While revising my original translation of Jigmé Lingpa's poem The Visionary Experience of Ever-present Good (kun.bzand.dgongs.nyams), I am checking my work against Sam van Schaik's translation in Approaching the Great Perfection.
There is a world of difference between our approaches. Sam seeks to be scrupulously accurate in rendering the words and phrases of Tibetan, while I favor a looser more poetic approach, striving for fluid and ease of comprehension in the English.
The difference in one verse provides a good example of Buddhist Hybrid English on the one hand and something else, I'm not sure what to call it, on the other.
Do bear in mind that Sam and I are translating for completely different audiences. His, I believe, is primarily academic, while mine is intended for practitioners. This difference alone accounts for much of the difference in result.
Here is Sam's translation:
Mind itself, which is without good or bad, acceptance or rejection,
Is adulterated by the alloy of adroit rejection and acceptance of dirt and purity.
When the nondual ultimate truth is fabricated by the duality of subject and object,
To aspire toward the rank of ultimate truth, which is not a thing to be obtained,
Is to hold the tenets of the kriyatantra of conduct. How attractive!
And here is my rendering of the same verse:
Because mind itself doesn’t take up the good or give up the bad,
A shrewd moral practice acts as an added pollutant.
The forms of dualistic fixation distort what is not two.
Ritual tantra seeks to attain a state where there is nothing to attain.
How elegant you are, you followers of ritual philosophy!
