It’s a strange but common experience to enter a Triratna Buddhist Centre bookshop in Spain, Finland or Belgium - and many other non-English-speaking countries - and see rows of Triratna books in English, alongside – maybe – a few in the local language.
It can be a big enough step to enter a Buddhist Centre. Who needs a language barrier too?
As you’ll know, we’re raising £100,000 for Sangharakshita’s 90th birthday, to fund the publication of his Complete Works over the next 5-7 years. This will include money for translations into many languages. You can contribute to this (in nine currencies).
A story featured on Triratna News in the last year illustrates the vital importance of translating Bhante’s writings: that of the new Triratna group in Odessa, Ukraine, sparked by one man’s discovery of a single Buddhist book in his own language in a street market.
If the 90th birthday collection reaches its target of £100,000, there will be £15,000 for translations. (We only need another £17,000!) Any extra money raised will go to translations too, meaning that there could be as much as £30,000 available for translations in the near future.
This is staggering, considering that Triratna’s translations budget is currently just £5000 per year. (This comes from Triratna’s European Chairs’ Assembly’s Development Fund – money given by European Centres and a few Centres further afield.) So it’s clear this new birthday money would represent a huge step forward for translations. (It also means the establishment of a formal translations committee to spend the money well, making strategic decisions about which books are needed most urgently, in which languages.)
