Interpreters in the Making of Global Buddhism : A Case Study

On April 15, 1912, French writer, explorer, and spiritual seeker Alexandra David-Néel (1868–1969) became the first Western woman to have an interview with the thirteenth Dalai Lama, Ngawang Lobsang Thupten Gyatso (1876–1933). Reading her own French-language accounts of this encounter against the Tibetan source, this article contends that the active interventions of Laden La, the interpreter whose presence was conveniently left out of all the official records of this meeting, enabled David-Néel and the Dalai Lama to find much common ground in their theological dialogue, despite talking at cross purposes. By reconstructing the key role played by an invisible interpreter in a historic interpreting event, this article not only offers a new research method for detecting the presence of interpreters in historiographical accounts of interlingual inter-religious encounters but also casts fresh light on the pivotal role played by interpreters in the making of global Buddhism, despite their assumed invisibility