The NYTimes Sinosphere blog has an interview with poetry translator Red Pine, a/k/a Bill Porter. Here’s an excerpt:
Q. Besides your travel books, your translations of some classics, such as the Platform Sutra and the Heart Sutra have been published in Chinese. Most Chinese readers probably don’t care about how you translated the book into English, so what’s of interest to them?A. They’re interested in my commentaries to the text — how I interpret the meaning.Q. But your commentaries are based on Chinese sources.A. I think our educational system makes us perhaps more open to different ideas. The Chinese are more constrained by their history of commentaries. Me, I don’t know what the tradition is. I just read the commentaries and use them to understand how the texts relate to practice. [Mr. Porter is a practicing Buddhist.] So it’s a personal journey and they’re interested in that. By the end of the year, my editions of the Dao De Jing and the Diamond Sutra are coming out in Chinese too.
Click the image above for the full interview.