Translation might be the most significant factor in Buddhism becoming a world religion. From the very beginning, the Buddha required his monks to translate his teachings into their dialects. Later on, the original Pali canon was translated into Chinese and Tibetan—both remarkable feats.
Today, with the rise of artificial intelligence, Buddhist scholar Donald S. Lopez Jr. proposes the
possibility of a fourth Buddhist canon and considers why we would want to create a new canon in the first place.
“Advances in artificial intelligence raise the possibility of a fourth canonical language—English—and a fourth Buddhist canon,” says Lopez. “But why would we want to do this? Is it because every text needs to be translated? Is it because we expect to find the fifth noble truth? After centuries of translation, is there anything significant left to discover?”
Lopez suggests that translation doesn’t just preserve tradition, it also creates it through what is uncovered and changed in the process. With the vast potential of AI, the implications are profound.
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