Spoken Tibetan and Translating Tibetan texts
Known spoken Tibetan will help concerning translating Tibetan texts. To start with knowing spoken languages helps one to get into the cultural and environmental world of the country and region. The patterns related to the language are also seen as word order and use of various other constructs are very much the same.To properly translate a larger text, you need to first understand it as much as possible. If you read the Tibetan and your brain thinks in Tibetan, then this will help unravel the first rough translation. As you have maybe seen, written Tibetan sentences could look very long, and it's impossible to think that someone could say the whole 'sentence' in one breath, but learning the pace of spoken Tibetan will help you isolate known sections in the sentence where a verb happens, or a connecting word, or a natural pause. For example, in listings in English we use the word 'and' after the first entry in the set; in Tibetan དང་ is just before the last entry. Comparisons is another pattern when knowing how comparison patterns appear will help with the translation.
Finally just reading loud the Tibetan will get you into the text in a more deep level than a plain word-by-word attempt trying to unravel the context.
More Information:
- Thubten Jinpa's The Art of Translating Tibetan Master class at Wisdom Publications, free with account