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Tao Te Ching translated by Ursula Le Guin (1997)

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Re: Tao Te Ching translated by Ursula Le Guin (1997)

#31

Post by xarope »

solidsnack9000 wrote: post #25
mbivert wrote: post #17

I'll always remember from when I was a teenager, the visual symmetry of the first two sentences of the Tao Te Ching, echoing the "yin-yang symbol" 道可道， 非常道。 名可名， 非常名。 Here's a translation: The Dao that can be stated, is not the eternal Dao; The name that can be named is not the eternal name. So much is lost when translating from Chinese.

Yes, so much is lost. 道可道 This is three words: 道 -- dao, it means literally a road or path; metaphorically, it used to mean a spiritual way of life 可 -- ke, this generally is used today to indicate capability, actuality or acceptability: something is possible or something is actually true 道 -- same as the first one Now how do we translate this into ten or more English words?

the way has many ways

yet are not the way

(I'm sure someone can put on their yoda hat and do even better!)

Re: Tao Te Ching translated by Ursula Le Guin (1997)

#32

Post by jhedwards »

sdwr wrote: post #26
solidsnack9000 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, so much is lost. 道可道 This is three words: 道 -- dao, it means literally a road or path; metaphorically, it used to mean a spiritual way of life 可 -- ke, this generally is used today to indicate capability, actuality or acceptability: something is possible or something is actually true 道 -- same as the first one Now how do we translate this into ten or more English words?

How does that work? Where's the negation?

They left out the second half of the sentence: 非 [not] 常 [eternal] 道 [way]

Classical Chinese is highly contextual, and characters take on different meanings depending on the position in the sentence and the narrative context, hence the second instance of 道 meaning "speak, expound" instead of "way, method".

My favorite instance of this is from the Zhuangzi: 物 [thing] 物 [thing] 而 [and/under those conditions] 不 [not] 物 [thing] 于 [among] 物 [things]

Which translates to "treat the things of the world as things, but don't be a thing among them" which means that you should use strategic thinking to avoid becoming a victim of circumstances.

Re: Tao Te Ching translated by Ursula Le Guin (1997)

#33

Post by mbivert »

solidsnack9000 wrote: post #25
mbivert wrote: post #17

I'll always remember from when I was a teenager, the visual symmetry of the first two sentences of the Tao Te Ching, echoing the "yin-yang symbol" 道可道， 非常道。 名可名， 非常名。 Here's a translation: The Dao that can be stated, is not the eternal Dao; The name that can be named is not the eternal name. So much is lost when translating from Chinese.

Yes, so much is lost. 道可道 This is three words: 道 -- dao, it means literally a road or path; metaphorically, it used to mean a spiritual way of life 可 -- ke, this generally is used today to indicate capability, actuality or acceptability: something is possible or something is actually true 道 -- same as the first one Now how do we translate this into ten or more English words?

> Now how do we translate this into ten or more English words?

I think it's fair to say that written Chinese simply allows to encode more information than English. So it's "physically impossible": translation from Chinese is a lossy operation.

We can only provide a reasonable approximation.

Even at the character level, some information just can't get through. "道" for example contains both "辶" (to walk) and "首" (head, chief, first (occasion, thing, etc)). In addition to the usual meanings, we could derive some further meanings, coherent in this context, with a "philosophical" approach to life (e.g. "the state of mind of someone who moves forward, one step at a time, without rushing").

Re: Tao Te Ching translated by Ursula Le Guin (1997)

#34

Post by solidsnack9000 »

sdwr wrote: post #26
solidsnack9000 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, so much is lost. 道可道 This is three words: 道 -- dao, it means literally a road or path; metaphorically, it used to mean a spiritual way of life 可 -- ke, this generally is used today to indicate capability, actuality or acceptability: something is possible or something is actually true 道 -- same as the first one Now how do we translate this into ten or more English words?

How does that work? Where's the negation?

This is not even getting to that; but that is actually pretty simple, to be fair.

The negation is: 非常道

非 -- fei, this has been a negator for a very long time in Chinese

常 -- chang, this means something like common, usual, normal, or nominal (I suspect that translating this as "eternal" is a creative move on the part of some westerner)

道 -- dao, the way again

Nowadays, 非常 as a compound is used to mean "extraordinary" ("not normal", "exceptional"); but it is not hard to see how it might be taken to negate 道 here.

Re: Tao Te Ching translated by Ursula Le Guin (1997)

#35

Post by lo_zamoyski »

solidsnack9000 wrote: post #25
mbivert wrote: post #17

I'll always remember from when I was a teenager, the visual symmetry of the first two sentences of the Tao Te Ching, echoing the "yin-yang symbol" 道可道， 非常道。 名可名， 非常名。 Here's a translation: The Dao that can be stated, is not the eternal Dao; The name that can be named is not the eternal name. So much is lost when translating from Chinese.

Yes, so much is lost. 道可道 This is three words: 道 -- dao, it means literally a road or path; metaphorically, it used to mean a spiritual way of life 可 -- ke, this generally is used today to indicate capability, actuality or acceptability: something is possible or something is actually true 道 -- same as the first one Now how do we translate this into ten or more English words?

> 道 -- dao, it means literally a road or path; metaphorically, it used to mean a spiritual way of life

Some relate Tao to Logos from the Greek, and as in the first chapter of the Gospel of John. The meaning of Logos is quite complex[0], and the typical translation into most languages as "word" is grossly inadequate.

And so, if Christ is the Incarnate Logos, and Tao is Logos, then Christ is the Incarnate Tao. And John 14:6 reads "I am the _way_, and the truth, and the life.". (Hieromonk Damascene has written a book on exactly this subject[1].)

These have also been related to Rta, Asha, and Ma'at.

[0] https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=lo%2Fgos&la=gre...

[1] https://a.co/d/0btyDy8i

Re: Tao Te Ching translated by Ursula Le Guin (1997)

#36

Post by solidsnack9000 »

lo_zamoyski wrote: post #35
solidsnack9000 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, so much is lost. 道可道 This is three words: 道 -- dao, it means literally a road or path; metaphorically, it used to mean a spiritual way of life 可 -- ke, this generally is used today to indicate capability, actuality or acceptability: something is possible or something is actually true 道 -- same as the first one Now how do we translate this into ten or more English words?

> 道 -- dao, it means literally a road or path; metaphorically, it used to mean a spiritual way of life Some relate Tao to Logos from the Greek, and as in the first chapter of the Gospel of John. The meaning of Logos is quite complex[0], and the typical translation into most languages as "word" is grossly inadequate. And so, if Christ is the Incarnate Logos, and Tao is Logos, then Christ is the Incarnate Tao. And John…

That is not really translation, though, once you start doing that.

Re: Tao Te Ching translated by Ursula Le Guin (1997)

#37

Post by duskwuff »

sitkack wrote: post #23

I love Ursula Le Guin's writing so damn much. I am reading, "Lathe of Heaven" right now, such a great book to come off of Sula by Toni Morrison. Maybe if I pull the right strings, I can get reincarnated as one of Luisito's nose hairs, https://luisurrea.com/2018/01/tolfink-was-here-on-ursula-k-l... > Then she terrorized us by bringing Toni Morrison into the room to meet us. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daf1FH7fWFk

Coincidentally - or perhaps not! - Le Guin borrowed the title for The Lathe of Heaven from an awkward late-1800s translation of the Zhuangzi.

Re: Tao Te Ching translated by Ursula Le Guin (1997)

#38

Post by jerf »

mbivert wrote: post #33
solidsnack9000 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, so much is lost. 道可道 This is three words: 道 -- dao, it means literally a road or path; metaphorically, it used to mean a spiritual way of life 可 -- ke, this generally is used today to indicate capability, actuality or acceptability: something is possible or something is actually true 道 -- same as the first one Now how do we translate this into ten or more English words?

> Now how do we translate this into ten or more English words? I think it's fair to say that written Chinese simply allows to encode more information than English. So it's "physically impossible": translation from Chinese is a lossy operation. We can only provide a reasonable approximation. Even at the character level, some information just can't get through. "道" for example contains both "辶" (to walk) and "首" (head,…

Native English speakers, and especially native English speakers who do not have fluency in another language, also often have a "familiarity breeds contempt" situation going on with their own language and are not aware of the fact that English is also a rich language, filled with cultural allusions, subtleties in the connotations versus the denotations, rich histories than span continents behind many words, distinct poetical traditions, and many other quirks.

It isn't just Chinese -> English that loses information. The other direction does too. They are two languages that spent thousands of years estranged from each other, so, unlike the European languages which are all different but coevolved, they are both different from each other in a lot of ways. The richness of languages that have grown apart from each other inhibits translations in both directions not just because the concepts in the original language are not precisely present in the other, but also because you can't help but invoke the rich concepts of the target language that don't match.

I'm sure a Chinese person reading just this very post could write about the implications carried in the word "continent" and how that is wrapped around a lot of cultural assumptions around how things are separated (if you don't know what I mean, google around for discussions around "how many continents are there"), the etymology of "quirk" and its many nuances, the connotations embedded in the word "estranged" and why I chose that one over, say, the more neutral "separated", the implications behind "coevolved", and make English sound as amazing as English speakers make Chinese sound... and that would be because both are correct.

Re: Tao Te Ching translated by Ursula Le Guin (1997)

#39

Post by yongjik »

hotdogscout wrote: post #8

I have a feeling people who love Le Guin love the idea of her and didn't actually read her books. Her style is impersonal, robotic and kind of boring. Look at her most famous quotes for a snippet: https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/874602.Ursula_K_Le_G...

Hard disagree. I find Le Guin's prose breathtakingly gorgeous. And then it hits you like a brick wall.

> The second year I was in Elbow, I was worklister, the mill syndicate cut rations. People doing six hours in the plant got full rations—just barely enough for that kind of work. People on half time got threequarter rations. If they were sick or too weak to work, they got half. On half rations you couldn’t get well. You couldn’t get back to work. You might stay alive. I was supposed to put people on half rations, people that were already sick. I was working full time, eight, ten hours sometimes, desk work, so I got full rations: I earned them. I earned them by making lists of who should starve.

(The Dispossessed)

Re: Tao Te Ching translated by Ursula Le Guin (1997)

#40

Post by eigenhombre »

primitivesuave wrote: post #4

My personal preference in TTC translation is by Gia Fu Feng and Jane English.

See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38058843 for a link to a text-only version; however, IMO their "translation" lies as much in Jane English's photos and the entire book presentation, as it does in the purely English language rendition of the text. I prefer other translations (including Le Guin's) for just the words, but Feng/English is still my favorite overall.
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