ATTENTION CHUNKS
When the Dalai Lama speaks to large audiences on his world tours, often at his side will be Thupten Jinpa, his main English-language interpreter. Jinpa listens with rapt attention while His Holiness speaks in Tibetan; he only occasionally jots a quick note. Then when there's a pause, Jinpa repeats what was said in English, in his elegant Oxbridge accent.Those times that I've lectured abroad with the help of an interpreter, I've been told to speak only a few sentences before pausing for the interpreter to repeat my words in the local language. Oth erwise there's too much to remember.
But I happened to be present when this Tibetan duo was in front of a crowd of thousands, and the Dalai Lama seemed to be speaking in longer and longer chunks before pausing for the trans lation to English. At least once he went on in Tibetan for a full fif teen minutes before pausing. It seemed an impossibly long passage for any interpreter to track.
After the Dalai Lama finished, Jinpa was silent for several mo ments, as the audience stirred with palpable consternation at the memory challenge he faced.
Then Jinpa started his translation, and he, too, went on for fif teen minutes-without hesitation or even a pause. It was a breath taking performance, one that moved the audience to applaud.
What's the secret? When I asked Jinpa, he attributed his memory strengths to training he got as a young monk in a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in the south oflndia, where he was required to memorize long texts. "It starts when you're just eight or nine," he told me. "We taclde texts in classical Tibetan, which we don't yet understand-it would be like memorizing Latin for a European monk. We memo rize by the sound. Some of the texts are liturgical chants-you'll see monks recite those chants completely from memory."
ATTENTION CHUNKS
When the Dalai Lama speaks to large audiences on his world tours, often at his side will be Thupten Jinpa, his main English-language interpreter. Jinpa listens with rapt attention while His Holiness speaks in Tibetan; he only occasionally jots a quick note. Then when there's a pause, Jinpa repeats what was said in English, in his elegant Oxbridge accent.Those times that I've lectured abroad with the help of an interpreter, I've been told to speak only a few sentences before pausing for the interpreter to repeat my words in the local language. Oth erwise there's too much to remember.
But I happened to be present when this Tibetan duo was in front of a crowd of thousands, and the Dalai Lama seemed to be speaking in longer and longer chunks before pausing for the trans lation to English. At least once he went on in Tibetan for a full fif teen minutes before pausing. It seemed an impossibly long passage for any interpreter to track.
After the Dalai Lama finished, Jinpa was silent for several mo ments, as the audience stirred with palpable consternation at the memory challenge he faced.
Then Jinpa started his translation, and he, too, went on for fif teen minutes-without hesitation or even a pause. It was a breath taking performance, one that moved the audience to applaud.
What's the secret? When I asked Jinpa, he attributed his memory strengths to training he got as a young monk in a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in the south oflndia, where he was required to memorize long texts. "It starts when you're just eight or nine," he told me. "We taclde texts in classical Tibetan, which we don't yet understand-it would be like memorizing Latin for a European monk. We memo rize by the sound. Some of the texts are liturgical chants-you'll see monks recite those chants completely from memory."
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