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Tao Te Ching translated by Ursula Le Guin (1997)
111–120 of 125 posts
Re: Tao Te Ching translated by Ursula Le Guin (1997)
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for the very interesting list. I was expecting Euclid's Elements to be up there. Perhaps the filter "literary work" disqualified it. If you all pardon an off topic digression, the nebulosity of the definition of a straight line in elements has always bothered me. I wanted something free of reference to a physical artifact (straight edge, taught rope etc) and free of algebra. Its sometimes defined in terms of r…
> If you all pardon an off topic digression... IMHO, Euclid's definition of a straight line in today's terms would be "a line that has the same direction on its entire length". His definition of a plane angle would be "a plane angle is the difference between the directions of two straight lines that have a common end in one point". What are Playfair's and Hilbert's definitions?
The problem I have with that version of Euclid's definition is that direction is not defined.
Playfair interprets Euclid as follows, I am using my own words here, a straight line is that figure which has the property that if it intersects its moved copy at 2 points it necessarily coincides with it everywhere. "Movement" is undefined, it has to be an isometry.
Hilbert's is more abstract and based upon sets. Line is a primitive (undefined name) that interacts with two other undefined names (points and planes) according defined relations (lies on, lies between and is_congruent).
Re: Tao Te Ching translated by Ursula Le Guin (1997)
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you feel as strongly about king James version of the bible?
How is that relevant? Unlike Le Guin, the translators of the KJV knew the original languages.
To a degree. But a lot of the weirdness of the KJV (like how it mentions "unicorns" nine times despite the ancient Hebrews having no concept of that mythological beast) seem to be because the translators were also using a lot of the existing Latin Vulgate translation (where the Hebrew word now believed to mean "auroch" was mistranslated as "unicornis" as the Hebrew literally means "horned animal")
Re: Tao Te Ching translated by Ursula Le Guin (1997)
#114Re: Tao Te Ching translated by Ursula Le Guin (1997)
#115„So the wise soul
governing people
would empty their minds,
fill their bellies,
weaken their wishes,
strengthen their bones,
keep people unknowing,
unwanting,
keep the ones who do know
from doing anything.“
That is Putinism in a nutshell.
Re: Tao Te Ching translated by Ursula Le Guin (1997)
#116As someone who just finished reading her book City of Illusions, this is a fun coincidence. The first chapter of (her interpretation of) the Tao Te Ching features in the book, and the bit about "two things, one origin, but different in name" is a central aspect of the book.
City of Illusions is one of her earlier works, but I found it a great read, and definitely could see the throughline to The Left Hand of Darkness, which would be published a couple years later.
Re: Tao Te Ching translated by Ursula Le Guin (1997)
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
The foreward (or was it an afterword?) in the edition I have on my shelf has quite a bit on how she produced it, and it is very interesting. It was a process of very intensively studying and comparing all existing English translations she could find, using the Carus Chinese character-by-character translation as a sort of rosetta stone. While of course using her own literary sensibilities to phrasing too, as an author…
> I could easily believe this would result in a product that is a more faithful conversion to English than many translations. It's interesting to think about how this in some ways can combine and synthesize various subjectivities over time in a way that you actually couldn't do if you read the original language and believed your "own" take on the original translation was the "correct" one! The problem with that is th…
Thanks for your comments!
I'm afraid I'm not in the city where my copy of the Le Guin version is on my bookshelf, but the printed version has per-chapter authors notes at the end for many chapters where she often discusses her word choices -- I'm not sure if the notes included in this online version capture those or not? If I remember right, there were a few footnotes (which i'm thinking may be what's captured in OP), but then separately additional notes at the end which I'm not sure are captured here.
I'm curious if she says anything additional in foreward or notes about her choice of "real". Obviously she was aware it was not a choice other translators typically made. When I'm back home, I'll look!
Googling, the scholar who approved of Le Guin's work and worked with her somewhat on it (in some places I see him credited as a contributor to the Tao Te Ching rendition), is J. P. "Sandy" Seaton, who on his own seems to have produced plenty of other well-regarded translations of classical chinese poetry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_P._Seaton
Re: Tao Te Ching translated by Ursula Le Guin (1997)
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don’t think this common, glib aphorism has to be true. > or that Chinese has some greater expressive quality than other languages, which is arrogant bullshit and not true. Well, as stated a few moments ago in a previous comment: A picture is worth a thousand words. I'd be (genuinely) curious if you had more precise inputs as to why Chinese language (pictographic) wouldn't be more expressive than Western's (alphab…
Thank you for your reply. Let me think about it when I have time and get back to you! :) Are you Chinese, btw? I don't know if that's relevant, I'm just curious
My pleasure; no, I'm not Chinese at all: I'm actually French
Re: Tao Te Ching translated by Ursula Le Guin (1997)
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Well, probably not, no -- I'm pretty sure the Daodejing was written in a literary language quite distinct from any spoken language at that time. This used to be something readily found all over the world.
Re: Tao Te Ching translated by Ursula Le Guin (1997)
#120I made a moderately popular website to compare the different translations: https://ttc.tasuki.org/