This article describes the monumental work of the Chinese translator Xuan Zang (602-664). Xuan Zang was the most prolific and conscientious Chinese translator of the Buddhist Scriptures from Sanskrit and devoted his career to familiarising himself with all aspects of Buddhism before embarking on his translation. His translation practice was both careful and systematic. The article points out that there are parallels between his translation practice and Peter Newmark’s theory of communicative and semantic translation as opposed to the free versus literal dichotomy. It also submits that other forms of Xuan Zang's translating techniques developed more than 1,300 years ago correspond to present-day practices.