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Tao Te Ching – Translated by Ursula K. Le Guin

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Re: Tao Te Ching – Translated by Ursula K. Le Guin

#81

Post by ProllyInfamous »

retrocog wrote: post #51
justonceokay wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading the Tao te Ching makes it clear why the best engineers are the soft-spoken individuals who refrain from talking until the end of the meeting.

That’s because good engineering is mostly listening to the system. If you talk too early, you end up arguing abstractions. If you listen long enough, the constraints introduce themselves. By the end of the meeting, the quiet person isn’t trying to win the room — they’re just reporting what reality already said.

>"If you listen long enough, the constraints introduce themselves."

This could be a line from [the non-existant] Tao #82.

Re: Tao Te Ching – Translated by Ursula K. Le Guin

#83

Post by Der_Einzige »

panarky wrote: post #68
prewett wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't encounter the Dao de Jing until later in life, but the opening bit has always seemed straightforward to me. I first saw it as "the way that can be described is not the Way", but also "the way that can be traveled is not the eternal Way". That is, the eternal (spiritual) Way cannot be concretized, just as a name is not the real thing. Or, given that this is HN, "the software development methodology that can b…

This is straight-up Baudrillard simulacra/simulation. The moment you say "Dao" (or "Agile", or "methodology"), you've already moved from the thing-in-itself to a sign living inside a sign system. That sign can be useful, but it can't be identical to what it points at. > “The Agile that can be PM’d is not Agile.” That’s exactly the stages of simulacra in miniature: - Faithful copy: "Agile" names a set of lived practic…

Jean Baudrillard is a fraud/charlatan. Semiotics is a fake field. Him and all his friends (i.e. Foucualt, Derrida, DnG, Althussar, etc) are at Chiropractors/ Homeopaths for the mind and at worst actual useful idiots for western intelligence agencies.

Re: Tao Te Ching – Translated by Ursula K. Le Guin

#84

Post by scroy »

andsoitis wrote: post #13
scroy wrote: post #11

As another comment points out, Le Guin herself does not call this a translation, so we shouldn't misrepresent it (although it might be my favorite English version). However, it's not in the public domain. Her work deserves all the attention it can get, but I'd rather not see it pirated wholesale.

> However, it's not in the public domain. Her work deserves all the attention it can get, but I'd rather not see it pirated wholesale. I don't disagree. Does github have a way to report copyright violations? I just bought the real book from Powell's. Several buying options: https://www.ursulakleguin.com/lao-tzu-the-tao-te-ching

I think the way to do it is to notify her estate and let them pursue it or not. But I'm really just here to say how I'm happy to pay her estate and publishers and everyone else should too.

Re: Tao Te Ching – Translated by Ursula K. Le Guin

#85

Post by Barrin92 »

drewchew wrote: post #62

Had to share the creation of Ea from the Earthsea cycle… very Tao… “Only in silence the word, Only in dark the light, Only in dying life: Bright the hawk’s flight On the empty sky. “The Creation of Éa,” Ursula K. Le Guin

I really liked Brook Ziporyn's translation of the Dao and particular his deep dive into the A / B / True A move that the Dao does all the time. There's a nice small lecture on YT on this as well: https://youtu.be/EJ1bB2w2gBk

Re: Tao Te Ching – Translated by Ursula K. Le Guin

#86

Post by sifar »

mbivert wrote: post #53
prewett wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't encounter the Dao de Jing until later in life, but the opening bit has always seemed straightforward to me. I first saw it as "the way that can be described is not the Way", but also "the way that can be traveled is not the eternal Way". That is, the eternal (spiritual) Way cannot be concretized, just as a name is not the real thing. Or, given that this is HN, "the software development methodology that can b…

> but the opening bit has always seemed straightforward to me the a/symmetry of the opening bits in Chinese, visually echoes a taiji: > 道可道， > 非恆道； > 名可名， > 非恆名。 given the diversity of translations available for those bits, I think it's fair to say that there's room for debate regarding their exact meaning − dare I say amusingly, by being certain one understand what it means, somehow one really does not. Lao-Tseu may…

Exactly. It subrly hints at the limitations of language in capturing true understanding.

This is something I was impressed with. Almost every other ancient text starts of being full of certainty or being the authoratitve truth.

Re: Tao Te Ching – Translated by Ursula K. Le Guin

#87

Post by TZubiri »

madhadron wrote: post #70
TZubiri wrote: post #41

I have 0 confidence that I could understand the Tao even if I read the best most classical translations available. Take the bible, which is translated from languages that are closer to mine, and which refers to a culture which is closer to mine, with family and scholars whose interpretation I can understand directly. Still I don't have much confidence that I understand the bulk of it, it takes years of reading and li…

This seems overly pessimistic. We regularly engage with other cultures and their texts and understand them, and, yes, it takes time and knowledge of context to do so. Someone needs to explain quite a bit about Roman society under Augustus for you to understand what is going on in detail in Ovid's Amores, and the Epic of Gilgamesh is pretty bizarre unless you know quite a bit about ancient Mesopotamia. The Tao te Chin…

>I don't think anyone is particularly fighting over what it means, just how to translate it when there isn't a parallel in modern English

A relatively recent new interpretation:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetry-news/69208/new-resea...

>Ovid's Amores, and the Epic of Gilgamesh is pretty bizarre unless you know quite a bit about ancient Mesopotamia.

But these cultures and texts are much closer to us than the Chinese Tao te Ching.

Taxonomically Latin and English have a common ancestor in ProtoIndoeuropean sure, but English and the Romances (I'm spanish native), but there's a lot of horizontal influence of Latin in English. Netwon, (and many other English writers) wrote in both Latin and English. The aphabet is the same.

Regarding the Epic of Gilgamesh, I haven't read much about that, cuneiform must be insanely hard to read, even through translations, that said, the fact that it seems to be an influence for Noah's Ark story seems to bring it much closer to western culture than Asian culture.

Same thing with Greek literature, it's a bit farther away, but some stuff like ficticious Oddyssey will be somewhat approachable through a translation, the rhymes and a million temporal references will be completely lost obviously.

Even some Arabic math texts I would consider to be somewhat more approachable by virtue of being so foundational to maths in general.

But religious Chinese? must be one of the most unapproachable combos for reading as a non native reader.

Re: Tao Te Ching – Translated by Ursula K. Le Guin

#88

Post by joquarky »

anondual wrote: post #58
prewett wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't encounter the Dao de Jing until later in life, but the opening bit has always seemed straightforward to me. I first saw it as "the way that can be described is not the Way", but also "the way that can be traveled is not the eternal Way". That is, the eternal (spiritual) Way cannot be concretized, just as a name is not the real thing. Or, given that this is HN, "the software development methodology that can b…

You should have posted your comment at the top. > Daoism also appears to have taken a literalist turn (ironically). It's incredibly ironic. To those who wonder where the irony is, imagine writing a book of poems on "freesbeing", which you describe as an ineffable experience that one gets when they play the freesbee. In your book, most passages allude to subtleties that escape any reader who isn't a freesbee enthousia…

I wonder if those who have come to realize that their thoughts are an unreliable narrator are less prone to be upset by the confabulations of genAI.

Re: Tao Te Ching – Translated by Ursula K. Le Guin

#89

Post by thadk »

culi wrote: post #20
dang wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found these. Others? Tao Te Ching translated by Ursula Le Guin (1997) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40886419 - July 2024 (118 comments) Tao Te Ching – Gia-Fu Feng, Jane English Translation (1989) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38058843 - Oct 2023 (99 comments) Tao Te Ching - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37686713 - Sept 2023 (170 comments) 175 translations of of the Tao Te Ching - https://ne…

In one of those threads a user, thadk, posted their really cool tool that shows a side by side comparison of English translations for each verse https://thadk.net/sbs/#/display:Code:gff,sm,jhmd,uklg,jc,rh/... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40887305

Glad it was a helpful remix! Since that post, the original tool author added UKLG's full version to the tool: https://ttc.tasuki.org/display:Code:gff,sm,jc,rh,uklg/sectio...

Re: Tao Te Ching – Translated by Ursula K. Le Guin

#90

Post by culi »

thadk wrote: post #89
culi wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In one of those threads a user, thadk, posted their really cool tool that shows a side by side comparison of English translations for each verse https://thadk.net/sbs/#/display:Code:gff,sm,jhmd,uklg,jc,rh/... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40887305

Glad it was a helpful remix! Since that post, the original tool author added UKLG's full version to the tool: https://ttc.tasuki.org/display:Code:gff,sm,jc,rh,uklg/sectio...

Ah I missed that tasuki was the original author of the tool. Thanks to both of y'all
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