An Shi-Gao, known by legend as a Parthian prince, settled in the Chinese city of Luoyang in 148 CE, where he proceeded to translate over a dozen texts into Chinese from Sanskrit (or something similar). He was the first translator of Buddhist texts in China, beginning the long, slow process that created the Chinese canon we have today. Many years later, a similar process was undertaken in Tibet.
These two translation projects are great monuments of faith. They have lasted for hundreds of years, and formed the basis of Buddhist culture for entire nations. And they have done so because they have a genuine worth. We want to read them because they express the Dhamma, and because we can feel the Dhamma through a unique human voice. Every translator is imperfect in their own way.
Today, translation of Buddhist texts is proceeding faster than ever. SuttaCentral hosts some 500 MB of translations, and we are just one project of many. The work is far from finished, and many texts remain untranslated: Pali commentaries, as well as most of the Chinese and Tibetan canons.
Translation is hard, and it requires a range of skills that not everyone has. But itâs not that hard, and there are not so few people with the skills. I translated the entire corpus of Pali suttas in a few years. Iâve never had any formal Dhamma education, nor have I any institutional support. I know what it takes. In my estimation, there are dozens of people who use this forum who are more than capable of translating suttas.
It remains a mystery to me why we see so little effort in this regard from all the great institutions, the monasteries, organizations, universities. There are thousands of people there and billions of dollars. All it takes is some leadership and focus.
Normally a translator can translate about 2,000 words/day. Thatâs how I worked out that I could finish the Pali suttas. And thatâs how I know that a few teams of dedicated translators could translate the untranslated texts in maybe a decade. Thereâs nothing stopping us.
Several projects are, in fact, working on this. Numata has a long-standing plan to translate the Chinese canon. 84000 is proceeding steadily, creating high quality translations of Tibetan texts. Alex Wynne plans to translate the Pali commentaries. These projects are proceeding, and the gaps are being filled.
So why do we need machine translations? What problem are we solving? Why do we need to burn massive computers for a month to generate an AI model that can spit out some auto-generated text based on Buddhist scripture?
What problem are we solving?
The singer and tech will.i.am has been developing both AI startups and education programs. Time reports him nailing the answer:
The investment that society has put in AI (artificial intelligence) surpasses the investment for HI, which is human intelligence. Itâs so lopsided that subconsciously we know that we havenât invested in our youth, in our communities. We havenât invested in humanity to keep up with intelligent machines. ⌠Itâs hard to raise money for kids. Itâs inhumane thatâs even a fact. Why is it so hard to raise money for education? That keeps me up at night â I donât understand it.
The work that has been done on creating digital texts was done out of faith. The Pali text used by SuttaCentral ultimately stems from the work of the Vipassana Research Institute in Pune, Maharashtra. Thatâs one of the poorest areas in the world, where the Buddhist community is comprised of Dalits. Thse people were formerly outcastes from Hindu society, beneath the lowest of the low, despised slaves whose existence was not merely justified but required by God. They found freedom through the work of Dr. Ambedkar, who taught them that the Buddha showed a way for them to lift themselves up. Now, there are Amedkarite Buddhists here in Sydney, working in IT mostly, valued friends and devotees of the Buddhist community.
And we at SuttaCentral, as well as most other Pali projects around the world, rely on the work of their people every day. Can you imagine what they were working with in Pune in the 1990s? It must have seemed amazing to them. I imagine they got hold of a bunch of computers, and human volunteers sat and typed on them. It must have been a lot of people! Doing something so meaningful, joining together to create something great; I wonder how this changed the lives of those who did this? Clacking away on clunky old computers from the 90s, doing work that is still just as valuable today.
Not too much has changed in some ways, as monastics and Buddhist devotees are still working, providing volunteer labor out of faith. This work is scraped up and used by the AI engines, with never a thought to give anything back.
SuttaCentral pioneered the use of the liberal CC0 license, which waives any kind of legal limitations on use of our texts. However we also note that texts should be used âin accordance with the values and principles of the Buddhist communityâ. This is deliberately vague. But what are those values and principles?
One of them is generosity (dÄna). No traditional Buddhist would think of using a temple, taking their freely offered books, and learning from the Sangha without offering something in return. Any Buddhist could tell you that the Sangha offers dhammadÄna (âthe gift of the teachingsâ), while the lay community offers in return ÄmisadÄna (âthe gift of material supportâ). This can take many forms: a donation when hearing a teaching; an offering of alms-food; help with chores in the monastery; volunteering for the organization, and so on. But we would never just take without giving. Itâs not proper.
But thatâs what they do. They take and they take and they never give a single thing back. These projects have used our work for years, and weâve never got a thing in return. Rich western institutions gobbling up the work of Buddhists. It fundamentally breaks the Buddhist tradition, violating the balance that was established by the Buddha, and by which the Buddhist community has thrived for 2,500 years.
What we should be doing is nourishing people. We should be training scholars and teaching languages. And this should be done in a properly Dhammic context: not just academic scholarship devoid of meaning, but genuine living education that draws out peopleâs spiritual potentials and talents. Education based on facts and faith. Students should be taught, not just the grammar and meaning of ancient texts, but the art of expressive and meaningful writing, which is by far the hardest part of translation. We need leaders who will inspire people, and we need funding and institutional support.
What happens when you do this is quite remarkable. Because the most important difference between a machine âtranslationâ and a human translation is not in the words they output. Itâs that one is a machine, and one is a person. When a person does this work, they spend their days reading the words of scripture, internalizing them, and finding a way to express them. Their work is exploratory and integrative. It changes them. It canât help but change them.
Iâm a different person than I was before I did my translations. Look, maybe Iâm not a great person; most days I struggle to be a reasonably good one. I have my moments. But sheesh, you should have known me before! My jokes were even worse! Every day, the understanding that I have learned helps me. It helps in my meditation, and in dealing with the issues in my life. It helps in my teaching and communicating. Iâve learned at a deep level, and many problems that I see younger students struggle with are just solved issues for me.
Thatâs what you do when you have human translators. You make better humans. Look at the contributions of monastics like Venerables Bodhi or Analayo or Brahmali. Their translation work is a part of their life and part of who they have become as human beings. It elevates them, and it elevates all of us.
This can never happen from a machine translation. The machine makes things too easy. It spits out an answer, seemingly solving every hard problem. But of course it doesnât. It just pretends the problems arenât there.
These things take time. I usually work on things pretty quickly. This article youâre reading now, I wrote in a couple of hours, plus some fiddling around. But Iâll spend a day, sometimes several days, just getting one word of Pali right. Mostly the conventional answer is okay, and I could get away with just sticking with what everyone knows. But I canât do that. Thereâs a tickle in my brain that wonât let me. It smells when something is not quite right. When I say, âOkay, good enoughâ and move on, it goes quiet for a bit, then comes back to nag me. It wonât rest until Iâve followed it through to its end.
When you can just get any translation created by a machine like that, it degrades the humanity of the translator. This is why, all over the world, creatives are protesting AI. Journalists, artists, actors, authors, painters, photographers, filmmakers, songwriters. Theyâre all seeing their work slurped up by these AI engines, which then spit out a half-baked travesty of creation.
Someone sent Nick Cave a song created by ChatGPT âin the style of Nick Caveâ. He responded on his Red Hand Files:
I understand that ChatGPT is in its infancy but perhaps that is the emerging horror of AI â that it will forever be in its infancy, as it will always have further to go, and the direction is always forward, always faster. It can never be rolled back, or slowed down, as it moves us toward a utopian future, maybe, or our total destruction. Who can possibly say which? Judging by this song âin the style of Nick Caveâ though, it doesnât look good, Mark. The apocalypse is well on its way. This song sucks.
What ChatGPT is, in this instance, is replication as travesty. ChatGPT may be able to write a speech or an essay or a sermon or an obituary but it cannot create a genuine song. It could perhaps in time create a song that is, on the surface, indistinguishable from an original, but it will always be a replication, a kind of burlesque.
Songs arise out of suffering, by which I mean they are predicated upon the complex, internal human struggle of creation and, well, as far as I know, algorithms donât feel. Data doesnât suffer. ChatGPT has no inner being, it has been nowhere, it has endured nothing, it has not had the audacity to reach beyond its limitations, and hence it doesnât have the capacity for a shared transcendent experience, as it has no limitations from which to transcend. ChatGPTâs melancholy role is that it is destined to imitate and can never have an authentic human experience, no matter how devalued and inconsequential the human experience may in time become.
A songwriter knows this. Why is it that we cannot see it?
Our problem is not that we donât have enough translations. Itâs that we have lost faith in humanity. Buddhists of the past, of out faith, poured their hearts and minds into scriptural work, creating something glorious that has lasted for millennia. We push a button and create disposable pap from a machine.
Why not both? Why not treat machine translation as a âgood enoughâ stopgap that supplies some basic needs, while also sponsoring real translations. Why not both, indeed.
Why not both horse and cart, and petrol driven vehicles? Why not both paper letters and email? Why not both landlines and mobile phones? Why not both corner stores and Amazon?
What we have learned, over and over again, is that people wonât use what is best, theyâll use what is there. And what is there is devices with screens. And every big tech company is devoting billions to dig AI into them as deeply as possible. Itâs there, whether you like it or not.
When we, as a Buddhist community, make our own AI projects, we are lending our voices to the AI overlords. Say what you will, do things differently if you can, but the message is still the same. AI is good actually and machine translations are just fine by the Buddhist community 
.
Why is it that while the artists and singers, the journalists and poets, are fighting to keep their humanity, we just give ours away?
What faith have we lost that has brought us to such a state?
EVER
. As you mentioned, there are other subjects youâd rather be contemplatingâŚ
