Your first hypertexting project will be Khen Rinpoche's Long Life Prayer. It is a warm-up activity, and once you have finished it and had it checked by a senior hypertexter, you'll be ready to dive into a more advanced project.

[Warning -- this page is still a work in progress, so the instructions will end abruptly!]

We'll go through the first verse here, and then you can download the hypertexting kit (see Getting started at home) and do the rest of the Long Life Prayer yourself.

*, ,AOm SVA STI,
,RMAD BYUNG 'PHRIN LAS 'OD SNANG PHRA MOS KYANG , ,'CHI BDUD MUN PA'I SMAG RUM DRUNGS PHYUNG STE,

Even a sliver of light of Your mighty and wondrous deeds rips from its root the darkness of the Shadow of Death.

Like many holy texts, the Long Life Prayer starts with a character (transcribed as "*,") and some Sanskrit, which we can skip, since there's obviously no corresponding English here.

Now, on to the Tibetan!

Tip: Look up each of the words and word groups in an entire section of Tibetan before assigning them to the translation.

If you only look up a few Tibetan words at a time and try to connect them to the translation prematurely, you may get off on the wrong track. You may link a particular Tibetan word with some English, only to discover later that another Tibetan word was actually the better match. By then, your original hasty mistake may have led to other errors, so it's better to avoid this problem by looking up all the words at the start.

With that tip in mind, we can look up all the words in the first verse. You can look them up in the Jim Valby dictionary four at a time, starting with rmad byung 'phrin las:

rmad byung - excellent, marvelous, admirable, grown excellent, major sems sde tantra, become excellent, SA rmad du byung ba, 1 of man ngag lung chen bco brgyad, major tantras of sems sde

'phrin las - (buddha, ensuing, charismatic, -) activity (12 aspects distributed 4 to each of chos sku, longs sku, sprul sku which are further divided into phyi, nang, gsang, making 36 altogether), affair, business, deed, work, efficiency, power, tibetan personal name, spiritual acts, sacred work, enlightened activities, action, the capacity for spiritual action

Note that although the transcription is upper case, the Valby dictionary only accepts lower case.

Next we'll look up 'od snang phra mos

'od snang - visible light

phra - jewel, fine, thin, minute, atomic

mos - loyal, longing, to like, agree, by her, "want" particle

We can look up the remaining kyang on its own:

kyang - wild ass, as, also, too, as well, but, yet still, nevertheless, even, if, even though, including, though, although, straight, right, very straight, slender as a stick, and, too, yet more, (used instead of dang after ga da ba sa), since, since that, then, therefore, likewise, whereas, also, even, even though, connective

On to the second line -- 'chi bdud mun pa'i

'chi - death

bdud - mara, demons, lord of limitations, devil, fiend, monster, ogre, satan, wizard, (personification of forces which obstruct realization), evil one, chief devil, antagonist of religion, personified evil principle, 4 types (phung po'i bdud, nyon mongs pa'i bdud, 'chi bdag gi bdud, lha'i bu'i bdud), 4 more types (thogs bcas kyi bdud, thogs med kyi bdud, dga' spro yi bdud, snyems byed kyi bdud), SA gcod lugs bdud bzhi, 1 of sde brgyad

mun pa'i smag rum - dense gloom

Now for smag rum drungs phyung

smag rum - dark, darkness

drungs - root disease, tree disease

phyung - draw, pull out, remove, emit, SA 'byin pa, past of 'byin

And last but not least, ste:

ste - affix for the gerund, gerundive connective

Now we'll look through the English and see which words are most likely connected, recalling that Tibetan syntax tends to be the reverse of English (see Tibetan language basics).

[Sorry -- this is where the instructions end for now! More soon!]