Edited by Dr T. Matthew Ciolek

[Est.: 9 Jan 1995. Last updated: 23 Jan 2007. This page is optimised for transmission speed, not for fancy looks.]

The purpose of this document is to provide central access point to online resources dealing with Tibetan language, literature and publishing tools.

The document is a part of the Tibetan Studies WWW Virtual Library. Please mail tmciolek@ciolek.com if you know of relevant networked resource not in this page.

Tibetan Studies - Language & Literature

• Amnye Machen Institute publications catalogue - 1995 (ANU, Australia)
  [Amnye Machen Institute, Tibetan Centre for Advanced Studies P. O. McLeod Ganj, Dharamsala, District Kangra H.P. 176 219 India Phone: 0091-1892-23703, 22441, Fax: 0091-1892-23073, E-mail: ami@cta.unv.ernet.in]
• Dharma Publishing (www.dharmapublishing.com, US)
  [Founded in India in 1963, reestablished in America in 1969, Dharma Publishing offers a wide range of Buddhist teachings to the West in books for practitioners, scholars, and general readers]
• Books on Tibetan Language - Catalogue (Snow Lion Publications, US)
  [Among recent Snowlion publications which can be ordered online there are: * Fluent Tibetan: A Proficiency-Oriented Learning System. Novice and Intermediate Levels by William A. Magee and Elizabeth S. Napper, Jeffrey Hopkins, General Editor. In collaboration with: Ngawang Thondup Narkyid, Geshe Thupten Jinpa, Kunsang Y. King, Jules B. Levinson, Jigme Ngapo, Daniel E. Perdue, Dolma Tenpa and Steven N. Weinberger; * How To Read Classical Tibetan: Volume 1, A Summary of the General Path by Craig Preston; * Learning Practical Tibetan by Andrew Bloomfield & Yanki Tshering; * Manual of Standard Tibetan by Nicolas Tournadre and Sangda Dorje; * A Tibetan Verb Lexicon: Verbs, Classes, and Syntactic Frames by Paul G. Hackett; * Translating Buddhism From Tibetan by Joe Wilson, Jr.; * A Basic Grammar of Modern Spoken Tibetan: A Practical Handbook by Tashi; * Buddhist Translations: Problems and Perspectives ed. by Lama Doboom Tulku; * Colloquial Tibetan: A Textbook of the Lhasa Dialect by Tsetan Chonjore with Andera Abinanti]
• Dharma Publishing: Yeshe De Text Preservation (www.nyingma.org, US)
  [Established in 1983, the Yeshe De Project is dedicated to preserving the texts of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, encouraging scholarly research, and promoting translation of traditional Buddhist texts. Under its auspices, TNMC and Dharma Publishing reprinted the entire Kanjur and Tanjur, the Tibetan Buddhist Canon in 120 Western-style volumes, and 600 additional volumes containing 75,000 precious texts gathered from monasteries and libraries around the world]
• Himalayan Languages Project (Leiden U, Netherlands)
  [Project Description, Individual Research Projects, Conferences & Symposia]
• Institutions that teach Tibetan in North America (U. Minnesota, US)
• Institutions that teach Tibetan-Classical in North America (U. Minnesota, US)
• Library of Tibetan Works & Archives (www.chocodog.com, US)
  [Library of Tibetan Works & Archives, Central Tibetan Secretariat, Gangchen Kyishong, Dharamsala 176215, India, Tel: 00-91-1892-22467, e-mail: ltwa@dsala.tibet.net, see also a web page at http://www.tibet.com/ltwa.html]
• Manjushree Center of Tibetan Culture (www.manjushree-culture.org, US).
  [A charitable trust that was established 1988 to help preserve the culture of the Tibetan people. Manjushree Center of Tibetan Culture in Darjeeling, West Bengal, India is registered and approved by the Department of Education of the Central Tibetan Administration of H.H. the Dalai Lama.
  Site contents: Intensive Tibetan Language Program (3-9 months) For Written and Spoken Tibetan (Course Overview, Course Fees); Common Questions; Getting to Darjeeling; How to Contact Us; A Few Photos from Manjushree Center.]
• Rinjing Dorje Personal Web page (webforce.nwrain.com, US)
  [Rinjing Dorje is a Tibetan Author & Folklorist. He writes books on Tibetan humor and culinary arts]
• The Samantabhadra Archives (The Nyingma Tantras Project, University of Virgina, US)
  ["An electronic and collaborative project aiming at the reproduction, analysis, interpretation, and translation (as appropriate) of Tibetan literature. At present we are focused on Nyingma and Bonpo literature, but plan eventually to expand to other types of Tibetan literature as well. Or intial focus is on the various editions of of the great canonical collection of Tibetan Buddhist scriptures known as The Collected Tantras of the Ancients (rnying ma rgyud 'bum)."
  Site contents: Archives in Detail; Into the Archives [not yet available - ed.]; Tibetan & Himalayan Digital Library - Digital Tibetan Encyclopedia [not yet available - ed.]
  [The Archives under construction use SGML markup and supporting DTDs for their catalogues and text representation. A very promising future site with digital documents - ed.]
• Tibetan Collection at U. Virginia Library (U. Virginia, US)
• [The core of the research collection consists of about 3,000 pecha volumes containing about 8,000 titles of texts. Since the late 1960s, these and other Tibetan materials have been systematically acquired, identified, marked, shelved, and circulated to Tibetan scholars. They are in the format of single sheets, block-printed on both sides of paper, some bound, but most unbound]
• Tibetan Texts Preservation Projects (www.geocities.com, US)
  [Information about Tibetan Text Preservation Projects and other Tibetan DataBases in US, Canada, Nepal, India. Also links to a page on Tibetan Dictionaries in Electronic Form]
• See also Buddhist Texts Input/Translations Projects section of the Buddhist Studies WWW Virtual Library

Tibetan Studies - Online Dictionaries

• Online Sino-Tibetan Dictionaries (www.yourdictionary.com, US)
  [BURMESE: Burm.-Eng.-Burm. On-line Dictionary. CHINESE: Chin. Character Dictionary Web; A Chin. Syllabary Pronounced According to the Dialect of Canton by S. L. Wong; Chin.-Eng.-Chin. Character Dictionary; Chin.-Eng.; Chin.-Japanese-Korean Dictionary of Buddhist Terms; Chinlex Chin.-German Socio-Economics Dictionary; Eng.-Chin. (gopher); Eng.-Chin. (PC-DOS download); Eng.-Chin.-Eng. Dictionary of Commerce and Trade; Eng.-Chin.-Eng. Dictionary of Medical Terms; Eng.-Chin. Dictionary; Guoyu Cidian Chin. Dictionary; Marjorie Chan's Index of Chin. Online Glossaries & Dictionaries; World Wide Web CJK-Eng. Dictionary/Database; Zhongwen Zipu Chin. Character Genealogy; Kingsoft Chin.-Eng.-Chin. On-line Dictionary; Dictionary of Chin. Characters; Hakka Dictionary romanized (Dylan's Sa Tdiu Gok Hak Ga Su Dien); Hakka Pronouncing Dictionary; I Ching Lexicon; Kanji Base Query form (50,000 chars); NEWARI: Newari On-line Dictionary; SHERPA: Sherpa-English Dictionary, Sherpa-German Dictionary; TAIWANESE: Daiwan Way Taiwanese On-lineDictionary; Modern Literal Taiwanese Dictionary. TIBETAN: Rangjung Yeshe Tibetan-Eng. Dictionary (85,000 chars); Tibetan-Eng. Dictionary of Buddhist Teaching & Practice; Jim Valby's Tibetan-Eng. DOS dictionary (FTP download); Zhang-Zhung/Tibetan/Eng. Dictionary.]
• Tibetan-English-Dictionary of Buddhist Teaching & Practice (Karma Kagyu Buddhist Network, Nepal/US)
  ["A database of approx 5 Mb with 65,000 entries. The project is supported by Rangjung Yeshe Translations and Publications, located in the Kathmandu valley of Nepal. The Dharma Dictionary is a compilation of: (1) verified entries from existing dictionaries, word-lists and glossaries selected on a practical usage basis (2) terminology used by translators of the present day who have received extensive teachings from living Buddhist masters (3) selected definitions and clarifications from classical literary works (4) information of literary personages, sacred places, and names of scriptures." Extremely slow yet extremely rich resource - ed.]
• Tibetan to English Dictionary and Translation Tool (www.gaugeus.com, US)
  A tool which uses Java applets and servlets to automate Tibetan to English translation process. It breaks up Tibetan phrases into component parts and displays their dictionary definitions]

Tibetan Studies - Fonts & Software

• Displaying Tibetan Language Documents on the Web (www.nitartha.org, US/ Nepal/ Malaysia)
  [Now Tibetan language documents can be displayed online, quickly and easily, using freely available web browser technology. A Nitartha International Project]
• Potala Software (tibet.leighb.com, US)
  [A non profit, non funded, volunteer organization dedicated to creating powerful, high quality Windows software for the Tibetan Language. Products: * UDP: The Unicode Document Processor; * Distribution package for the CSX+ and Tibetan Modern A Fonts; * Distribution package for Pierre Robillard's Tibetan Fonts; * Distribution package for Marvin Moser's ACIP to Robillard Converter; ]
• Tibetan Fonts Archive (U. Oregon, US)
  [Download u-chan (27 k) for Macintosh; Download u-chan (33 k) for Windows; Download TibKey (182 k) for Windows]
• Tibetan FTP Archive (St. Petersburg U, Russia)
  [Est. Aug 1995. Contains a small number of files, mainly DOS and Windows software, including Tibetan-English dictionary (824Kb, by Jim Valby, apparently this dictionary is also available in Mac format]
• Tibetan ChosGyal Sanskrit Fonts (www.tibet.dk, Denmark)
  [All of the Tibetan fonts are 'dbu.can' in style. The Five fonts delivered with the standard Tibetan Dos program: 1. The Tibetan Machine fonts with Sanskrit variations; 2. The Tibetan Calligraphic font; 3. The Tibetan Amdris font; 4. The Tibetan Newsprint font; 5. The Dzongkha Calligraphic font.]
• Tibetan Software Archive (St. Petersburg U, Russia)
  [Est.Oct 95. Contains Tibetan for Batch Formatters (LaTeX Tibetan, LoutTib); MS Windows (TibKey); MS DOS (cgatib, Mani, Tibetan-English dictionary [by Jim Valby], ttps. Offers a convenient link to Tibetan FTP Archive St.Petersburg U, Russia)]
• Tibetan Tools for Windows, V0.09p (ANU, Australia)
  [TibKey 1.0 - A small utility that makes typing Tibetan text into your Windows applications very easy! Automatically selects and enters the correct Tibetan ligatures. Uses a simple Tibetan Keyboard layout]

Practicalities

Question

Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 20:20:57 -0400
From: "Xxxx Yyyyy" 
To: tmciolek@ciolek.com
Subject: question

Dear Dr. Ciolek,
I want to get a tattoo of the Tibetan word for hope in Tibetan but I cannot find it anywhere!  
Is there any way you know this and could help me out? 
 
Thanks!

Xxxx Yyyyy
SUNY University at Albany, Albany, NY, US

Answer

Dear Colleague,

You have two courses of action;
(a) go to a good university library and look up the needed word in an English-Tibetan printed dictionary.
(b) do a 3 step online operation:

(1) Search an English - Tibetan dictionary
http://eng-tib.zanwat.org/

Test case:
"Hope" (E.) = "re ba" (Tib.)

(2) Double-check the results with a Tibetan - English dictionary
http://www.nitartha.org/dictionary_search04.html

Test case:
"re ba" = "re ba 
hopeful; {mi re ba la sman rin len} to extort medical fees from the hopeful [ry]
re ba - hope; expectation [RB]
re ba - hope, wish, intent [IW]
re ba - hope, illusion, fantasy, wishes, coarse yak hair tent cover, goat's hair, expectation, prospect, yak fabric, yak hair, to hope for [JV]
... "

(3) View the required word in the vernacular, using a Tibetan Machine Uni font
http://www.thdl.org/tibetan/servlet/org.thdl.tib.scanner.OnLineScannerFilter?thdlBanner=on

Test case:
"re ba" = generates the following Unicode values

རེ་བ་

which, in the context of a web page, are displayed as:

རེ་བ་

That's all. Have fun. All the best,

T. Matthew Ciolek

Fred Battle, Leigh Brasington, S.M. Burke, Jeff Cox, K.H. Holt Gauthier, Ray Kreisel, Nathaniel Meyer, Andres Montano Pellegrini, McComas Taylor, V.E. Ushakov

Copyright © 1995-present by T. Matthew Ciolek. This Web page may be linked to any other Web pages. Contents may not be altered.

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