By the end of this century, a whole host of rare languages will have disappeared in the same way that endangered species are extinguished from face of the Earth. You might like to call this the extinction of language. Some ancient languages such as Latin and Sanskrit are still around, but they are considered dead because no existing societies use them in everyday life.

At one time, it was quite common for Indian Buddhist masters to compose sadhanas and philosophical texts in Sanskrit. However, many Buddhist Sanskrit texts have been lost forever in the midst of turbulent events, or because no one maintained them. Today, many texts exist in Tibetan and other Asian languages, indeed there is a huge body of Buddhist texts, originally translated from Sanskrit, that now exist only in the Tibetan language.

For the last few decades a number of individuals and institutions have been studiously translating numerous Tibetan texts into English. This work is almost a form of life insurance for these sacred scriptures. English is already the global lingua franca and will only continue to grow in usage and popularity. As long as these texts exist in English, there is always going to be someone who can understand them. One of the good things about this development is that almost all Tibetan words, including their subtle nuances, can be expressed in English. This is partly because English has a vast vocabulary and can convey both intuitive and technical concepts that some other languages might struggle with. Already, many Buddhist sanghas all over the world are chanting Buddhist liturgies and studying the texts in English.

Translating the sutras and shastras into Classical Tibetan took place as early as the eighth century. Trisong Detsen (r. c. 755–797), the 38th emperor of Tibet, sponsored this project at Samye Monastery, Tibet’s first gompa. He and various panditas also sanctioned standardized Dharma terms with the Madhyavyutpatti, two scrolls of standardized translation conventions that were used as reference texts. This helped to ensure the success of that ambitious and far-reaching project.

Today, however, there is no authority with the power to implement such a standard. Everyone is acting independently, with no form of collaboration that could help to unify the work of modern translators. This situation has both positive and negative implications, yet it is important to address the downsides because they are not being actively discussed in a public way. One of the most troubling issues is that particular texts can be overly influenced by the biases of a single person. In addition, a text can be translated by three translators in three different ways such that each version becomes localized without any authoritative version. Furthermore, individual translations of this kind can contain a lot of mistakes. There is a very real danger, therefore, that these problems could continue and eventually get out of hand.

A variety of sadhanas, prayers, poems, dohas, sutras, shastras, and tantras have been translated into English by well known translators, and by some not-so-well-known ones. We should be thankful for their work in making the wisdom of the Buddhadharma available to so many people, and also for their contribution to its preservation. Overall, there is no doubt that they have done a great job.

That being said, it is possible that a translator, albeit well intentioned, may have tried to stay overly faithful to the literal meaning of the original text, resulting not only in the loss of poetic elements and the text’s power to move the reader, but also in an unnatural-sounding translation filled with many nonsensical terms. The area that we must pay attention to is the possibility of translators making mistakes by not understanding or misunderstanding the meaning and intent of words and concepts in the original language.