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A Study on Translation Methods of Buddhist Scripture

박윤철 1

1동국대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

We have read a Buddhist scriptures and sought for better wisdom from it for a long time. And it was written in Chinese characters which have implicit and comprehensive meanings. In its Korean version, there were some guidelines in the past, which prohibited monks or Buddhist translators from distorting source texts with a view to preserving Buddha's teachings. Until now, the approaches on Buddhist scripture translation have mainly transferred its contents to readers with two different ways, a literal translation and a meaning-based translation. However, it could be found that Buddhist scriptures need both of the methods. This paper suggests an integrated approach, which both methods are combined in order to transfer messages naturally and readily. In previous researches, there were Nida(1967)'s formal and dynamic equivalence approaches which were famous for Bible translation. Formal equivalence can be explained with a literal translation, and it seems that dynamic equivalence placed a value on the responses of readers and effects or results of source text. With help of these devices, this paper analyzed Prajñā-Paramitā, one of the Buddhist scriptures. As a result of analysis, we could find the following facts. First, there were implicit meanings in source text of the scripture, and some messages were transferred to target text naturally. It means that Prajñā-Paramitā requires dynamic equivalence method, which can rewrite the responses of phrases or expressions easily. Second, some expressions like incantation in the end of Prajñā-Paramitā, need formal equivalence way. They involve a simple prayer which can be recited to go beyond this world for better wisdom. It means that they would rather recognize as it is than reconstruct for better understanding the contents. Therefore, this study offers an integrated approach to accept both of the expressions which require formal and dynamic equivalences. Depending on contextural situations, some methods need to transfer messages exactly. An integrated approach will be expected to solve different problems in transferring messages of source text even though Buddhist scriptures are religious books which adhere to literal translation.

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