Education Germany Project #9256

Make the Ageless Wisdom of Tibet Available to All

by Berzin Archives e.V.

Make the Ageless Wisdom of Tibet Available to All

Project Report | Nov 22, 2021
Berzin Archives Report: 20th Anniversary

By Dr Alexander Berzin | Founder and Author of Berzin Archives

Berzin Archives 20th Anniversary

Study Buddhism Turns 20!

On December 1st 2001, in a room in Berlin, Germany, we pressed the launch button, and it was born: the Berzin Archives website.

From those humble beginnings of a handful of articles, the website grew and grew and, in 2015, it was rebranded as Study Buddhism.

Today, the website is beloved by millions of readers across the globe, the website now spans across 32 languages, with thousands upon thousands of articles to read, hundreds of educational videos to watch, and a multitude of audio recordings to enjoy. All of this has been made possible by the hard work of more than 100 paid staff, working away in countries all over the world, over the last two decades. And of course, none of it would be possible without the generous support of you, our donors. You not only support us in bringing the ancient Buddhist wisdom of Tibet to the world, but your generosity allows us to do so in a way true to the spirit of the Buddha, with our free-of-charge and free-of-advertising content available to everyone, everywhere. Thank you so much.

And, if you're interested to see just how much the website has changed over the last twenty years, do check all of the photographs included in this short letter.

Again, thank you for helping is to “Make the Ageless Wisdom of Tibet Available to All.”

Berzin Archives, version 1

Berzin Archives, version 2

Berzin Archives, version 3

Berzin Archives, version 4

Study Buddhism, from 2015 onwards

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Sep 3, 2021
Berzin Archives Report: June through August 2021

By Dr Alexander Berzin | Founder and Author of Berzin Archives

View of a temple in Himachal Pradesh, India

Over the summer we’ve been hard at work at Study Buddhism, fine-tuning our website so that it meets the requirements of Google’s new algorithm and is optimized for users in all our languages, using a wide range of devices. On top of this, we’ve continued to bring new content – written material as well as video interviews – to our website and social media channels.

Our YouTube channel hit the fantastic milestone of 30,000 subscribers, with many of the recent followers and viewers in India. In fact, for the first time, these last three months saw views from India outpace those from the US. Our work in bringing subtitles – including seven languages spoken in India – to all our videos is helping to bring our content to the land where Buddhism originated. Due to the global situation with COVID-19, we have now been unable to record new interviews for 18 months. We’re hoping that we will soon be able to return to our previous rate of video content creation, but until then, we will release what we have at a slightly slower pace.

Altogether, our translators and editors have prepared 370 new articles and over 150 new subtitle files. On top of this, our team have created an astounding 1400 subtitle files in 31 languages for our YouTube channel. We’ve also started to go through our videos and collect quotes for our Twitter account, where we’ll share inspiring articles, quotes, and videos. You’ll find all the details in the bulleted list below.

Here are some of our accomplishments over these last three months:

• Preparation and publication of 370 translations into our various languages
• Translation and addition of 153 subtitle files
• Copyediting of 89 English transcripts and files
• Transcription of 25 English audio files
• Configure the glossary in our content management system to allow editing of non-English glossaries
• Work begun on editing and expanding the German, Spanish and Russian glossaries
• Optimization of page loading speed
• Optimization of resetting the cache and log when new articles are published
• Continue optimization of the operation of the website to meet the guidelines of the new Google algorithm
• The addition of 9 videos to the Study Buddhism YouTube channel of an interview with Menri Trizin Rinpoche, the spiritual leader of the Bön tradition and the abbot of Menri Monastery in Dolanji, India.
• The creation of 390 subtitle files for the videos of Tashi Mannox on YouTube, for the website’s languages other than English.
• The creation of 600 subtitle files for the videos of Dr Andrey Terentyev on YouTube, for the website’s languages other than English.
• The creation of 410 subtitle files for the videos of Venerable Guo Huei on YouTube, for the website’s languages other than English.
• Starting to collect quotes from the 400+ videos on our YouTube channel, to be used on our Twitter account.

All of this hard work is made possible by your continuing generous support. Together, we shall “Make the Ageless Wisdom of Tibet Available to All.”

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Jun 3, 2021
Berzin Archives Report: March through May 2021

By Dr. Alexander Berzin | Founder and Author of Berzin Archives

Buddha Shakyamuni statue at the Mahabodhi Stupa

This spring, we have made impressive progress in translating content into our existing languages, as well as the eleven new languages launched more than a year ago. Overall, this quarter has seen eight new translations of articles every single day. We also continue to translate subtitles for our growing YouTube channel, allowing our multimedia content to reach people in every continent on the planet.

Recently, Google announced new metrics to rank page experience for end-users, and we have started the mammoth task of ensuring that our website’s content is up-to-date and follows all of the recommendations. This is vital work, so that we keep ranking consistently high on Google search and also so that our users have the best website experience on both desktop and mobile devices.

Our social media channels are exploding, as we race towards 50,000 followers on Facebook and 30,000 subscribers on YouTube. Our YouTube channel’s views are up 20% compared to the previous three-month period, as we add more titles, descriptions, and subtitles in our 32 languages.

Speaking of YouTube, we have two exciting video series coming up. First of all, we have our interview with Dr. Andrey Terentyev ready to be released shortly. In this fascinating series, Dr. Terentyev discusses the history of Buddhism in imperial Russia, opens up about Buddhist life during the Soviet era, and discusses the future of Buddhism in the region. After this, we will release an interview with Menri Trizin Rinpoche, the spiritual leader of the Bön tradition and the abbot of Menri Monastery in Dolanji, India.

Lastly, but by no means least, this May we celebrated five years since the rebirth of the Berzin Archives as Study Buddhism, the beautiful website you have all come to use and love. Through the immense effort and hard work of dozens of people across the world, we have added 11 new languages, now covering the whole of the traditional Buddhist world. These five years have seen 6500 new articles and translations go online (that’s 25 every single week!), 440 videos (more than 7 every month), and a staggering 7700 subtitle files. You, our donors, all help to make this possible. Thank you so much!

You’ll find all the details of what we’ve been up to in the bulleted list below. Here are some of our accomplishments over these last three months:

Preparation and publication of 720 translations into our various languages
Translation and addition of 163 subtitle files
Copyediting of 41 English transcripts and files
Transcription of 46 English audio files
Transcription of 9 Tibetan audio files
Publication of 15 advanced English articles on cognition theory (ways of knowing)
Addition of further features in the content management system to facilitate editing of the various language section glossaries
Improvement of the website’s database to facilitate editing articles on the website
Further expansion of the functionality of the internal search engine and glossary search features
Expansion of the multimedia icon feature on the website
Addition of a currency converter feature on the donation page
Adjustment of the display of Hebrew font
Research and preparation for the upcoming Google algorithm update
Editing of 20 videos of our interview with Dr. Andrey Terentyev, the founder of Narthang Publications Russia.
Subtitling and addition to the Study Buddhism YouTube channel of the above-mentioned interview clips with Dr. Andrey Terentyev.
Addition of related tags into YouTube’s backend system to make our videos easier to find.
Continued input on YouTube of translated titles and descriptions for our video interviews.
Addition of the video interviews of Dr. Andrey Terentyev, Geshe Dorji Damdul and Tashi Mannox onto our Vimeo channel (for Tibetan language users).

All of this hard work is made possible by your continuing generous support. Together, we shall “Make the Ageless Wisdom of Tibet Available to All.”

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