Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Translations of the Dao De Jing

daoisopen.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 61 posts

Re: Translations of the Dao De Jing

#41

Post by anqurvanillapy »

contingencies wrote: post #15

A page about hair-splitting on translations of a philosophy whose chapter one paragraph one states the notion isn't possible to convey in words! The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao; The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth. The named is the mother of ten thousand things. Ever desireless, one can see the mystery. Ever desiring, one can see the ma…

Hard to convey and even more concise in Chinese, e.g. 道可道, 非常道. (Characters respectively mean: {'道[1]': 'Tao', '可': 'can; able', '道[2]': 'say; tell', '非': 'not', '常': 'usual; normal', '道[3]': 'Tao'}).

Re: Translations of the Dao De Jing

#42

Post by pfortuny »

aandrieiev wrote: post #39

The problem with translating any Chinese classics lays in their multi-layered meaning. Old Chinese literature is complicated because every author expected that the reader was accustomed to volumes of other classics and could comprehend all the references to them hidden in the text. No matter how many good translations we have, they will not help us resolve this issue. Furthermore, understanding Dao De Jing is problem…

Yep, same as with Western Renaissance Literature (v.gr. Dante).

Re: Translations of the Dao De Jing

#43

Post by mrob »

Double_a_92 wrote: post #40
mrob wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although the ebooks are generally good quality, the spelling and grammar are in many cases (deliberately) changed from the original. When I read a book I want to read the words of the original author, not a modernized version. It would be nice if you could download versions without the "[Editorial]" changes.

So you'd like to read it in ancient chinese? Or a word-by-word literal translation of it? There are always going to be some changes in grammar...

I can't read ancient Chinese, so in the case of the Dao De Jing, I'd prefer a translation, but almost all the books at Standard Ebooks were originally written in Modern English. I consider the original spelling an important part of the work.

Consider this edit:

https://github.com/standardebooks/h-p-lovecraft_short-fictio...

This is a character who would know that "'phone" is short for "telephone", but it's changed so that he says "phone". It ruins the effect of telephones being new and modern technology, and makes them so commonplace that people are no longer consciously aware that the word "phone" is an abbreviation. (Although it actually does need an edit, because the automatic conversion of the ' failed and turned it into a ‘ instead of the correct ’.)

Re: Translations of the Dao De Jing

#44

Post by lisper »

madhadron wrote: post #31
crooked-v wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the analysis is interesting, the resulting "translation" is useless nonsense.

Odd. I looked at it and thought it was a brilliant use of English, on par with anything James Joyce did.

That is not necessarily disagreement.

Re: Translations of the Dao De Jing

#46

Post by mercer »

fnordsensei wrote: post #29

It's worthwhile to read many translations of this book. I find this really helps to "triangulate" the nuance and depth of the original. Inevitably, you come across translations that you like more, and others that you like less. I was attracted to the Dao De Jing at a fairly young age. It took over a decade, though (as I was reading a related text—I can't remember which one, maybe the Zhuangzi), for it to suddenly daw…

I'll second that recommendation! One of the better books I've read last year.

Re: Translations of the Dao De Jing

#47

Post by henriquemaia »

aandrieiev wrote: post #39

The problem with translating any Chinese classics lays in their multi-layered meaning. Old Chinese literature is complicated because every author expected that the reader was accustomed to volumes of other classics and could comprehend all the references to them hidden in the text. No matter how many good translations we have, they will not help us resolve this issue. Furthermore, understanding Dao De Jing is problem…

> The problem with translating any Chinese classics lays in their multi-layered meaning. Old Chinese literature is complicated

I concede that can be troublesome. But, from a different perspective, it’s also kind of liberating.

> understanding Dao De Jing is problematic even for native speakers of Chinese

That being true, it allows you enough room of not being ashamed of your own interpretations, if you find them useful. In that sense, the text is much more alive, talking to you directly, instead of being an unsolvable puzzle that takes you away from it.

Re: Translations of the Dao De Jing

#48

Post by mapcars »

contingencies wrote: post #15

A page about hair-splitting on translations of a philosophy whose chapter one paragraph one states the notion isn't possible to convey in words! The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao; The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth. The named is the mother of ten thousand things. Ever desireless, one can see the mystery. Ever desiring, one can see the ma…

You can not talk it but you can talk around it and get some interest on the subject even thousands of years later :)
Post reply on HN