Translation practices have been central to the ongoing reinterpretation and transformation of the Buddhist tradition. Translation ensures both continuity—through the transmission of the vast sacred literature of the tradition—and change, as different ways of interpreting Buddhist thought and practice are opened up or closed off in the process of translation. As an interpretive practice, translation depends upon and illuminates historical conceptions of Buddhist literature and of the process of translation itself, neither of which necessarily coincide with contemporary English conceptions. The translation of Buddhist literature reveals the different ways in which various Buddhist communities have located and recreated the value and power of their textual traditions in light of their individual cultural and historical contexts.

A frequently cited passage in the Pali canon (Vinaya 2.139) both prescribes and exemplifies the complex and crucial role that translation has played in the transmission of the Buddhist tradition. In this...