the Challenge of Translating Buddhism conference participants at Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa in 2011.
In 2011, FPMT hosted its first international translation conference, Taking Up the Challenge of Translating Buddhism, at Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa in Italy. Following the conference, the FPMT Translation Services team—together with the Lotsawa Rinchen Zangpo Translation Team (LRZTT) composed of FPMT-affiliated translators and the FPMT Translation and Editorial Board (TEB)—began the long-term project of compiling a Tibetan-English glossary for the organization. The purpose of this ongoing project is to create consistency throughout FPMT translations.
Over the recent years, we have further improved the consistency of our translations through the compilation and use of databases for common stanzas, mantras, and deity names. Also, we now transliterate all Sanskrit terms in our texts in order to aid readers in correct Sanskrit pronunciation as well as preserve the accuracy and efficacy of mantras.
Resources for Readers
- A Guide to Sanskrit Transliteration and Pronunciation
This document gives a brief introduction to the transliteration of Sanskrit found in FPMT translations.
Some of Our English-Language Translators
Our translators live in every part of the world and bring extensive Dharma and language knowledge to their work as translators.
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 seven-year residential Masters Program at Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa (ILTK) in 1998, from which 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 and Masters Program.
Sze Gee was well known among her fellow Masters Program 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 Realizations during ILTK’s second 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.
Sze Gee has since acted as an interpreter for Geshe Ngawang Drakpa at FPMT’s Tse Chen Ling in California and has been a teaching assistant for the Masters Program at Nalanda Monastery in France. She recently completed the translation of Chokyi Gyaltsen’s General Meaning of the Middle Way, another important Masters Program text, and currently supports the Masters Program as a teaching assistant by video from Singapore.
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 as a visiting teacher and translated “The Tathāgata Essence,” the first chapter of the standard Basic Program 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.
Philip Quarcoo was born in Freiburg, Germany. He studied Modern European Languages at the University of Durham in Britain. He participated in Geshe Tashi Tsering’s two-year course Foundation of Buddhist Thought at Jamyang Buddhist Centre in London and later attended classes with Geshe Thubten Soepa at FPMT’s Aryatara Institut. Philip graduated with an MA in Tibetan studies from the University of Munich in 2007 and then lived in Mongolia teaching English at FPMT’s Shedrup Ling Centre in Ulaanbaatar.
Philip has translated three short booklets on vegetarianism by Geshe Thubten Soepa as well as texts by the 19th-century Mongolian scholar Agvaanbaldan. In cooperation with Conni Krause, he translated Je Tsongkhapa’s Middle Length Lamrim from Tibetan into English for FPMT’s Basic Program. This work is to be published by Wisdom Publications shortly.
Other Language Translations and Translators
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 the 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 FPMT centers and has served as an Tibetan interpreter for various geshes. He currently teaches the 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 standard Basic Program text, and Losang Chokyi Gyaltsen’s Wisdom Debating Ignorance (gshaga ‘debs), from Tibetan into English. For the Basic Program in Munich, Ven. Fedor has translated various Basic Program texts into German.
