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Between the eighth and the fourteenth centuries Tibetan translators, working with Indian scholars, rendered the whole Buddhist canon into Tibetan with a consistency that no other translation project of the age achieved. They could do it because they had agreed the terms first, in the Mahāvyutpatti of the early ninth century, and because a royal decree fixed the principles of translation. The tradition continues: the same canon is now being translated out of Tibetan into English.
The pages here will tell the history of the lotsawas, present the principles of the early translators, and set out the craft as it is practised now.