Tao Te Ching translated by Ursula Le Guin (1997) • Hacker News Board

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

#71

Post by karencarits » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 6:19 AM UTC

sophyphreak wrote: post #55

I've studied classical Chinese. Ursula Le Guin's translation does not retain much feeling or meaning from the original. I don't fault her on this though because most translations of the Daodejing are like this. I recommend Philip J. Ivanhoe's translation, which has its own flaws as well. If we want to go out into the weeds a bit, I think this text is ethereal in the original but despite this, most translations tend t…

> the Daodejing being the second most translated book in history after the Bibl

I know this is difficult to quantify accurately, but Wikipedia lists Daodejing behind the Little Prince and Pinocchio

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_literary_works_by_nu...

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

#72

Post by kjkjadksj » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 6:24 AM UTC

noufalibrahim wrote: post #64

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.

The way i look at it is that written language itself is a translation of an idea onto a page. Something is lost or atleast becomes ambiguous without an interpreter or a teacher or at the least, a detailed commentary. This is not that much of problem for a casual piece of text but for something that has much more potential impact, it's huge. Translating laws or perhaps the constitution of a country can all but change…

This is probably why we put so much emphasis on precedent over the actual text of the law. Likewise with the bible, perhaps not as much with the christians at least these days, but the Jews have their talmud that interprets the book ad nauseum through centuries of rabbis spitballing their interpretation of the base text, ending up with things like a string hung from telephone polls to represent the walls of the temple to loophole around sabbath laws.

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

#73

Post by michaelmior » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 6:52 AM UTC

max4c wrote: post #12

Highly recommend checking out Le Guin's Earthsea Cycle. Some of the best fantasy I have ever read.

I recently started reading it and I love it. Her style of storytelling is very unique. It feels very meandering in a way, but rather than that making reading feel like a drag, I feel like I end up getting more color on the world she built.

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

#74

Post by mjd » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 7:13 AM UTC

sophyphreak wrote: post #55

I've studied classical Chinese. Ursula Le Guin's translation does not retain much feeling or meaning from the original. I don't fault her on this though because most translations of the Daodejing are like this. I recommend Philip J. Ivanhoe's translation, which has its own flaws as well. If we want to go out into the weeds a bit, I think this text is ethereal in the original but despite this, most translations tend t…

> I don't fault her on this

I do. She didn't know Chinese. For her to attempt a translation (by mashing up earlier translations) shows contempt for Chinese culture and literature.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1wn0qtj.12

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

#75

Post by canjobear » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 7:17 AM UTC

nine_k wrote: post #50

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?

I suppose that wenyan is not a normal spoken language [1], but a form of a literary encoding, more like poetry meeting stenography, and a way to crystallize the meaning without excessive syntax. English translation requires many more words because a "normal", vernacular Chinese rendition would also require many more words. My suggestion is to assume quotes: "Dao which is 'dao' is not true dao", that is, the mere word…

It was a bona fide spoken language at the time the Daodejing was written. Likely sounding very little like modern Chinese.

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

#76

Post by sorokod » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 7:20 AM UTC

mjd wrote: post #74

sophyphreak wrote: post #55

I've studied classical Chinese. Ursula Le Guin's translation does not retain much feeling or meaning from the original. I don't fault her on this though because most translations of the Daodejing are like this. I recommend Philip J. Ivanhoe's translation, which has its own flaws as well. If we want to go out into the weeds a bit, I think this text is ethereal in the original but despite this, most translations tend t…

> I don't fault her on this I do. She didn't know Chinese. For her to attempt a translation (by mashing up earlier translations) shows contempt for Chinese culture and literature. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1wn0qtj.12

Do you feel as strongly about king James version of the bible?

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

#77

Post by canjobear » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 7:21 AM UTC

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 really impossible thing to translate into English here is that 道 was also the verb “to say.” So 道可道 is a pun that could mean “the way that can be trod” or “the way that can be said.”

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

#78

Post by keepamovin » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 7:23 AM UTC

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.

> So much is lost when translating from Chinese.

I don’t think this common, glib aphorism has to be true. It all depends on how your mind works, or what statement you have.

Do you require ambiguity, and inferentialness to be explicitly clothed as such, as in Chinese, or can you take the words themselves, that can be concrete meanings, and use them as a jumping point to infer on your own? As in English.

There's also a very strong way in which this statement is not true, because if we assume that the text contains transcendental universal truths, saying that it can only be accurately expressed in Chinese, is suggesting either that it's a uniquely Chinese truth, so it's not universal, or that Chinese has some greater expressive quality than other languages, which is arrogant bullshit and not true.

So I think rather than thinking of a translation, think instead of what statement do you have of the truths reflected in a particular form in that original Chinese text. What statement do you have of those truths in whatever material you're working with, be it a language or something else?

And it's funny to talk about much being lost, because the text itself readily and repeatedly admits that the truths it talks about cannot be accurately expressed. In fact, it highlights the limitations of language, of the original Chinese it was written in, to accurately and fully convey what it is talking about.

So I think it's nonsense to say that, “oh, so much is lost when translating from Chinese”, and it's entirely the wrong way to talk about it, and kind of a lazy worshipfulness that's unworthy of that, I think, in this context entirely.

So liberated from those constraints, I think you can be free to consider, well, what is it talking about? And also to think about that and come up with your own translation.

So back to the original point, I don't think you have to lose something when you're putting it in English. Here's my attempt:

The path that can be walked is not the AllPath. The word that can be said is not the AllWord.

Btw, What does your regular Chinese person think about this book? I know it’s very popular in the west. Is it popular in Chinese speaking regions as well? What do people think about it?

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

#79

Post by canjobear » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 7:29 AM UTC

solidsnack9000 wrote: post #34

sdwr wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"…

Interestingly the 常 was originally 恒, meaning “constant,” in the oldest manuscripts. It got changed to 常 because it was taboo to write any character appearing in the given name of an Enperor, and Emperor Wen of Han had the given name 恒.

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

#80

Post by MarceColl » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 7:43 AM UTC

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #58

sophyphreak wrote: post #55

I've studied classical Chinese. Ursula Le Guin's translation does not retain much feeling or meaning from the original. I don't fault her on this though because most translations of the Daodejing are like this. I recommend Philip J. Ivanhoe's translation, which has its own flaws as well. If we want to go out into the weeds a bit, I think this text is ethereal in the original but despite this, most translations tend t…

> If this is true, we should expect translations to be vastly different from one another. But despite the Daodejing being the second most translated book in history after the Bible, most translations keep the feel and content of the others. I'm not really familiar with the Tao Te Ching. But isn't the straightforward explanation here that Wang Bi was wrong?

I've dabbled in classical chinese as well. The language is quite ambiguous and the text is as well, you could look at it with very many angles. The straightforward explanation is that other translators probably influenced each other a lot and that caused the translation similarities