Referred to as the “tradition of multi-party translation,” this system of
collaboration for translating the Indian Sanskrit Buddhist canon into Chinese
typically involved a nine-person translation team. The team included a head
translator, who sat in the center, reading or reciting the Sanskrit scripture
and explaining it as best he could with often limited Chinese; a philological
advisor, or “certifier of the meaning,” who sat to the left of the head translator
and worked in tandem with him to verify meticulously the meaning of the
Sanskrit text; a textual appraiser, or “certifier of the text,” who sat at the chief ’s
right and confirmed the accuracy of the preliminary Chinese rendering; a
Sanskrit specialist, who carefully confirmed the accuracy of the language
of the source text; a scribe, who transcribed into written Chinese what was
often initially an oral Chinese rendering; a composer of the text, who crafted
the initial rendering into grammatical prose; the proofreader, who compared
the Chinese with the original Sanskrit text; the editor, who tightened up and
clarified any sentences that were vague in the Chinese; and finally the stylist,
who sat facing the head translator, who had responsibility for refining the
final rendering into elegant literary Chinese.