about.html

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title: Dharma Pearls | About This Project
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	<h1>About This Project</h1>
	<p><em>Dharma Pearls</em> is a long-term project to translate Chinese Buddhist texts to modern English that began in the late 1990s when I first began to learn about Buddhism as a practitioner. In those years, I taught myself classical Chinese to access the source texts directly, and I translated several smaller texts. In the years since, I've continued to study Chinese Buddhist translations as a lay scholar with the ultimate goal of launching a translation project.</p>
  <p>In late 2018, I began work on updating my earlier translations of several Chinese Āgama sutras and contributed the revisions to <a href="https://www.suttacentral.net">Sutta Central</a>. Editing soon led to translating new material, and I created a Wordpress blog in 2019 as a publishing platform. Realizing that Wordpress was unsuitable for creating the tools I had in mind, I decided in September 2019 to move the project to Github Pages, using Jekyll and Yaml-formatted data files to develop a "Reading Room" experience for readers and scholars with an interest in studying early Buddhist texts.</p>
  <p>Currently <em>Dharma Pearls</em> is in its initial stages of development, and the translation work is focused on the Āgama and Avadāna sections of the Taisho canon. </p>
	<p>The intended audience for these translations is both English and bilingual readers, students, and scholars interested in the source texts. To this end, an English reading guide, a Chinese-English glossary, and topic indices are planned to help readers navigate the language and concepts of the source material.</p>
  <p>All translations, essays, web design, and images are the work of Charles Patton unless otherwise noted. You can make suggestions, ask questions, offer sponserships, or submit corrections by <a href="mailto:cdpatton2009@gmail.com">email</a> or by <a href="https://github.com/winterdharma/DharmaPearls/issues/new">opening an Issue</a> at the <a href="https://github.com/winterdharma/DharmaPearls">Dharma Pearls Github repository</a>.</p>
  <p>Copyright protection is waived for non-profit use of English translations found on this site. See the <a href="copyright.html">copyright policy</a> for more details.</p>
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