Institutional Authority

The Gauḍīya Yīn-Yì System is a comprehensive framework designed to guide the translation of Śrīla Prabhupāda's works into Chinese, ensuring doctrinal fidelity and linguistic precision. This system, comprising six volumes, establishes a constitutional framework that governs the rendering of sacred Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava vocabulary into Chinese while preserving sacred sound and meaning. The term Yīn-Yì, meaning 'Sound and Meaning,' is inspired by the Chinese Buddhist tradition of sound-and-meaning lexica, adapted to meet the specific needs of the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava tradition. The system addresses the challenge of translating sacred Indian languages into Chinese without losing their potency or intelligibility. Volume I, the Lexical Constitution, is the core of the system, dictating the treatment of sacred terms as either phonetic transliterations or semantic renderings. Subsequent volumes cover semantic architecture, governance frameworks, AI integration, provenance, and poetic rendering workflows. The system emphasizes the preservation of sacred sound, particularly in the rendering of the mahā-mantra and other mantras, which are carried as indivisible sonic wholes. It also provides guidelines for rendering grand designations and epithets with majestic semantic titles, ensuring that translations resonate with the Chinese cultural imagination while maintaining the integrity of Gauḍīya siddhānta. The framework is not merely translational but pedagogical, aiming to reveal the place of each concept within the larger theological architecture.