A few more words on perspective and method…

Walter Benjamin’s principle of “translation as re-creation,” outlined in his seminal essay The Task of the Translator (1923), posits that the aim of translation is not mere linguistic fidelity but the renewal and extension of the original work’s life in a different cultural and temporal context.

In this spirit, the cross-cultural interpretation of Zava Damdin (b.1976)’s Mongolian doha—a spiritual poetic form rooted in tantric traditions—becomes less an act of linguistic equivalence and more an exercise in metaphysical and experiential resonance. His doha emerge as profound vehicles for contemplative insight, interweaving Buddhist soteriology with Mongolian cosmology. Translating such poetry through Benjamin’s lens allows the interpreter not to decode fixed meaning, but to engage the reader in a renewed encounter with the text’s layered significances, allowing its insights to emerge afresh through a different cultural and philosophical lens (Benjamin, 1923/2004, pp. 253–263; Rosemont, 2017, p. 4).

Contemporary Mongolian religious figures such as Zava Damdin engage poetic forms not merely as vehicles of expression, but as eloquent articulations of selfhood and profound modalities of epistemological transmission. In this context, the act of translating Zava Damdin’s doha becomes a ritualistic performance—one that honours the original’s transcendent atmosphere, while also transforming it to resonate with new audiences.

As I mentioned in a previous article, the translator, in Benjaminian terms, functions less as a servant to the text and more as a co-creator in its spiritual evolution. This is particularly relevant when Zava Rinpoche’s verses, deeply grounded in Mongolian-Buddhist ontologies, are rendered intelligible to readers outside of that lineage without neutralising their esoteric potency (Allard, 2021, pp. 11–13; Fijn, 2020, pp. 141–147).

In translating Mongolian dohas, I employ extensive footnoting and semantically structured lexical sets to illuminate culturally embedded metaphors, preserve epistemological integrity, and provide the reader with a deeper grasp of the intertextual and spiritual resonances within the text. These annotations serve not only as linguistic clarification but as a form of critical hermeneutic engagement.

Abfalter and Mueller-Seeger (2021, p. 145) describe such footnoting as essential in qualitative translation for managing layered meanings and contextual ambiguities. Koskinen (2014, pp. 97–99) similarly advocates for paratextual scaffolding to bridge ontological and institutional divides in ethnographic translation work. Building on this, Repke and Dorer (2021, pp. 195–197) emphasise that carefully calibrated translation choices—including adaptive footnotes—are integral to preserving conceptual equivalence and epistemic nuance across languages in culturally sensitive materials.

University of Freiburg’s recent contributions to translation philosophy—especially in the context of religion and intertextuality—reinforce this Benjaminian approach. A 2022 Freiburg working paper on Buddhist hermeneutics outlines how poetic expressions of tantric experience resist full conceptual capture and instead demand interpretive generosity (Schneider, 2022, pp. 5–7).

When applied to Zava Damdin (b.1976)’s doha, which often combine direct yogic insight with socio-political commentary, this implies that translations must not only preserve stylistic contours but actively participate in the generative process of meaning-making. Thus, the role of cultural translation becomes simultaneously exegetical and creative, aligning with Benjamin’s ideal that translations build “afterlives” for texts—an apt metaphor for a tradition that embraces rebirth and cyclicality as central themes (Benjamin, 1923/2004, p. 260; Schneider, 2022, p. 9).

Ultimately, applying Benjamin’s philosophy to Zava Damdin (b.1976)’s doha across cultural boundaries transforms translation into a form of upaya—a skillful means in Mahāyāna thought. Rather than distilling fixed interpretations, the cross-cultural reader must be invited into a dialogic process wherein Mongolian spiritual aesthetics are neither domesticated nor exoticised.

The doha thus lives again, not as artifact, but as a living voice in a trans-historical conversation. As recent transdisciplinary scholarship from both ANU and Freiburg suggests, this approach opens a path for deeper engagements with spiritual poetics, where translation becomes an ethical act of witnessing and co-participation (Fijn, 2020, pp. 145–148; Allard, 2021, p. 14; Schneider, 2022, p. 10).

In a time marked by fragmentation and noise, this kind of poetry—and the careful, reverent attention it asks of us—offers a quiet, necessary counterpoint.

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Further Reading

Allard, L. (2021). Poetry, Ritual, and Authority in Contemporary Mongolian Buddhism, ANU Centre for Asian and Pacific Studies, pp. 11–14.

Benjamin, W. (1923/2004). The Task of the Translator. In Selected Writings, Vol. 1: 1913–1926 (pp. 253–263). Harvard University Press.

Fijn, N. (2020). Living with Herds: Human–Animal Coexistence in Mongolia (pp. 141–148). ANU Press.

Rosemont, H. (2017). Translation as Cultural Reproduction in Inner Asia. ANU Mongolian Studies Working Paper Series, p. 4.

Schneider, T. (2022). Hermeneutics and Esotericism in Buddhist Poetics. University of Freiburg Working Papers in Religious Translation Studies, pp. 5–10.

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If there are any errors of judgement in this article, they are of my own making.

For these, I humbly apologise.

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Refer to the INDEX for other articles that may be of interest.

© 2013-2026. CP in Mongolia. “Letters from Mongolia 11: Translation as Re-creation” is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. ScholarGPT provided an additional channel for research. Documents linked from this page may be subject to other restrictions. Posted: 8 January 2026. Last updated: 8 January 2026.