Daisaku Ikeda and the Culture of Translation

Abstract

Although not functionally multilingual or a translator himself, Daisaku Ikeda has been deeply involved in translation processes, both as a reader and as someone who has produced texts for translation into various languages. This article examines two sources of influence shaping Ikeda's attitude toward translation culture: the flourishing culture of translation that prevailed in the Japan of his childhood and youth and the example of the 5th century C.E. Buddhist translations of Kumarajiva. These two sources are seen as fostering an attitude toward translation as a vehicle for cross-cultural communication rooted in a faith in a universal humanity.

Notes

Interviews with translators of Ikeda's text were conducted in April 2010 and February 2011.

¹Summit Conference of evangelical leaders, held at the Hyatt Regency O'Hare in Chicago in the fall of 1978. This congress was sponsored by the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy. The Chicago Statement was signed by nearly 300 noted evangelical scholars, including James Boice, Norman L. Geisler, John Gerstner, Carl F. H. Henry, Kenneth Kantzer, Harold Lindsell, John Warwick Montgomery, Roger Nicole, J. I. Packer, Robert Preus, Earl Radmacher, Francis Schaeffer, R. C. Sproul, and John Wenham (http://www.bible-researcher.com/chicago1.html)