Buddhist Hybrid English

Buddhist Hybrid English is a term coined by Paul J. Griffiths on analogy with Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit to designate the often incomprehensible result of attempts to translate Buddhist texts into English faithfully. This effort often involves the creation of entirely new English phrases for Sanskrit, Tibetan, Chinese, or Japanese phrases, the use of English words in uncharacteristic ways, and heavy reliance on calques. Probably the most notorious BHE phrase is "own-being" to translate Sanskrit svabhāva (often in contexts where it is used as a technical philosophical term, equivalent to English essence). The term is occasionally used less pejoratively to refer specifically to the Tibetan-to-English translations done by Jeffrey Hopkins and his students at the University of Virginia, who appear at least sometimes to have consciously modeled themselves and their efforts to create an entirely new Buddhist lexicon in English on the work of the great Tibetan translators or lotsawas, who translated the Indian canon into Tibetan in the 11th century.